Concept Of Reconciliation Research Articles

Race and Nation in Post-Apartheid South Africa

The post apartheid state forges ahead with nation building, reconciliation, and the cultivation of an inclusive non-racial citizenship. The ANC government seems poised somewhere between denying the importance of group specific realities and having to realise the importance of `difference' in coping with the apartheid legacy. While the state cannot ignore language, culture and identity, its central problem is how to reconcile `difference' with common citizenship. Responses to the TRC Report indicate that all parties resist acceptance of responsibility for their past involvement. The absence of a shared moral universe by all citizens becomes increasingly clear. Different life experiences in legislated inequality have resulted in different value systems, perspectives and identities derived from conflicting interests. The theologically inspired concept of reconciliation, under these circumstances, fails to address conflicting moral claims. An understanding of cultural and psychological influences in the formation of identity and in the construction of the `other' is more important than exposure to moral indignation. Against this backdrop, political education is most likely to be effective where the focus is on more modest goals of democratic conflict resolution.

La réconciliation à travers l'écriture d'une histoire commune : l'exemple des commissions d'historiens germano-tchèque et germano-polonaise

How does writing a common history affect the reconciliation process between Germany and central Europe? These reflections about the concept of reconciliation and the roles that history and memory play in this process are based on an analysis of the work that German-Czecho/slovakian and German-Polish committees of historians have accomplished. This case study emphasizes reconciliation's political dimension, sheds light on issues in terms of central European identities, and provides food for thought about the meaning of a European history that would transcend national boundaries.

Conflict and Reconciliation in Hegel's Theory of the Tragic

The aims of this article is to expound and defend Hegel's theory of the tragic and to clarify his concept of reconciliation. These two aims are Related in that a widespread but misleading conception of the tragic and a common, but mistaken, understanding of Hegel' s concept of reconciliation can seem to offer mutual support. I argue that once these are properly understood we can better understand Hegel's curious readings of the Antigone by Sophocles and the Eumenides by Aeschylus. I show that the latter rather than the former better exemplifies Hegel's theory, of which I offer a qualified defense.

Reconciliation for Realists

Reconciliation is being urged upon people who have been bitter and murderous enemies, upon victims and perpetrators of terrible human rights abuses, and upon groups of individuals whose very self-conceptions have been structured in terms of historical and often state-sanctioned relations of dominance and submission. The rhetoric of reconciliation is particularly common in situations where traditional judicial responses to past wrongdoing are unavailable because of corruption in the legal system, staggeringly large numbers of offenders, or anxiety about the political consequences of trials and punishment.But what is reconciliation? How is reconciliation to be achieved? And under what conditions should it be sought? The notable lack of answers to these questions prompts the worry that talk of reconciliation is merely a ruse to disguise the fact that a “purer” type of justice cannot be realized–that, in being asked to focus on reconciliation rather than on punishment, victims of past wrongdoing are having to settle for the morally second best. By mining our pretheoretical understandings of reconciliation, the essay arrives at a core concept of reconciliation as narrative incorporation that at the same time suggests a way in which reconciliation might be pursued and grounds a response to moral qualms provoked by the use of an unanalyzed conception of reconciliation.

Hegel's Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation.

This book provides an authoritative account of Hegel's social philosophy at a level that presupposes no specialised knowledge of the subject. Hegel's social theory is designed to reconcile the individual with the modern social world. Michael Hardimon explores the concept of reconciliation in detail and discusses Hegel's views on the relationship between individuality and social membership, and on the family, civil society, and the state. The book is an important addition to the string of major studies of Hegel published by Cambridge. It will interest a broad swathe of readers in philosophy, (both students and specialists), and could be used in courses on political and social theory.

Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP) Evaluation Issues

Abstract: The victim offender reconciliation (VORP) concept originated in Ontario in 1973; subsequently program applications have occurred in other parts of Canada, the United States, England, and the Federal Republic of Germany. Most VORP's are small, grass roots organizations but as these programs mature and seek continuation funding they are likely to encounter demands for program evaluation. For evaluations to be useful VORP program managers and evaluators will need to direct explicit attention to goals for VORP's, the place of the concept of reconciliation in VORP programs, the purposes of evaluations, and the development of easily understood formats for presentation of statistical information.

Nature and Narcissism: The Frankfurt School

Reconciliation with nature is a puzzling concept in the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse. It is difficult to grasp in a comprehensible manner, yet it can hardly be dismissed as an afterthought of these authors, as so much of their work seems to lead back to it. To transform the concept of reconciliation with nature into ecology and environmental consciousness hardly seems consonant with their intent. Yet, Jiirgen Habermas seems quite correct that in some respects the concept is irrational, indeed eschatological in its implications. I employ the category of narcissism, popularized recently by the work of Christopher Lasch, in order to reinterpret the concept of reconciliation with nature. My thesis is that the quest for reconciliation with nature in the work of the first generation of critical theorists is a quest for narcissistic feelings of lost omnipotence and wholeness. However, let there be no misunderstanding on this point. If the theory of narcissism developed by Bela Grunberger, Janine ChasseguetSmirgel, and Lou Andreas-Salome is correct, any comprehensive social theory must be concerned with this quest. It is not a criticism, only a compliment, to state that Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse are seeking paradise lost. The issue is only whether reconciliation with nature as they understand it is a fruitful direction in which to proceed. I argue that in some respects it is not, and that the theory of narcissism suggests how the concept of reconciliation might be reinterpreted in a more mundane albeit still thoroughly utopian fashion, without losing its critical power. It is curious that Horkheimer and Adorno, who otherwise drew so freely and brilliantly upon psychoanalysis, did not draw upon psychoanalysis to illuminate the quest for reconciliation with nature. Part of the reason they did not is surely that the intensive psychoanalytic study of the first two years of life the years from which the quest for reconciliation springs was only undertaken by Freud's followers, especially Melanie Klein, of whose work they show no awareness (Klein's first major work, A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States, was published in 1935). To be sure, Adorno clearly grasps the way in which the end of the individual (i.e., the

British Idealism: Its Political and Social Thought

British Idealism is often identified with the three best known British Idealists: T.H. Green, F.H. Bradley and B. Bosanquet. However, the full range of British Idealists includes also E. Caird, D.G. Ritchie, J.S. Mackenzie, H. Jones, J.H. Muirhead, W. Wallace, A.S. Pringle-Pattison, R.B. Haldane, R.L. Nettleship and J. Watson. Shortage of space does not allow a satisfactory discussion of the nature of British Idealist thought, nor is it the aim of this article. What follows intends to be introductory only. It brings to the fore the concept of reconciliation as the idea that gives unity to British Idealism, explains the role of Idealist thought in nineteenth century British social thought, and reveals the contribution of British Idealism to substantive social and political thought. This introductory account is coupled with a bibliographical essay to illustrate the range of concerns Idealist thought embraces.British Idealism is sometimes described as an intellectual ‘movement’ not as a result of any comprehensive study of the idealists and their views so much as on the strength of its supposed role in providing intellectual support for the ‘collectivism’ or increasing state intervention that is claimed to have dominated British politics in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, the intellectual interest in British Idealism has generally followed on the belief that Idealism was the major force behind the politics of collectivism.Although British Idealists did constitute a group, this group did not and, indeed, could not have had the effect on British politics that is usually suggested. British Idealism could not have lent itself exclusively to one line of policy.