Tagged: “Dr. Robert Enright”

I have heard that forgiveness is not a moral virtue but instead is a psychological skill in which a person reduces resentment toward an offender.  Why do you call it a moral virtue?

June 23, 2024 No comments
All moral virtues are concerned with goodness toward others.  For example, justice is to be fair to others.  When we forgive, at least on its highest level (whether or not a particular person reaches this level), we are offering kindness, respect, and even love toward those who have been unfair to us as forgivers.  Given this willed goodness toward an offending person, this is a quintessential sign of goodness. If forgiveness is only being less resentful toward an offending person, this could be achieved, for example, by seeing that person as so less than human that you feel sorry for this person, thus reducing resentment.  This seems too narrow and reductionistic.

I know you say that forgiveness and justice should grow up together, but I still am not convinced.  Isn’t it the case that as I forgive and soften myself toward the one who injured me, I become less motivated to do the hard work of justice-seeking?  I say this because a little anger in the heart can toughen the heart to move forward with the quest for fairness.

June 22, 2024 No comments
You make a good point that mild and short-term anger can motivate a person to seek fairness.  Here is another perspective: As you forgive, you seek the good of the other person who hurt you.  Part of this seeking after the other’s good is to assist that person in growing to be a fair person.  So, the short-term anger is good for motivating the injured person to stand up for his rights.  The longer-term forgiving is good for motivating the injured person to help the other be fair for that other person’s sake.

Is Forgiveness Something Tied to Western Philosophies/Religions and Therefore Is Not a Worldwide Idea?

June 22, 2024 No comments

I came across the above question, which suggests that forgiveness does not have a universal essence to it.  Yet, some years ago, we at the International Forgiveness Institute did a study of forgiveness words in 26 different world cultures.  As you will see below, forgiveness is not confined to Western thought.

Here is a list of various cultures and their words for “to forgive” or “I forgive you”:

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Albanian prt falur
Catalan a perdonar
Castilian Para perdonar
Czech Odpoutm
Danish At tilgive
Dutch Te vergeven
English to forgive
Filipino upang patawarin
Finnish Annettakoon se teille anteeksi
French pardonner
German Ich verzeihe Dir
Hungarian n megbocs tok neked
Icelandic afyrirgefa
Irish a logh
Italian A perdonare
Maltese li nahfru
Norwegian Til  forlate
Polish Odpuszcza
Portuguese A perdoar
Romanian Pentru a ierta
Spanish Para perdonar
Swahili kusamehe
Swedish Frlta
Turkish BEN size bala
Vietnamese Ti tha th cho bn
Welsh i faddau

26 languages, 26 similar ways to communicate. This, of course, is no proof of the universality of “to forgive” or “I forgive you.” Yet, we put this term and this expression to the test and they were not defeated. At the very least we can conclude that forgiveness has a place in many cultures.

For each term or expression, we translated it from English into the other language. We then back-translated into English and retained the term/expression only if both forms of translation were consistent.  The important implication is this: We can be motivated to talk with others about forgiveness and can be quite confident that the other person, from a different culture, has words that mean forgiveness, the same word that we are using.

 

Which is the deeper form of forgiving: being respectful of the offending person or trying to love that person?

June 21, 2024 No comments
If by the term love you mean willing the good of that person and then acting on this even when it is painful for you to do so, then love in this sense is much deeper than respect.  Respect is highly valued, but it does not cost the forgiver as much struggle and even pain as love in this sense does.  You can be respectful from a distance.  Love in service to others requires you to enter into that other person’s life to be of help, in this case to aid in leading a better life.