Unilateral forgiveness:

forgiveness in the absence of apology

Maria Camila Castro

mc.castro10@uniandes.edu.co

201225856

Trabajo de grado para optar por el título

de Magíster en Filosofía

Director: Santiago Amaya

Universidad de los Andes,

Departamento de Filosofía

Diciembre, 2018.
 Unilateral forgiveness:

forgiveness in the absence of apology

According to conditional theories, forgiveness is unreasonable unless the

wrongdoer complies with conditions that make them worthy of it (Griswold, 2007;

Murphy, 1988; Swinburne, 1989). These conditions are meant to ensure respect for

the victim and proper condemnation of the offense. The wrongdoer, we are told,

ought to repent, apologize, atone, repair, and so forth. There are, however, cases

that do not fit this paradigm. Sometimes victims have good reasons to unilaterally

forgive someone who has not complied with conditions that would otherwise

make them deserving of forgiveness.

In this paper, I argue that unilateral forgiveness need not be, as conditional

theories would have it, a moral mistake. In fact, in some cases unilateral

forgiveness constitutes a reasonable response to a wrongdoing. These are scenarios

in which the standard considerations to resent others, to feel indignation for what

they did, and to sever our relationships with them hold. But because in these

scenarios blaming the wrongdoer ceases to fulfill any significant moral role, these

considerations do not necessitate the blame that would otherwise be fitting. These

are, in other words, scenarios where considerations for desert no longer count as

conclusive.

The paper begins with a presentation of the phenomenon of unilateral

forgiveness and the conditional theory. Then, I defend the rationality of certain

cases of unilateral forgiveness questioning the assumption (common among

conditionalists) that forgiveness ought to take place only when the reasons for

blaming the offender have been overridden. The argument is that there are reasons

that defeat considerations for desert in settling the question of whether the person

1
ought to be forgiven. These reasons, as we shall see, have to do with the function of

our blaming practices. In the end, I sketch some promissory remarks about the

value of unilateral forgiveness.

1. Unilateral forgiveness

Many people think that forgiveness ought to be earned. Some of our standard

practices seem to underwrite this common idea. Sometimes we ask others to

apologize before we forgive them. We cite their lack of repentance as a reason not

to forgive them. We continue to blame them until they show proper remorse for

what they did. Likewise, when things go well, their responses to the wrongdoing

and to our expressions of blame seem to be key. Not only do repentance, apologies,

atonement, and reparation usually prompt a change of heart in us, but also make

our forgiveness reasonable.

Sometimes, however, people forgive in the absence of this kind of

responses. They forgive others who have done nothing (or, at least, have not done

enough) to earn it. As I will use the term, they unilaterally forgive their wrongdoers.

These cases raise a host of questions. What moves people to unilaterally forgive?

What are their reasons for doing it? Do cases of this kind show that forgiveness

does not necessarily have to be earned?

It might seem that forgiving the dead is an example of unilateral

forgiveness. To the extent that the wrongdoer is dead, and she did not do anything

in life to earn it, forgiving her can be thought of as a gift, an act of generosity or, at

the very least, an attempt to merely secure one’s own mental peace. Further, if

there are any reasons to forgive her, the reasons do not seem to come from the

wrongdoer herself, or at least from anything done by her.

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 Upon closer examination, it is not entirely clear that this is the case. As

authors who have discussed the phenomenon have argued, it is plausible to think

that episodes of forgiving the dead are made possible by the construction of

hypothetical narratives where the wrongdoers provide one with reasons to forgive

them (Griswold, 2007; Haber, 1991; Urban Walker, 2006). For instance, one can

imagine having one last conversation with the wrongdoer in which she repents

and asks for forgiveness. The dead person, in other words, does not actually do

something to earn forgiveness. But the victim imagines (perhaps with good reason)

that she would do it if she could.

