Excuse and justification: What’s explanation and understanding got to do with it?

Nigel Pleasants

doi:10.1177/1368431020986753

Abstract

A well-worn French proverb pronounces ‘ tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner’ (‘to understand all is to forgive all’). Is forgiveness the inevitable consequence of social scientific understanding of the actions and lives of perpetrators of serious wrongdoing? Do social scientific explanations provide excuses or justifications for the perpetrators of the actions that the explanations purport to explain? In this essay, I seek clarification of these intertwined explanatory and moral questions.

Highlights

Is forgiveness the inevitable consequence of social scientific understanding of the actions and lives of perpetrators of serious wrongdoing? Do social scientific explanations provide excuses or justifications for the perpetrators of the actions that the explanations purport to explain? Many think that social science explanation and understanding does have these effects, implications or meanings, and for this reason they are hostile towards, or suspicious of, it
The normative question, is whether or how people should excuse perpetrators on the basis of reasons furnished by social science explanation
Likewise, when we discover that A didn’t know that someone else had put poison in the sugar that he spooned into B’s coffee, no further explanation or interpretation is needed to decide that A should be excused for poisoning B

Summary

Introduction

A well-worn French proverb pronounces ‘tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner’ (‘to understand all is to forgive all’).1 Is forgiveness the inevitable consequence of social scientific understanding of the actions and lives of perpetrators of serious wrongdoing? Do social scientific explanations provide excuses or justifications for the perpetrators of the actions that the explanations purport to explain? Many think that social science explanation and understanding does have these effects, implications or meanings, and for this reason they are hostile towards, or suspicious of, it.The issues arise most dramatically, starkly and clearly with social scientific studies of events of extreme violence such as the Holocaust, genocide, terrorism and crimes againstSocial scientists are often keenly aware that their explanatory and interpretive endeavours are likely to be seen by other people as having excusing or justifying consequences or implications. Do social scientific explanations provide excuses or justifications for the perpetrators of the actions that the explanations purport to explain? Take the case of Allied bombing again: which kind these actions should be classified under seems not to be resoluble by the discovery of some previously unknown facts, or anything else that social science explanation might yield (it’s a moral, not an explanatory question).

Results

Conclusion