If forgiveness is an act, how come I don't feel better?

Resentment, forgiveness, relationship, dignity and recognition--how many of my favorite philosophical concepts can I discuss in one post?

A person I’m close to, in their second decade of life—I’m trying to stay somewhat vague here—has somewhat frequent explosions of temper, and during those episodes, they yell me. These explosions are often over things that are not ultimately very significant, and this person has learned to take time and calm themselves down afterward. They eventually apologize.

I know that what I’m supposed to say when I receive their apology is that it’s okay, they’re forgiven, we got through it, we’ll move on. I can’t always manage that, though, if not enough time has passed and I’m still resentful. I often simply say thank you. We move on; this is not a relationship that can be broken (and it wouldn’t make sense anyway, given that the episodes are not about important matters in the grand scheme of things), and punishment is not in order. So what else am I supposed to do?

Is this just what forgiveness amounts to?

If so, I don’t think I really understand it. I mean, I know what it is in a basic way: forgiving means letting go of anger and resentment, forgoing punishment or revenge for a wrong. Which is what I do, I suppose, even when all I say in response an apology is “Thank you.” But that’s an act—albeit not a very direct or good one—and not a feeling. I perform forgiveness, but I don’t feel it.

That troubles me. It seems to me that forgiveness isn’t really complete until I’m no longer upset. But the emotions involved can’t just get switched off just by deciding it’s time to let go of them. So what gives?

My first thought as I’ve puzzled about this was that forgiveness must be a complex that can involve an act or the relevant attitude(s), and neither is always prior to the other. Maybe sometimes we perform the act aspirationally, in the hope that doing so will help us let go of the resentment. Maybe at other times we can’t manage the act until the attitude has subsided. As

Yael Schonbrun

recently wrote, both revenge and forgiveness are natural impulses for us humans.

Photo by Nadine E on Unsplash

Enter philosophy

It turns out (duh) that philosophers have had some things to say about this. Apparently—I haven’t read the texts in question¹—Bishop Joseph Butler, in two sermons published in 1726 (XIII and IX, “Upon Resentment and Forgiveness of Injuries”), argues that resentment and forgiveness can coexist. According to Paul Hughes’ overview in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

What Butler actually says… is that forgiveness is perfectly compatible with an attitude of resentment. Butler held that resentment helps us to deal with those who harm us: it motivates us to insulate ourselves from wrongdoers, and it motivates us to deter future wrongdoing via punishment. When resentment has these ends it serves the public good and is therefore compatible with the general obligation to good-will [IX.9]. Indeed, as Butler puts it, resentment is both “natural” [VIII. 11] and “innocent” [VIII.19]. Therefore, resentment as such is compatible with good-will.

Butler does say that resentment can be dangerous, but it is not resentment as such that is the problem. Rather, he claims that when resentment is allowed to become “excessive” it can easily lead an agent to pursue revenge, not as a means to producing some greater social good, but as a self-gratifying exercise that seeks “the misery of our fellow creatures” [IX.10]. But to let resentment carry one this far is to violate a general obligation to benevolence. To forgive, then, is simply to prevent resentment from having this effect on us.

I find this helpful, and it also answers another question I’ve had, which is: who’s at the center of forgiveness? For whose sake do we (are we supposed to) forgive: the wrongdoer, or the victim? One thing I noticed about some of the things I found when I started poking around is how, in mental health contexts, forgiveness seems to be about what you (the victim) need, not what they (the wrongdoer) need (APA, Mayo Clinic). That struck me at first as backwards, because I thought of forgiveness in terms of repairing relationships. The wrongdoer is the one who broke the relationship, so it’s up to them to make amends of some kind and then up to the victim to accept those amends as ending the breach. In that case, maybe my “thank you” is enough because it accepts the apologizer’s attempt to repair the relationship.

Forgiveness as recognition

The problem with this is that in the case of a stranger wronging you, by definition you didn’t have a relationship prior to the wrongdoing. There’s no bond to repair. In that case, what’s going on? Maybe we need to say that the wrongdoing—a harm—is a violation of your dignity as a person. Your resentment is then appropriate, and it would in turn be appropriate for them to make amends, and when they do, it’s appropriate for you to forgive.

And if in the case of a stranger repentance and forgiveness are about dignity, maybe that’s the case even in the context of an established relationship. Part of what a caring relationship entails, after all, is that each party appreciates the other as a person and thus, forgiveness restores a relationship because it re-recognizes the parties as persons who matter. I like this way of thinking about forgiveness because recognition is both an act and and attitude.

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

This way of thinking about it in terms of restoring dignity also helps to resolve an interesting question that Hughes brings up in the SEP article:

Suppose, for example, that one sought to forgive and that the miracle of modern medicine produced a pill that, if ingested, could immediately eliminate one’s resentment. It has seemed to many that taking the resentment-eliminating pill does not qualify as forgiving (even if one were to take the pill for the right kinds of reasons). Why?

Why? Because, if I’m right, taking the pill doesn’t do the work of recognizing one another’s dignity. It only takes away the resentment.

Of course, there have been 299 years since Butler published this account, and a few more people have weighed in. Still, what I’ve worked out seems to be on track (again, from the SEP):

Forgiving those who wrong us often helps us move beyond strong negative emotions which, if allowed to fester, could harm us psychologically and physically. Forgiveness benefits wrongdoers, as well, by releasing them from the blame and hard feelings often directed toward them by those they wrong, or helping them transcend the guilt or remorse they suffer from having done wrong, thereby allowing them to move forward in their lives. These ends of forgiveness may be regarded as in general enabling in the sense that they show how forgiveness sometimes helps people move beyond the wrongs they endure or cause and the sometimes debilitating effects those wrongs have on wrongdoers and victims alike. For some, forgiveness has these forward-looking benefits because of the way it transfigures the past.

Of course, this doesn’t solve the problem of how to bring my emotions into line with my intention to forgive, but in some ways that’s a separate and bigger issue: emotions, while influenceable (this is what cognitive behavioral therapy aims at), aren’t under our direct control, and that’s true in contexts way beyond this one. In the case of being wronged, resentment is appropriate, and the intention to continue in relationship, coupled with relevant behaviors, will prevent its having a destructive effect on each party and on their relationship. Over time, then, the resentment will tend to fade. So I’m happy with the idea of forgiveness as a mode of recognition.

Forgiveness is hard sometimes. But it’s an important part of being human. And hey, once again, philosophy helped. Cheers!

1. Or actually, I might have, given that I studied with Stephen Darwall and Butler is part of the history of the second-personal stance that Darwall champions. But if I did, it’s been decades, and I don’t remember.