Examples of pure unilateral forgiveness might seem hard to come by. But

that does not mean that they do not exist. During the Colombian civil war, Pastora

Mira-García was forcibly displaced and many of her family members, including

her father and son, were murdered.1 Many years after their deaths, on two separate

occasions, Mira-García had the opportunity to confront the killers. But instead of

holding them accountable for what they did, she chose to forgive them. The

following is her testimony of one of those encounters:

I understood that in that moment I had two possibilities. I could go back to

that moment, the episode when as a child I saw the murder of my father, or

I could be brave, learn a life lesson and help that human being, or whatever

was left of that human being (…). I started going [to his house] every day to

care for his wounds and inject his medication. I began to feel that not having

our hearts locked behind bars is better than to keep the bars and to maintain

1 Colombia’s civil war has lasted for about 70 years. The first years were marked by the
confrontation between two political parties: The Conservative and the Liberal. The following years
have been the result of a war between several guerrilla groups and the Government, and also
among themselves. Some Colombian territories have been constantly affected by both conflicts. One
of them is San Carlos (Antioquia), where Mira-García is from. As millions of Colombians, Mira-
García has been a recurring victim throughout her entire life.

3
 precisely the one who has hurt us so much in captivity, so that he can

continue to harm us. Because, in the end, hatred and revenge are nothing

more than a glass of poison from which I could take as many sips as I want,

while I wait for the other person to die. In the end, I only poison myself. Me,

the one who is drinking it, because the other person doesn’t even notice the

feeling that I am expressing.2

There is no doubt Mira-García has reasons to hold the murderer of her father

responsible for his death. He had deliberately killed her father just because he

belonged to an opposing political party. But instead of acting on those reasons by,

say, resenting him or seeking revenge, she decided to take care of him. Although

the man had not apologized or asked for forgiveness, she chose to forgive and care

for him. Mira-García exemplifies justified unilateral forgiveness.

Now, it is important to distinguish unilateral forgiveness from other

reactions that are only superficially similar: for instance, merely forgetting a

wrongdoing. Forgetfulness, in this sense, is not a memory failure but the deliberate

act of erasing the wrongdoing from the common story between two people in the

absence of repentance, apology, atonement, or reparation, without affecting the

parties’ interaction (Swinburne, 1989: 85).

2This is an excerpt from an interview by a project called Plan Perdón. Here is the Spanish version of
Mira-García’s testimony:
“Yo entendí que en ese momento yo tenía dos posibilidades. Devolverme a ese momento, ese
episodio de niña cuando había visto asesinar a mi padre o tomar con entereza una lección para la
vida y ayudarle a ese ser humano, a lo que quedaba de ese ser humano (…). Y empecé a ir todos los
días a curarlo y a inyectarlo. Empecé a sentirme que es mejor tener nuestro corazón sin rejas que
mantener unas rejas y mantener cautivo justamente a aquel que nos ha hecho tanto daño para que
nos siga haciendo daño, porque finalmente el odio y la venganza no es más que un vaso de veneno
en el que me tomo yo los sorbos que quiera esperando que el otro se muera. Solo termino
envenenada. Yo que lo estoy consumiendo porque el otro ni siquiera se da cuenta del sentimiento
que estoy profesando” (Duque, 2016).

4
 Unlike forgetting, unilateral forgiveness is not aimed at getting back to how

things originally were—although that sometimes can happen. For even after the

forgiveness is bestowed, the relationship between victims and wrongdoers is

usually mediated by what happened. At least from the forgiver’s point of view

there is an acknowledgment of the offense and of the consequences that it had on

the relationship. Perhaps one good way of putting it is this: whereas unilateral

forgiveness gives way to relationships that are not mediated by blame, forgetting

gives way to relationships that are not mediated by the wrongdoing. 3 This is how

Mira-García presents the distinction:

It is forgiveness, but it is not forgetfulness. It is to remember, but with a

feeling that is quite different. (…) So, when you achieve forgiveness, that

anger is no longer an element that is there, latent. It disappears. It lingers in

our history, because it indeed belongs to each one of us. But without those

associated feelings such as revenge, hatred, or rage.4

It is also important to distinguish unilateral forgiveness from condonation.

