Analysis Of Forgiveness Research Articles

Arendt's phenomenology of political forgiveness

AbstractForgiveness is often understood as a primarily interpersonal experience, a type of moral response to a wrongdoing that has particular effects on the personal relationship between the one wronged and the wrongdoer. However, some have also attempted to defend another kind of forgiveness, one that takes place in public and applies to a wider range of practices in a specifically political context. That such a concept of forgiveness is possible is not particularly controversial. But the way that this political forgiveness is unified—if it is unified—with personal forgiveness has not been clarified. By approaching the question phenomenologically, it becomes possible to root forgiveness, both personal and political, in the more fundamental context of the shared human world. Hannah Arendt's analysis of forgiveness does just this. In so doing, Arendt accounts for both the role of forgiveness in private human relationships and the way in which this role is fundamentally political.

A Comparative Analysis of Forgiveness among Adolescents, Adults and Older People

The present study focused on people of three different age groups in relation to forgiveness. It was postulated that there would be a significant difference among adolescents, adults and older people in respect to forgiveness, forgiveness of self, forgiveness of others and forgiveness of situation. One hundred and fifty (n=150) participants including fifty (n=50) adolescents, fifty (n=50) adults and fifty (n=150) older people were selected through referral and respondent-driven sampling. Demographic Information Form (DIF) and Heartland Forgiveness Scale (Thompson et al., 2005) were used to collect research data. One way ANOVA test results reveal a significant difference among three groups. Older participants reported more forgiveness, forgiveness of self, others and situation than adolescents and adults. The present findings have implications for individual, family and society.

Commentary on "A Framework for Quantifying the Influence of Adherence and Dose Individualization".

Drugs that provide long durations of action after a last-taken dose are said to be "forgiving," as they allow the patient a degree of latitude in the timing of sequential doses. New research, by Assawasuwannakit et al.,(1) based on exemplary methods, enriches the pharmacometric analysis of forgiveness, which for several decades had been a simply descriptive reminder that the beneficial actions of some drugs can continue for hours or days after the disappearance of detectable drug.

Forgiveness in the Treatment of Alcohol and Other Substance Abusers: A Review

The article provides a review of the current literature on the relationship of forgiveness and addiction. Anger, resentment, and shame seem to be the important factors of alcohol and other substance abuse, as positively associated with relapse. Despite the evidence that forgiveness can reduce feelings of anger, resentment, depression, and anxiety; as well as promote self-esteem and hope, forgiveness in addicted clients has received a little attention from empirical investigators only recently. The aim of this study is an analysis of forgiveness and associated factors within addiction. Relevant theoretical and empirical studies in this field are reviewed, although most of them have cross-sectional character. Only two direct forgiveness interventions in addicted people have been conducted, but they showed a significant positive effect on the treatment of substance abusers. The article stresses forgiveness may be an important factor in prevention, as well as in counselling and therapy in substance abuse clients. Forgiveness therapy by addressing anger may be particularly helpful for this population. It can be either applied independently, or combined with other psychotherapeutic approaches, so that it can have a cumulative effect on the treatment.

Revisiting Jankélévitch’s Dichotomy

Many authors start their analyses of forgiveness with the opposition between and forgiveness. The reason might seem immediately clear. Forgiveness is preceded by a disapproval of the action. Both the act of forgiving and that of asking for forgiveness cannot be equated with an attempt at denying the blame. When forgive, recognize an offence, and thus in this sense accuse someone of a wrongdoing; never excuse them in the sense of exculpating. In the same vein, Vladimir Jankelevitch in his book L'innocence et la mechancete asserts that we the ignorant, but forgive the wicked.1 1 have thus chosen this passage as a stereotype that I will unpack in order to revisit a twofold opposition in the analysis of forgiveness. The first is precisely the dichotomy between and forgiveness; the second is the opposition between forgiving the wicked and excusing the ignorant. While I agree that forgiveness never means exculpating (it is a point I do not doubt in my essay), part of my puzzle comes from another meaning of the word excuse, according to which forgiveness can include accepting the excuses of the other. One meaning is a reason put forward to mitigate or justify an offence, which, were it included in the process of asking for forgiveness, would be offensive inasmuch as it avoids acknowledgment of responsibility. But another meaning is an apology, such as in the expression, Please, me. The latter is perhaps best exhibited by the French expression presenter ses excuses, which does not mean lessening the blame but expressing regret of the harm done. For instance, to somebody who has been hurt by us, knock on their door and say, Je viens te presenter mes excuses. Here, the word excuse refers to the regret that wish to convey. That's why one may also say, His attitude was unbearable. I demand that he himself. Another French expression goes even further: je vous prie de m'excuser, which literally states that it is the other who is to us, not who are to ourselves. Therefore, I would like to insist on the second meaning of when one offers an apology. Instead of opposing and separating excusing and forgiving, I will argue for a common point between them, which is the welcoming of regret, and in so doing I will emphasize the negative impact that a strong dichotomy between excusing and forgiving has on the analysis of forgiveness. Apart from the common role of regret in excusing and forgiving, which often goes unnoticed, the second aspect of the passage from Jankelevitch that I will argue against is the opposition between excusing the ignorant, on the one hand, and forgiving the wicked on the other. Here, it is not the French context that will prove to be helpful, but Aristotelian analysis. While speaking about sungnome, which I translate as forgiveness, Aristotle does not insist on the presence of knowledge but of regret. He does not address forgiveness of premeditated evil but, quite the opposite, tackles forgiveness (sungnome) of involuntary actions,2 even though he also mentions forgiveness of incontinence (akrasia, 1 150b8).3 Moreover, Aristotle asserts that regret can be common to involuntary and voluntary actions. Beyond the problem of vocabulary, culture, and translation, such a contrast between forgiving wickedness and forgiving involuntary actions proves to be an instructive key in the analysis of forgiveness. I claim that focussing on the regret expressed in the case of involuntary actions (such as expressed when somebody apologizes) is helpful in understanding the process of forgiveness (both asked and received). In contrast, concentrating on wickedness as such cannot help a person to forgive, since the offended person expects or at least hopes that the culprit not only recognizes his evildoing but also conveys to her that he has the finn intention not to repeat iL Wickedness as wickedness cannot be the object of forgiveness. …

