I read on social media that there are different kinds of forgiveness, like state forgiveness and trait forgiveness. Are there really different kinds of forgiveness?
Some psychologists use exclusive psychological language and concepts to try to understand what forgiveness is. I disagree with this approach because psychology generally does not examine moral virtues to the depth that philosophers do. Thus, I prefer the philosophical approach to first understanding what forgiveness is prior to doing psychological research with forgiveness. From Aristotle’s viewpoint, forgiveness has an objective, absolute, and universal character to it, which means that it is unchanging across time and cultures. This core meaning to forgiveness is what Aristotle calls its Essence. There are large difference in how forgiveness is expressed in different cultures and this is what Aristotle calls the Existence of forgiveness. So, Essence remains constant (across time and cultures) and Existence changes according to traditions, norms, and circumstances without altering its Essence. So, state and trait forgiving for Aristotle are the same, but on a continuum from how you forgive at the moment (state forgiveness) and how you tend to forgive in general (trait). This, then, should not imply that there are different kinds of forgiveness, but instead the same forgiveness at the moment and how we develop to generally offer forgiveness to others.