Condoning is the deliberate act of refraining from condemning something one

thinks is wrong. This response treats wrongdoing as permissible.5 Unlike

condonation, unilateral forgiveness does not refrain from condemnation of the

wrongdoing. Rather, it cares for and enforces the rules that are valuable for life in

3 For a similar account of forgiveness as distancing from blame but not from the wrongdoing itself,
see Amaya (Forthcoming).
4 This is an excerpt from one of Mira-García’s appearances on national television in a Senate's

documentary on victims. The Spanish version is as follows:

“Es un perdón-no olvido. Pero es recordar las cosas con un sentimiento muy diferente (…) Entonces
cuando se alcanza a perdonar esa rabia ya no es un elemento que está ahí latente. Ya desaparece. Y
queda nuestra historia, porque es que nos pertenece a cada uno de nosotros. Pero sin sentimientos
aliados, como la venganza, el odio, la rabia” (Fundación Víctimas Visibles, 2007).
5 For discussion on the concept of condonation see Bell (2013: 268), Downie (1965: 130), Griswold

(2007: 46), Haber (1991: 51), Hampton (1988: 40), Hughes (1995: 111) and Kolnai (1974: 95).

5
community. It takes place precisely because victims express that moral

wrongdoing should not have happened and should not be repeated. In sum,

unilateral forgiveness is by no means permissive of wrongdoing, whereas

condonation is.

2. Conditional theory

Although forgiveness is a common phenomenon, radically different theories aim to

account for it. Most of them, however, agree in two respects. First, forgiveness is

supposed to be, at least paradigmatically, an interpersonal practice. Typically, two

parties are involved in it: one party asks for forgiveness, while the other one

bestows it (Griswold, 2007)6. Second, forgiveness is supposed to be a practice

subject to rational assessment. In principle, any instance of forgiveness can be

evaluated as a reasonable or unreasonable change of attitude towards the

wrongdoer (Griswold, 2007; Haber, 1991; Hieronymi, 2001; Murphy, 1988).

Under conditional theories, these two aspects of forgiveness are intimately

related.7 The reasonableness of forgiveness is a function of it being an interpersonal

practice. Simply put, it is rational to cease blaming someone who did wrong only if

the reasons for blaming her disappear. In turn, such reasons can only disappear

when the wrongdoer takes appropriate distance from the actions or the attitudes

that merit the blame originally directed at her. For the conditionalists, this kind of

distancing is achieved mainly by the wrongdoers expressing repentance,

apologizing, atoning, or repairing the victim. This is why these responses are

6 Brandon Warmke and Michael McKenna (2013) endorse a model of forgiveness as a conversation,
which relies precisely in this interdependent character.
7 The following are some advocates of the conditional theory: Griswold (2007), Haber (1991), Kolnai

(1974), Murphy (1988), Roberts (1995), Novitz (1988), Richards (1988), Swinburne (1989) and Wilson
(1988).

6
necessary conditions of rational forgiveness; they override the reasons for blaming

the person.

Conditionalism comes in a variety of forms. Some conditionalists, for

instance, have adopted a Strawsonian framework and have argued that

forgiveness can be understood as overcoming the reactive attitudes of blame, in

particular, the attitude of resentment.8 Their view is that forgiveness should only

take place when resentment ceases to be warranted, where the warrant of the

resentment depends upon the wrongdoer still having, or not having, the attitudes

that first led her to do wrong and whether or not she has distanced herself from

what she did (Griswold, 2007; Murphy, 1988). As Charles Griswold puts it:

Forgiveness does not attempt to get rid of warranted resentment. Rather, it

follows from the recognition that resentment is no longer warranted. And

what would provide that warrant can be nothing other than the right

reasons. These specify the conditions the offending party should meet to

qualify for forgiveness (2007: 43).

For Griswold, these conditions are generally met when the wrongdoer repudiates

her deeds and expresses regret and contrition (2007: 49). In doing so, she provides

the victim with good reasons to “emend her view that the wrong-doer is reducible

to the agent who did those wrongs” (2007: 54).