Forgiveness: Hindu and Western Perspectives

This paper compares Hindu and Christian beliefs on forgiveness: it argues that forgiveness is an important element within the Hindu religious world-view, even if less explicitly so than within the Christian tradition. Before the late 1980s, discussion of forgiveness in the West was for the most part confined to Christian communities, seldom reaching mainstream publications in other areas. The situation has now changed dramatically. Since the 1990s, scholars from different disciplines have written dozens of books and journal articles on forgiveness, which also featured in numerous popular essays, exhibitions, websites, and other media. There are four major areas for forgiveness research in the West: religion, philosophy, psychology and, perhaps surprisingly at first sight, politics. However, relatively little analysis of forgiveness in other faiths, except Judaism, has appeared.

Behavior analysis of forgiveness in couples therapy.

Behavioral couples’ therapy has a long history of success with couples and is an empirically validated treatment for marital discord (Task Force on Promotion and Dissemination of Psychological Procedures, 1995). However, only about 50% of all couples in treatment experience long-term change (2 years). One of the founders of behavioral couples’ therapy called for the therapy to return to its original roots in functional analysis (Jacobson, 1997). This produced integrative behavioral couples’ therapy. As behavioral couples’ therapy attempts to reach the maximum number of couples possible, we believe further attention to behavior analytic principles will continue to contribute to advances in the field. We propose that an operational analysis of forgiveness will help to strengthen behavioral couples’ therapy by creating a direct module to handle some of the most entrenched situations, those commonly referred to as betrayal.

The Events of Morality and Forgiveness: From Kant to Derrida

AbstractIn this paper, I will perform a "step back" by showing how Derrida's analysis of forgiveness is rooted in Kantian moral philosophy and in Derrida's interpretation of Kierkegaard's concept of decision. This will require a discussion of the distinction that Kant draws in his Groundwork between price (the economic) and dignity (the incomparable), as well as a discussion of the underlying notion of singularity in Kant's text. In addition, Derrida universalizes Kierkegaard's concept of the agent so that, with this perspective in view, the interpretation of Kantian morality as something that must be described in a paradoxical way, becomes fully transparent. Whereas the interpretation of Kantian morality will provide us with a concept of morality that remains a "blind spot" for the agent, with the help of Derrida's Kierkegaard interpretation we can see that the concept of decision remains ultimately ambivalent. In conclusion, both (a) the deconstructed concept of morality and (b) the concept of decision will finally (c) let us understand Derrida's radical concept of forgiveness, which is both a non-economic act of morality in the sense explained and an unpredictable, uncontrollable decision and event.

Healing and Reconciliation in the L.I.V.E. Program in Ireland

Sharing experiences during residential weekends in a program for victims from the different communities involved in the conflict in Northern Ireland and ex-combatants has been demonstrated to promote healing and reconciliation. In the sessions, during which a nondirective participant driven approach was used, the following mechanisms for healing have been identified: empathy, desensitization, cognitive restructuring, observational learning, and modeling. Reconciliation between victims/survivors from the different camps is brokered by the shared healing process but is also a direct function of the opportunities for interaction and collaboration. Encounters between victims/survivors and ex-combatants have been promising, but so far the obstacles are better understood than the parameters for success. Dissonance theory and the analysis of forgiveness as a transaction have been helpful in clarifying the problems.

The Individuality in the Deed: Hegel on Forgiveness and Reconciliation

The topic of forgiveness and reconciliation is one of the areas in Hegel's philosophy in which an uneasy tension between philosophy and religion, logic and existence, is most obvious. My goal in this paper is to illuminate Hegel's discussion of forgiveness and reconciliation in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion by examining his treatment of the same topic in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Previous commentators have discussed the political and social aspects of reconciliation, but paid little attention to its religious aspects. Similarly, commentators who have addressed the psychological and social aspects of reconciliation in the Phenomenology, have too seldom turned their attention to Hegel's full discussion of the religious aspect of reconciliation in the Lectures. In bringing these two texts together, I hope to make a contribution to the larger project of showing the relevance of the Phenomenology to Hegel's later works. Finally, I will suggest some limitations in Hegel's analysis of forgiveness and reconciliation.Part III of the Lectures delineates three levels of rupture and reconciliation: within the individual consciousness, among individuals of the community, and between the individual and God (215-251 ). This last level of reconciliation is the religious aspect and presupposes the earlier levels. To help understand the individual's reconciliation within himself and with others, which will be my main area of concern in this paper, we will now look at the relevant passage of Phenomenology of Spirit.