Forgiveness and Its Moral Dimensions

Edited by Brandon Warmke, Dana Kay Nelkin, and Michael McKenna

Contains 12 entirely new essays on forgiveness by some of the world's leading moral philosophers
Draws connections between forgiveness and free will, religion, institutional wrongdoing, apology, moral responsibility, and our emotions.
Presents bold new theories about the nature and norms of forgiveness

Forgiveness and Its Moral Dimensions

Edited by Brandon Warmke, Dana Kay Nelkin, and Michael McKenna

Description

Philosophical interest in forgiveness has seen a resurgence. This interest reflects, at least in part, a large body of new work in psychology, several newsworthy cases of institutional apology and forgiveness, and intense and increased attention to the practices surrounding responsibility, blame, and praise. In this book, some of the world's leading philosophers present twelve entirely new essays on forgiveness. Some contributors have been writing about forgiveness for decades. Others have taken the opportunity here to develop their thinking about forgiveness they broached in other work. For some contributors, this is their first time writing on forgiveness. While all the contributions address core questions about the nature and norms of forgiveness, they also collectively break new ground by raising entirely new questions, offering original proposals and arguments, and making connections to the topics of free will, moral responsibility, collective wrongdoing, apology, religion, and our emotions.

Forgiveness and Its Moral Dimensions

Edited by Brandon Warmke, Dana Kay Nelkin, and Michael McKenna

1. Forgiveness: An Introduction - Brandon Warmke, Dana Kay Nelkin, and Michael McKenna
2. The Forgiven - David Shoemaker
3. Fitting Attitudes and Forgiveness - Glen Pettigrove
4. Forgiveness as the Renunciation of Protest - Derk Pereboom
5. Free Will and Forgiveness - Ishtiyaque Haji
6. Forgiveness as a Performative Utterance - Richard Swinburne
7. Institutional Apologies and Forgiveness - Angela M. Smith
8. The Sunflower: Guilt, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation - Eleonore Stump
9. Forgiving Evil - Eve Garrard and David McNaughton
10. Forgiveness, Self-Respect, and Humility - Margaret Holmgren
11. Forgiveness as a Duty of Universal Love - Christine Swanton
12. Frailty and Forgiveness: Forgiveness for Humans - Lucy Allais
13. Forgiveness and Consequences - Richard Arneson

Forgiveness and Its Moral Dimensions

Edited by Brandon Warmke, Dana Kay Nelkin, and Michael McKenna

Author Information

Brandon Warmke (Ph.D. Arizona) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University. He works in ethics, social philosophy, moral psychology, and political philosophy. He is the author of several philosophical and empirical papers on public discourse and moral responsibility, and over a dozen papers on forgiveness. With Justin Tosi, he is the author of Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk (2020, OUP). His work has been featured in The Atlantic, HuffPost, Scientific American, The Guardian, Slate, The New York Times Magazine, and Vox.

Dana Kay Nelkin (Ph.D. UCLA) is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and an Affiliate Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. Her areas of research include moral psychology, ethics, bioethics, and philosophy of law. She is the author of Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility (Oxford University Press), and a number of articles on a variety of topics, including self-deception, friendship, the lottery paradox, moral luck, psychopathy, forgiveness, and praise and blame. She is also a co-editor of the The Ethics and Law of Omissions and The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility. Her work in moral psychology includes participation in an interdisciplinary research collaboration of philosophers and psychologists, The Moral Judgements Project, which brings together normative and descriptive enquiries about the use of moral principles such as the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing and the Doctrine of Double Effect.

Michael McKenna (Ph.D. Virginia) is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. His areas of research are mostly devoted to free will and moral responsibility, but also include issues in moral psychology, action theory, ethics, and metaphysics. He is the author of Conversation and Responsibility (Oxford University Press), the co-author with Derk Pereboom of Free Will: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Press), and has also written numerous articles, most of which would impress you if you were to read them. He is also co-editor of Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities, Free Will and Reactive Attitudes, and The Nature of Moral Responsibility. He has a boundless lust for life, and he often drinks to excess.

Contributors:

Lucy Allais is professor of philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and Henry Allison Chair of the History of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. She has published work on Kant, forgiveness, moral responsibility and punishment, and is working on freedom of the will.

Richard Arneson holds the Valtz Family Chair in Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, where he has taught since 1973. He teaches moral and political philosophy and writes mainly on theories of social justice and on act consequentialism and its critics. He also does work on applied philosophy topics.

Eve Garrard is a moral philosopher who is currently Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Manchester University. Her research interests are in moral theory, bioethics, and philosophical issues connected with the concepts of evil and forgiveness. She has co-edited (with Geoffrey Scarre) Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust (2003), co-authored (with David McNaughton) Forgiveness (2010), and has published various papers on aspects of forgiveness and of evil. She is currently doing further work on the idea of evil. She has published several papers on bioethical issues, and has in the past sat on various Ethics Committees, including the Royal College of Pathology Ethics Committee, and has been involved in GP ethics and clinical ethics training.

Ishtiyaque Haji is professor of philosophy at the University of Calgary. He has research interests in ethical theory, philosophy of action, metaphysics, and philosophical psychology. He is the author of Moral Appraisability (1998), Deontic Morality and Control (2002), (with Stefaan Cuypers) Moral Responsibility, Authenticity, and Education (2008), Freedom and Value (2009), Incompatibilism's Allure (2009), Reason's Debt to Freedom (2012), Luck's Mischief (2016), and The Obligation Dilemma (2019).