Other conditionalists have adopted a debt-model of forgiveness.9 According

to this model, forgiveness can be understood as releasing the wrongdoer from an

obligation she acquired with the victim as the result of her wrongdoing. As

conditionalists, their view is that the reasons for blaming someone disappear when

8
For another Strawsonian accounts that do not endorse conditionalism, see Allais (2013) and
Hieronymi (2001).
9 For debt-model of forgiveness accounts that do not endorse conditionalism, see Nelkin (2013),

Twambley (1973) and Warmke (2014).

7
the wrongdoer fulfills her obligation. For instance, Richard Swinburne argues that

it is reasonable to stop blaming the wrongdoer only if she pays the debt that she

incurred with her wrongdoing, whereby the payment is accomplished by means of

atonement:

By hurting you, I put myself in a moral situation somewhat like the legal

situation of a debtor who owes money. The wrong needs righting. There is

an obligation to do something like repaying (1989: 74).

Your acceptance of my reparation, penance and, above all, apology, is

forgiving (1989, 85).

In sum, the conditional theory has a view of forgiveness as a matter of

giving the wrongdoer her due.10 If the wrongdoer repents, apologizes, atones or

repairs the victim, she makes herself worthy of forgiveness. These means of

distancing herself from the actions or attitudes that merit the blame originally

directed at her make the reasons for blame disappear: the warrant for resentment is

absent; the debt has been payed.

We can now see that for conditional theories unilateral forgiveness must be

a moral mistake. Given that they take the rationality of forgiveness to be a function

of the interdependence between the wrongdoer and her victim, they hold two

central claims. First, it is rational to cease blaming someone who did wrong only if

the reasons for blaming her disappear. Second, the reasons for blaming can only

disappear when the wrongdoer takes appropriate distance from the episode of

wrongdoing in response to the blame originally directed at her.

10Lucy Allais (2013) makes this claim specifically about Griswold’s account of forgiveness.
However, this point can be generalized to conditional theories.

8
 However, the key feature of unilateral forgiveness is that it is not justified by

the actual or hypothetical response of the wrongdoer to the victim’s expression of

blame. Therefore, to the conditional view, unilateral forgiveness is unreasonable

because the reasons for blaming still exist. Conditionalists would consider Mira-

García’s unilateral forgiveness as unreasonable. The wrongdoer has provided no

good reasons to be forgiven. He has not taken an appropriate distance from the

murder of her father. Therefore, Mira-García has abandoned blame when it is still

justified.

3. A defense of unilateral forgiveness

Conditionalists claim that forgiveness is rational only when the wrongdoer has

done something to overcome the blame she deserves. For them, repenting,

apologizing, atoning, and repairing are necessary conditions for forgiving because

in the absence of them the wrongdoer still deserves blame. Unilateral forgiveness

is, in this respect, a mistake. The person is forgiven despite the fact that those

necessary conditions have not been met.

We can agree with conditionalists that deserving blame is a good reason not

to be forgiven. As long as blame is deserved, resentment has a warrant;

alternatively, the wrongdoer has incurred in a debt that is reasonable to claim. It

does not follow from this, however, that deserving blame is always a conclusive

reason not to be forgiven. As I shall now argue, considerations of desert can

sometimes be defeated. And when that happens, unilateral forgiveness need not be

a mistake.

It is possible to distinguish between two kinds of reasons. The are, on one

hand, overriding reasons: reasons that incline the balance in favor of an alternative

and against other alternatives for which there were some standing considerations.

On the other hand, there are defeating reasons: reasons that disable standing

9
considerations as reasons for actually justifying an alternative. To take a common

example: news that the price of a stock is going down might override other reasons

to buy shares from that company (one’s desire that the company survives, for

instance). In contrast, news that I was under the influence of the evil demon when I

developed the desire to support that company might defeat the reasons I had to

buy their stock.11

We can apply this distinction to our present discussion. To deserve blame is

ceteris paribus a good reason not to be forgiven. Nevertheless, that reason can be

overridden by other reasons, say, if one apologizes for what one has done. In those

cases, the apology overrides the wrongdoing as a consideration not to forgive,

ceasing the resentment to be warranted or the debt to be paid. Deserving blame,

however, can also be defeated as a reason not to forgive someone. That is, there

might be certain kinds of considerations that disable considerations for desert as

reasons that settle the question of the appropriateness of forgiveness.

