Healing Multiculturalism: Middle-Ground Liberal Forgiveness in a Diverse Public Realm.

Monica Mookherjee

doi:10.1007/s11406-016-9758-z

Abstract

This article examines debates about political forgiveness in liberal, pluralist societies. Although the concept of forgiveness is not usually taken up by liberals, I outline a plausible conception by exploring two recent approaches. The first, ‘unattached articulation’, concept requires no real emotional change on the forgiver’s part, but rather a form of civic restraint. In contrast, the second version highlights a strong form of empathy for perpetrators. In spite of their advantages, each concept proves too extreme. The problems are revealed by focusing on the case of the Harkis, who fought for the French during the Algerian war. Often still marginalised in French society, their case helps to highlight the conceivability of a ‘middle-ground’ or moderate concept of political forgiveness. Its core rests on the forgiver’s care for the social world. While this concept brings considerable challenges also, and is not inevitable in any particular case, it entails a more plausible combination of emotional and rational shifts in the forgiver’s world-view. Although the article does not recommend forgiveness by any person or group, it observes, recalling Arendt’s idea of amor mundi or ‘love of the world’, that political forgiveness may sustain a viable connection between diverse citizens’ public and non-public lives.

Highlights

Debates about forgiveness and reconciliation abound in culturally-diverse societies like South Africa, Australia and Northern Ireland, which seek to move beyond bitter histories of group conflict
While few political philosophers would reject the value of reconciliation, liberal multiculturalists might question the political goal of forgiveness
While private empathy is undoubtedly a very significant human capacity, citizens are more likely to forgive publicly through care for social world, or through an ethic of worldliness in Arendt’s sense, cultivated through a series of moderate, those in some cases still challenging, emotional and rational shifts. While it is no minor attainment for victims of serious injustices, compassion-based forgiveness would link the cultural and political spheres of identity more plausibly than the ‘change of heart’ and ‘unattached articulation’ concepts

Summary

Introduction

Debates about forgiveness and reconciliation abound in culturally-diverse societies like South Africa, Australia and Northern Ireland, which seek to move beyond bitter histories of group conflict. Seeming humanly attainable and socially sustainable, this mid-way approach avoids ambitious calls for empathy, and rests instead on the possibility of developing compassion for the social world It recalls Arendt’s idea of ‘love of the world’, or a mature social acceptance of the impossibility of forever binding others and oneself to the past. 2 While wounded individuals should not be called on to deny their moral judgements, this form of forgiveness fosters agency in the context of diversity, and promises to break a cycle of alienation It offers no guarantee, in the Harkis’ case or in any other, the idea of forgiveness outlined in this paper could assist to open a pathway to reconciliation, and is potentially restorative and political, for the right reasons and in the right way

Liberal Forgiveness in a Diverse Public Realm

Liberal Multiculturalism at another Extreme

Conclusion