Margaret Holmgren is Associate Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Iowa State University. She is the author of Forgiveness and Retribution: Responding to Wrongdoing (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and of a number of articles in the areas of ethics, philosophy of law, and moral epistemology. With Heimir Geirsson, she also co-edited the anthology Ethical Theory, which is now in its third edition, with Broadview Press. Before coming to Iowa State University, she taught at Oberlin College and Wellesley College.

Michael McKenna (Ph.D. Virginia) is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. His areas of research are mostly devoted to free will and moral responsibility, but also include issues in moral psychology, action theory, ethics, and metaphysics. He is the author of Conversation and Responsibility (Oxford University Press), the co-author with Derk Pereboom of Free Will: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Press), and has also written numerous articles, most of which would impress you if you were to read them. He is also co-editor of Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities, Free Will and Reactive Attitudes, and The Nature of Moral Responsibility. He has a boundless lust for life, and he often drinks to excess.

David McNaughton is retired and lives in Edinburgh with his wife, Rosa, and their two dogs. He is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at both Keele and Florida State Universities, and is currently Honorary Professor of Philosophy at Edinburgh University. He is the author of Moral Vision (1988) and (with Eve Garrard) of Forgiveness (2010), and of a number of papers on ethics, philosophy of religion, and the relations between the two. His edition of Joseph Butler's Fifteen Sermons came out in 2017 with OUP, and he is currently editing Butler's Analogy of Religion. He and Piers Rawling are also writing a book on their approach to practical reasons.

Dana Kay Nelkin (Ph.D. UCLA) is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and an Affiliate Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. Her areas of research include moral psychology, ethics, bioethics, and philosophy of law. She is the author of Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility (Oxford University Press), and a number of articles on a variety of topics, including self-deception, friendship, the lottery paradox, moral luck, psychopathy, forgiveness, and praise and blame. She is also a co-editor of the The Ethics and Law of Omissions and The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility. Her work in moral psychology includes participation in an interdisciplinary research collaboration of philosophers and psychologists, The Moral Judgements Project, which brings together normative and descriptive enquiries about the use of moral principles such as the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing and the Doctrine of Double Effect.

Derk Pereboom is the Susan Linn Sage Professor in the Philosophy Department at Cornell University. He is the author of Living without Free Will (Cambridge 2001), Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism (Oxford 2011), Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life (Oxford 2014), and of articles on free will, philosophy of mind, and in the history of modern philosophy.

Glen Pettigrove holds the Chair in Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. Before joining the Glasgow department, he taught at the University of Auckland. He specializes in moral psychology, normative ethics, and early modern philosophy. He has a particular interest in the role of the emotions in our personal and collective lives and has written on anger, cheerfulness, forgiveness, guilt, love, and shame. He is the author of Forgiveness and Love (Oxford University Press, 2012) as well as numerous articles on virtue, religious ethics, and group attitudes.

David Shoemaker is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Murphy Institute of Political Economy at Tulane University. He has written or edited numerous books and articles on topics in moral psychology, agency and responsibility, personal identity and ethics, and social/political philosophy. He is a recurring Visiting Researcher at Lund University, associate editor of Ethics, general editor of the series Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, and, with David Sobel, the co-editor of the long-running ethics blog PEA Soup.

Angela M. Smith is Professor of Philosophy at Washington and Lee University. She has published extensively on topics relate to moral agency, moral responsibility, and moral blame.

Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University. She is also Honorary Professor at Wuhan University and at the Logos Institute, St. Andrews, and a Professorial Fellow at Australian Catholic University. She has published extensively in philosophy of religion, contemporary metaphysics, and medieval philosophy. Her books include Aquinas (2003), Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (2010), and Atonement (2018). She has given the Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen (2003), the Wilde lectures at Oxford (2006), the Stewart lectures at Princeton (2009), and the Stanton lectures at Cambridge (2018). She is past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers, the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and the American Philosophical Association, Central Division; and she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Christine Swanton is at the Philosophy Department University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has recently published (2015) The Virtue Ethics of Hume and Nietzsche (Wiley Blackwell). Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View was published with Oxford University Press in 2003. Recent work incudes Perspectives in Role Ethics Routledge (with Tim Dare, eds.) and a book manuscript Target Centred Virtue Ethics (OUP, forthcoming).

Richard Swinburne is a Fellow of the British Academy. He was Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Oxford from 1985 until 2002. He is best known for his trilogy on the philosophy of theism (The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reason), second editions of all of which have been published recently, and for the short 'popular' book, Is There a God? which summarizes them. He is the author of a several books, including Responsibility and Atonement, on the meaning and justification of central Christian doctrines. He is also known for his defence of substance dualism, developed in Mind, Brain, and Free Will and (in a more 'popular' version) in his latest book Are We Bodies or Souls?.

Brandon Warmke (Ph.D. Arizona) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University. He works in ethics, social philosophy, moral psychology, and political philosophy. He is the author of several philosophical and empirical papers on public discourse and moral responsibility, and over a dozen papers on forgiveness. With Justin Tosi, he is the author of Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk (2020, OUP). His work has been featured in The Atlantic, HuffPost, Scientific American, The Guardian, Slate, The New York Times Magazine, and Vox.