To see what kind of reasons might defeat desert, we need to consider what

is the role that our blaming practices play in our moral life and how within this life

they make sense. According to Manuel Vargas (2012), our practices of

responsibility are meant to cultivate a valuable kind of agency that respects and

reflects concern for morality. More specifically, they are supposed to cultivate a

kind of agency that is “sensitive to and governed by moral considerations”

(Vargas, 2012). In this respect, they are justified by their scaffolding effects on other

agents. Not only do they serve to discourage certain kinds of behavior, but also

they shape our sensibility so as to recognize and respond to certain moral

considerations.

11Both John L. Pollock (1974, 1987) and Joseph Raz (1975) present this kind of reasons that work by
doubting the connection between the considerations that usually justify a conclusion and the
conclusion. Pollock calls them undercutting defeaters, whereas Raz calls them exclusionary reasons.

10
 Vargas’ theory is not a moral influence account. There are, at least, two

important caveats that are worth pointing out about the agency cultivation model

that differentiate it from moral influence accounts. First, the justification of our

responsibility practices is given at the level of a practice, and not at the level of

particular interactions. That is, the effects that justify responsibility practices are

the group level effects, not the particular interpersonal ones. According to this, the

justification for holding someone responsible does not depend on the effectiveness

of tokens of praise and blame, but on the fostering of a responsibility system

overtime.

Second, this account has its grounding on our psychological sensibility. Our

practices aim at shaping a kind of sensibility that recognizes and responds to

relevant moral considerations. In doing so, they gradually establish a community

that shares its respect and concern for morality. And, at the same time, by acting

according to such sensibility our practices give place to a community that

reinforces moral responsibility.

Is important to consider that, as Vargas argues, blaming practices—like

practices of responsibility in general—are embedded in particular contexts. Call

the circumstances that can enable and support our exercise of an agency that

respects and reflects care for morality moral ecology (Vargas, 2012: 246).

Reciprocally, given that blaming practices are justified in terms of how they help

us become better moral agents, they must be sensitive to the circumstances in

which they take place in order to establish a suitable moral ecology.

More precisely: one could think that the creation of a moral ecology

requires, at least, the protection of potential victims, reconciliation in our personal

relationships and with the wider moral community, as well as the formation of

moral character (Pereboom, 2015). The variety of circumstances makes it the case

that the interaction between our blaming practices and the contexts in which they

11
take place is, by definition, not stable. Such practices of protection, reparation, and

formation always demand particular ways that are ascribed to concrete contexts.

Thus, the ecology in which we are immersed calls for particular norms for blaming

or ceasing to blame (2013: 267).

Moral ecology can affect our blaming practices. For instance, it can change

the content of norms: 16th century context in America shaped some agents to

consider slavery unproblematic. The ecology that they were in made them believe

that some people were born to serve others. In contrast, 20 th century context has

enhanced agents’ sensitivity to anti-slavery concerns. Now our norms defend

equal rights for everyone. Moral ecology can also change the status of

relationships: in past decades the vertical arrangement of families made it rather

impossible to imagine that a father could ask his son for forgiveness. However, the

disarrangement of this vertical order has given space to horizontal relationships in

which it is more likely that parents ask their children for forgiveness.

In some circumstances, blame no longer enables us to build up a community

that cares for morality. Given that blame is justified as a practice as long as it has

effects on others, in those scenarios in which the practice of blaming does not

achieve this role, it ceases to be justified. Take this example: sometimes there is no

fact that can set the question of who started hostilities against the other. In other

words, there is no way of differentiating victims from wrongdoers because both

parties have been agents and patients of wrongdoing. In such cases, blaming the

other party does not shape a sensibility that is responsive to reasons because both

think they are right. Or take the case of revenge cycles, in which holding the other

party accountable only gives place to further offenses and injuries.

