The Virtue of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is at one and the same time a very ordinary and quite challenging moral phenomenon. It is expected of children as a part of their moral development and of our moral exemplars. At the same time, we debate whether we could or even should forgive in certain circumstances. It is deeply personal, but also important to attempt to affect social and political healing.

The Virtue of Forgiveness brings a diverse set of concerns to bear on forgiveness and forgiveness seeking. The chapters include insights from neuroscience, speech act theory, psychological research on both victims and perpetrators, social science, legal anthropology, holistic measures of health, interdisciplinary approaches to theology, the study of forgiveness tropes in literature, the philosophy of human action, and the study of value. Comprehensive reviews and conceptual arguments are complemented by case studies and data-driven hypothesis testing. The volume provides a singularly rich interdisciplinary conversation about forgiveness that covers traditional topics in the moral psychology of forgiveness while exploring new territory and incorporating new disciplinary voices.

As these essays illustrate, forgiveness is vitally important to our mental and physical health, to our agency, and to the social structures that promote reconciliation in the face of conflict at different social scales. It is an especially apt subject for multi-disciplinary engagement, and this collection provides a representative sample of projects in the existing dialogue between psychology and philosophy while broadening the disciplines represented to include neuroscience, anthropology, social science, literature, and theology.