Abstract

This paper will examine the following questions: What is it to forgive? Who is qualified to forgive? Who is a fit object of forgiveness? What justifies forgiveness? What is the place of forgiveness in the structure of human moral life? What is the ontological presupposition of an ethics of forgiveness? What is the implication of the persistence of interest in forgiveness in ethical discourse? We will first try to illuminate the nature of forgiveness of moral wrongs in analogy with debt forgiveness. We will examine and compare the answers to the above questions from the deontological, eudemonistic, virtue, theoretic, and communitarian perspectives to draw some conclusions: that there cannot be a theory that tells us precisely whom to forgive, what, for what reasons; that on any view forgiveness is a situational departure from a normal moral practice, the best reason for which is that the forgiver sees a good for both the forgiver and the forgiven that supersedes the obligation to pursue justice; that the reluctance to dispense with the notion of forgiveness signifies the human awareness of human fallibility as agents and judges, an emblematic symptom of human finitude.