In circumstances like these ones, where blame does not fulfill its moral role,

unilateral forgiveness can be a reasonable response to wrongdoing. Although there

are standing considerations in favor of not forgiving a wrongdoer, in this kind of

12
contexts there is an additional reason that must be considered when settling the

question of whether forgiveness is or not an appropriate response to wrongdoing.

This reason is that blame no longer fosters a desirable kind of agency that allows

us to take care of morality. In such circumstances the standing considerations in

favor of not forgiving a wrongdoer are defeated. If the practice is no longer

justified, then the considerations that recommended it cease to count as reasons in

favor of it.

The charge against unilateral forgiveness is that it is not an appropriate kind

of forgiveness because it is bestowed upon someone that deserves blame because

she has not complied with the necessary conditions to distance herself from the

wrongdoing. But deserving blame is not a conclusive reason to withhold

forgiveness. In some contexts where the consideration to hold someone

accountable stand, such considerations can be defeated as reasons in favor of not

forgiving because the practice of blaming a wrongdoer no longer helps us to

establish a suitable moral ecology. That is, we can explain the rationality of some

cases of forgiveness without appealing to considerations of desert, but to the

justification of blaming practices. Thus, forgiveness can be reasonable in the

absence of apology.

Mira-García’s unilateral forgiveness of her wrongdoers is not a mistake.

Instead, it demonstrates that she is responsive to a kind of moral considerations

that are salient in her contexts and that she is the type of person that cares for and

endorses morality. She realizes that the practice of blaming her wrongdoers no

longer makes sense because it does not fulfill a significant moral role:

The blood of the righteous clamors for justice. But not the justice of the law

of talion, of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, nor the justice of a

hundred, a thousand years of prison. (...) If in my condition as a victim,

13
 which I have been since my childhood until now, after the mere 94 years I

believe I have lived [she laughs], if I were to arm myself, to give way in my

heart to hatred, to vengeance, to resentment, I would have to arm myself

from the little toe to the last thread of my hair to take revenge, and then I

would end up affecting those who have done nothing to me. Awful, what a

shame. And so, in history, as days go by, who do I end up being? One more

of those that I have condemned because they caused me harm. That is the

big message. There is no need to return blow for blow.12

In her case the considerations for blame are defeated because blaming practices no

longer fulfill their moral role. Blame no longer cultivates in others a valuable kind

of agency that respects and reflects concern for morality. Instead blame does not

allow us to attend to moral considerations that are salient because it perpetuates a

revenge cycle that hurts more people, impedes that we reconcile with each other,

and obstructs the possibility of forming a valuable moral agency that reconstructs

the communities and relationships that moral wrongdoing damaged.

4. Self-respect

I have argued that in some cases unilateral forgiveness constitutes a reasonable

response to a wrongdoing. Conditionalists believe that forgiveness should be

earned, but I have put forward an argument to demonstrate that forgiveness can

12This is another excerpt from the interview by Plan Perdón. This is the Spanish version:
“La sangre del justo clama justicia. Pero no justicia de la Ley del Talión de ojo por ojo, diente por
diente, ni la justicia de cárcel de cien años, de mil años. (...) Porque si en mi condición de víctima,
desde la infancia hasta ahora, a mis escasos 94 años que creo que he vivido (se ríe), me fuera a
armar, le diera paso en mi corazón al odio, a la venganza, al resentimiento, debería armarme desde
el dedo pequeño del pie hasta el último pelo de mi cabello para cobrar venganza, entonces
terminaría afectando a quienes nada me han hecho. Uy qué feo, que pena. Y entonces en la historia,
al pasar los días, ¿quién termino siendo? Uno más de los que yo censuré porque me causó el daño.
Esa es la gran reflexión. No hay que devolver golpe por golpe” (Duque, 2016).

