• Current opened records

  • A Place for Forgiveness in Reconciliation

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  • This essay takes on two tasks. One, I defend Lucy Allais’s account of forgiveness from arguments that forgiveness is impossible, and that attempting it is irrational. I show that Allais’s distinctions between wrong and wrongdoer, and belief and affective attitude, allow her to offer a logically coherent account. Two, construed in this way, I defend the role of forgiveness in the process of political reconciliation against criticism from Cécile Fabre. I offer counter-arguments to Fabre’s direct criticisms of the efficacy of forgiveness, and suggest that forgiveness is typically an integral part of the alternative processes Fabre proposes: empathy and trust.