Forgiveness and Redemption

1. Forgiveness and Redemption Diana Mertz Hsieh TOC Summer Seminar 2001

2. Foundational Issues • Human relationships • Finding purposes • Evaluating importance • Harm and conflict • Discovering causes • Evaluating seriousness

3. Human Relationships • Purpose • Shared values • Expectations

4. Purpose of Human Relationships • All relationships serve particular ends: • business or pleasure • material or spiritual • rational or irrational • The most basic purpose of a relationship is the mutual benefit of both people (Trader Principle)

5. Mutual Benefit A mutually beneficial relationship is one in which both people objectively regard the values gained through the relationship as more valuable to themselves than the values traded and foregone.

6. Purpose in Relationships CASH VALUE: When conflict arises in a relationship, the most basic goal is to restore the relationship to a state of maximal mutual benefit.

7. Shared Values in Relationships • Measuring importance on three axes • Breadth: number of shared values • Depth: importance of shared values • Scarcity: frequency of shared values in wider population depth scarcity breadth

8. Shared Values in Relationships CASH VALUE: The axes of shared value (breadth, depth, and scarcity) provide an objective method of analyzing the overall value of our relationships.

9. Expectations in Relationships Expectations are descriptive judgments predicting the future behavior of another person. Expectations allow us to rationally plan our actions within a relationship.

10. Evaluating Expectations • Moral weight (correspondence to moral principle) • Explicit vs implicit • Negative vs positive • Rationality (justification with respect to facts and moral principles)

11. Expectations in Relationships CASH VALUE: Harm is the potential consequence of one person's actions not matching the other person's expectations.

12. Summary of Cash Value • The primary cause of conflicts in relationships is failed expectations • The breadth, depth, and scarcity of shared values are objective criteria in determining the objective value of a relationship • The purpose of eliminating conflict in a relationship is the restoration of the relationship to a state of mutual benefit

13. Harm and Conflict Harm is the loss of value. • Harm is flexible: • Loss can be temporary or permanent, partial or total, present or future. • Value can be material, monetary, temporal, or spiritual. • Cause can be forces of nature, other people, or ourselves.

14. Evaluating Harm • Existential evaluation (the what?) • Magnitude of harm measures the extent of the actual negative impact of that harm upon a person's life and happiness • Replaceability of lost values measures how easily the lost value can be replaced by a similar or similar-enough value

15. Evaluating Harm • Psychological evaluation (the why?) • Intent of an action resulting in harm measures the perpetrator's foreknowledge of and attitude towards the harm resulting from the action • Difficulties in objectively judging intent • Indirect inference • Emotion-induced blindness

16. Intentional Harm • Intentional harm arises when there is clear foreknowledge of the harm that will result from action taken • Malicious harm: harm is purpose of action • Callous harm: harm is side-effect of action

17. Negligent Harm • Negligent harm arises when a reasonable person ought to have but did not foresee the harm that would result from action taken • Evasion of: • Harmful consequences • Risk of those consequences • Ways to mitigate those consequences • Degrees of evasion

18. Unintentional Harm • Unintentional harm arises when a reasonable person could not and did not foresee the harm that would result from their action • Misunderstandings • Bad guesses • Unconsidered alternatives • Unforeseeable circumstances • Emergencies

19. Conflicts • Conflict without harm • Conflict with mutual harm

20. Repairing Relationships • Three primary issues: • Nature and causes of harm (What's wrong with this picture?) • The process of replacing the lost values (Who's going to pay for this mess?) • The risk of future harm (How many garbage cans is this guy going to run over?)

21. Nature and Causes of Harm • Existential evaluation of harm • Magnitude • Replaceability • Psychological evaluation of harm • intent

22. Replacement of Lost Values Restitution is the process by which the victim of a harm is compensated for the values lost by the perpetrator of the harm. • Functions of restitution • Reflection of consequences • Demonstration of sincerity

23. Types of Restitution • Full vs partial vs none • Direct vs indirect • Role of virtue of pride

24. Risk of Future Harm The analysis of the risk of future harm tells the victim the likelihood of suffering the same or a similar enough harm in the future. • Evaluation of: • Character • Intent • Attitude towards harm

25. Apology An apology is a statement from the perpetrator of a harm to the victim of that harm acknowledging that his actions caused the harm, showing regret for that harm, and possibly acknowledging moral wrongdoing.

26. Redemption Redemption is the process of altering or deepening one's commitments to rational moral principles after a moral wrong. • The virtue of pride • Non-subjectivity • Problem of dishonesty

27. Forgiveness Forgiveness is a recognition of the perpetrator's honesty of explanation, genuineness of regret, and commitment to non-harm in the future. • Benefits of forgiveness • Two errors of forgiveness

28. Other Options • Acceptance: victim's recognition of the perpetrator's value to his life, despite the failure to meet the criteria of forgiveness • Termination of relationship: victim’s judgment that mutually beneficial relationship not possible

29. Conclusion complexity