14
be justified when the wrongdoer does nothing (or maybe not enough) to earn it. In

some cases, considerations of desert are defeated. That is, other reasons disable the

standing considerations to blame as reasons for actually justifying the withholding

of forgiveness. Roughly stated, what disables such considerations is the fact that in

such contexts our blaming practices no longer fulfill its role.

But one could challenge the main claim made above: namely, that blame has

the function of fostering a valuable agency. After all, the argument was based on a

particular view of blame. Conditionalists, perhaps, have a different account of the

moral role of blame and would like to put it forward to argue that in unilateral

forgiveness scenarios blame still fulfills its role and, therefore, the considerations

for blame cannot be defeated as a reason not to forgive.

Jeffrie Murphy’s conditional theory provides an alternative account of the

moral role of blame (1988). Given that he advocates an emotivist view of

forgiveness, he concentrates on the role of resentment.13 Resentment is intimately

related with the value of the self: “resentment (in its range from righteous anger to

righteous hatred) functions primarily in defense, not of all moral values and

norms, but rather of certain values of the self” (1988: 16). In short, resentment

safeguards our own dignity. Thus, good reasons to abandon resentment should be

compatible with safeguarding one’s value (1988: 19). To guarantee self-respect

while giving up resentment, he argues, the wrongdoer must comply with the

condition of distancing herself from her evil act (1988: 24).

13The first advocate of resentment in the literature on forgiveness is Bishop Butler (1726). Murphy’s
interpretation of his Sermons has been the most influential. Many authors have adopted a similar
version of resentment: Allais (2013), Calhoun (1992), Griswold (2007), Garrard and McNaughton
(2002), Hieronymi (2001), Horsbrugh (1974), Moore (1989), Novitz (1998), O’Shaughnessy (1967)
and Roberts (1995).

15
 A common worry among conditionalists is that unilateral forgiveness is a

sign of lack of self-respect.14 The absence of resentment towards a wrongdoer is a

sign of lack of respect for oneself because one fails to stand up when one’s rights

have been violated. To give up resentment without a proper distancing of the

wrongdoer from her act is to convey that “we do not think we have rights or that

we do not take our rights very seriously” (1988: 17). Murphy would argue that

even if resentment is in some way detrimental to the protection of the moral

community, we should still express it because what it evidences beyond such

protection is that we care for the proper regard that we deserve and that we do not

agree with the regard that the wrongdoer expressed with her actions.

If the moral role of blame is not to foster a kind of agency in our moral

community but to preserve ones’ dignity, then reasons not to forgive cannot be

defeated if this moral role is preserved. But the argument in favor of unilateral

forgiveness holds, even if we take blame’s role to be the value of the self. In some

circumstances resentment no longer communicates a demand for respect, instead it

becomes a threat. Resentment can become an aggression towards others. As Mira-

García testifies, in her case blaming causes more suffering and damage. Whenever

this is the case, then, the moral role of blame is not fulfilled and the reasons for the

practice are thus defeated.

Moreover, Murphy’s view is rather unfair with victims. It states that the

affirmation of their dignity depends on the wrongdoers’ uptake and appropriate

response to the blame originally directed at her. This view bestows too much

power on the wrongdoers over their victims (Holmgren, 1993). It subordinates the

victim’s self-value to the “wrongdoers’ confused beliefs” (1993: 346). What is more:

without self-respect, forgiveness cannot actually take place. If I believe that I

14 For different formulations of this objection, see Griswold (2007), Haber (1991) and Novitz (1998).

16
deserve your mistreatment, or that what you did to me was not that bad after all,

then there is no place for condemnation and by extension for forgiveness. If I hold

the judgment that what you did to me was wrong and that I should not be treated

in such way, then condemnation takes place—even if I forgive you. Forgivers do

not renounce to their self-respect when forgiving. Unilateral forgivers, in

particular, demonstrate that in some cases the wrongdoer does not need to play a

crucial role in the affirmation of their dignity.

5. The value of unilateral forgiveness

Let me just sketch some remarks about the value of unilateral forgiveness. One of

them is that unilateral forgiveness discloses the existence and importance of moral

considerations that are not taken into account by conditionalists. Unilateral

forgivers privilege other moral considerations over desert ones. In Mira-García’s

case, considerations about her belonging to a community and her role in it stand

out. In contrast, conditional theories exalt desert considerations.

Unilateral forgiveness can highlight the significance of human relationships.

This kind of forgiveness is grounded on a thorough understanding of how moral

injuries damage our social fabric. At the face of this, unilateral forgivers display an

attitude of care for people and for their relationships with them because they hold

in mind the consequences that the wrongdoing can have for life with others and

reflects upon what the best response to such severe damage could be. What is

more, this caring attitude goes beyond the parties directly involved in the

wrongdoing as it includes the community.

Another remark is that unilateral forgiveness is valuable because in some

circumstances it is a better alternative than blame to fulfill the moral role of our

responsibility practices. It cultivates a valuable kind of agency in others by

indicating what kind of actions and treatment we are not willing to accept. Thus, it

17
allows us to build a community that takes care of morality. Unilateral forgiveness

communicates that we have been doing things in the wrong way and that in some

circumstances to keep on privileging considerations of desert over the

reconstruction of a community makes no sense because it only gives place to more

damage.

Victims are able to influence their contexts by calling attention to what they

identify are morally salient considerations. Mira-García’s forgiveness has

influenced her proximate and even non-proximate community. Her forgiveness

condemns what she believes should not have happened and should not happen

again. Also, it invites others to think about the role that blaming has in order to

evaluate if the absence of its desirable effects can defeat or not the considerations

that usually give place to blame.

But unilateral forgiveness not only cultivates a valuable kind of moral

agency in others, as Vargas claims. Unilateral forgiveness also cultivates a valuable

kind of moral agency in forgivers themselves. It empowers victims because they do

not conceive themselves as patients of damage. They no longer wait for their

wrongdoer’s change expressed through repentance, apology, atonement or

reparation. Now they understand the effects that they can have on their

community as agents of change who can transform the situations that they

consider unacceptable. In sum, unilateral forgiveness cultivates in forgivers an

agency of change.

6. Conclusion

Unilateral forgiveness is a kind of forgiveness that is not very welcomed in the

literature about forgiveness, in particular, by the conditional theory. Yet, it is a

kind of forgiveness that some people endorse in special cases. This motivates the

enterprise to give a theoretical account of unilateral forgiveness that comprehends

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these cases as reasonable responses to wrongdoing. Otherwise, we philosophers

are prescribing in an opposite direction from the one toward which our moral

practices are aiming. And this, I believe, is a mistake. Many theories insist that

moral theories should be motivated, consistent and informed by our actual moral

practices (Norlock, 2009; Strawson, 1968; Vargas, 2012). The present project is

inscribed in this kind of enterprise.

Thus far, I have argued—against the conditional theory of forgiveness—that

unilateral forgiveness can be a reasonable response to wrongdoing. I began with a

predominant view of forgiveness according to which the process of forgiveness is a

reasonable response to wrongdoing only when the wrongdoer has taken enough

steps to make reasons for blaming disappear. Conditionalists stress an intimate

connection between the reasonableness of forgiveness and the interpersonal

character of the practice. The gist of the argument here has been that our accounts

of forgiveness will not be able to provide an articulate explanation for unilateral

forgiveness cases, as long as forgiveness is understood as a matter of giving the

wrongdoer what is her due.

Throughout I have put forward an account of unilateral forgiveness that is

consistent with self-respect and with taking wrongdoing seriously. I have argued

that desert considerations to blame are defeasible. They can be disregarded by the

reason that in some scenarios blame no longer fulfills its moral role of cultivating a

valuable kind of agency, which respects and reflects concern for morality.

Moreover, unilateral forgiveness becomes a better alternative to fulfill such a role

because it condemns moral wrong and opens up a possibility to change. This kind

of forgiveness empowers victims because it enables them to understand

themselves as agents of a desirable change. Forgiveness emphasizes the role of

victims in changing their own circumstances from detrimental to preservative of

the self and our moral rules. In doing so victims influence positively their contexts.

19
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