Images of the Other: A Model of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is not supposed to make sense.  Humanity, in our finiteness, naturally desires that forgiveness be sensible, be doable, be clear.  We normally have expectations; words like "sorry" or "apologize" are expected.  Some level of wrongdoing is admitted.  And for most conflictual situations in life, such practices of "forgiveness" work perfectly.  (Why I quoted forgiveness will be explained later.)  When I accidentally make a mistake (such as tripping somebody over), I quickly apologize and, for the most part, the unfortunate victim might brush it off, say "it's okay," and we go on our merry ways.  Such offenses was probably not what Peter had in mind when he asked Jesus, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Arguably, Peter had in mind more grievous wrongdoings in mind than just mere accidents.  In fact, preceding the narrative in Matthew 18, Jesus described in abstract terms a wrongdoing that is serious enough for disagreement in the presence of the congregation!  To which Jesus exclaims his famous "seventy times seven," which really is understatement for being always forgiving.

Having said that, however, the fact remains that some wrongdoings remain easier to forgive than others.  Accidentally cutting someone off when getting on the subway is not on the same level as authorizing genocide.  To which one may ask, is forgiveness possible in such situations?  Vladimir Jankélévitch argues that no, it is not possible.  Indeed, as he famously asserted, forgiveness "died in the death camps [of Auschwitz]."  Jankélévitch is not alone.  Indeed, hypothetically speaking, few would extend forgiveness to the likes of Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, or Adolf Eichmann.  Understandably, architects of the Holocaust constitute "cheap shots."  After all, with perhaps some modern near-equivalents, few atrocities of such scale and magnitude were in the machinations of several central figures.  So let us consider situations that are more realistic or, at least, pertain to repeated historical events necessitating questions of forgiveness.  How does forgiveness operate when we make a grievous offense (i.e., not an accidental mess up)?

The model of forgiveness I want to propose is begins with a mathematical model.  In algebraic theory, a domain constitutes a certain set of values for which a defined function takes and converts into another value.  These set of converted values form the image of the domain onto a different domain.  So, in our diagram below, the domain, A, consists of the values 1, 2, 3, 4.  The function takes each value, doubles it, and increases it by 1 (thus, 2x+1), resulting in 3, 5, 7, 9 (for 7, 3*2+1=7).  B is a different domain consisting of numbers 1 to 10. 3, 5, 7, 9 are part of B as well, and so they form the image of A in B.

This is not a mathematical analysis, so I won't go further.  The main point I wish to expound on is that human groups operate like domains to which forgiveness serve as functions.  Forgiveness, then, projects a bit of the Self to the Other such that the Other finds a bit of the Self in her.  Consequently, forgiveness leaves in the Self images of the Other.

I contend this is not as outlandish as it sounds.  Consider a situation of grave error - let's say, I knowingly and willfully plagiarized something you wrote.  I was under no deadline, but I just loved your term "the imaginary of alterity," and I wished to God it was something I said, and so I stole it and put it in my published paper, everyone remembered it and thought it was mine.  Now, assuming this is not a situation necessitating game theory - i.e. I'm facing imminent punishment and need your forgiveness so I  receive grace, thereby avoiding punishment - what happens?  In such a situation, it would make sense for me to be the one seeking forgiveness, even though this is not always the case depending on culture and circumstance, so I would approach the victim (let's call her Sandy) and ask for an apology.  

(A)  Sandy, I f****ed up, I shouldn't have taken your work and passed it off as mine.  So we cool?

Chances are, no, we ain't cool.  But why?  I apologized!  What more do you want?  Most forgiveness philosophers and psychologists would argue that a missing element is some form of a reparation.  After all, some form of an injustice has been perpetrated and requires redress.  A more appropriate apology, then, may be:

(B)  Sandy, I f****ed up, I shouldn't have taken your work and passed it off as mine.  I sent a letter to the Journal of Alter-Parity and asked that they retract my paper.  So we cool?

Chances are, if it still ain't cool, at least it is more amenable.  But why does one reparative action matter so much?  Of course, injustice should never get away unaddressed, if not reversed, but this veers too close to a rational choice framework where to forgive is not simply a matter of course, but a quick exercise in comparative utilities.  If I don't retract my paper, then Sandy could push for greater penalties than if I simply just retracted my paper.  What I would like is for forgiveness to be inexplicable to the school of rational choice.  Forgiveness, simply put, is too "high" of a virtue to be made banal in common parlance and practice.

This is the position of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.  Jankélévitch, as you may recall, makes the claim that "forgiveness died in the death camps."  It is impossible to forgive people who were connected with the creation and execution of Auschwitz.  But for Derrida, it is precisely in those difficult situations, in the unforgivable, that true forgiveness germinates.  This sounds contradictory, but we need to keep in mind Derrida's objective: to make forgiveness difficult and utterly irrational so that it is not a matter of course.  Thus, if I accidentally ran into someone, such a situation does not merit forgiveness, even though out of common courtesy, it merits excuse or a quick apology.  Perhaps we see this at play with Jesus' "Father, forgive them.  They know not what they're doing."  The fact is that God is trapped in a state of contradiction; God cannot forgive because (1) God's son is on the cross, and (2) injustice does not go unpunished, as the psalmists sing oftentimes.  Worse, it was not the wrongdoers who asked for forgiveness, but the victim!  Yet, Christian tradition asserts God as forgiving.  What gives?

We may resolve this strange paradox if we rethink forgiveness in terms of imaging the Self in the Other, and vice-versa.  Each apology contains a narrative, a story, that is applicable to the circumstance surrounding the request for forgiveness.  In apology A, above, Sandy has little reason to find the apology acceptable because the story seems to be familiar, as if everybody plagiarizes!  That's because all the apology contains is an admittance to the error.  Such an apology works for rather unimportant errors because everybody encounters such situations every now and then.  If my apology were,

Sandy, I'm sorry; I stepped on your foot by accident,

She probably would be much more amenable to accepting the apology out of the pure fact that accidental stepping-on-someone-else's-foot is not unusual for her, just as it is for many others.  Her likely response - "That's alright." - would probably attest to it.  She can easily accept this story as hers, just as many no doubt would too.

But for Sandy to accept a similar apology for plagiarism or any grievous error would be to map that story onto her Self; the story is imaged on her.  Now, plagiarism is admitted to be part of my life and Sandy's as well. The only reason Sandy can accept apology A for my plagiarism is if she - and perhaps many others - have done the same thing.  Thus, the story in apology A cannot be forced on Sandy no more than she could claim that she is a serial plagiarist.  For forgiveness to successfully project Self's story on the Other, the Other must allow that projection, and it must not be a hastily-made decision, for the story will be part of the Other's domain.  Thus, Sandy must ensure that the story I tell is a story she can accept because it tells of a story or character that she willingly identifies with.  

Apology B admits the error, but offers an action to show my contrition.  Sandy may be more amenable to such a request for forgiveness on the basis that such a story is easier to project unto her own.  If I were to commit such a grave error, we might imagine her thinking, I would want to find a way to repair the damage.  The apology that leads to reconciliation is one in which Sandy reads my story to be something that can be imaged on to her story as well.  Now, note that in all this, we have been assuming freedom of choice.  We are not assuming any outside interference or arbitration in the process of apologizing, and this includes religious requirements on forgiveness.  If there were third-party interference, if I must forgive because Jesus said "seventy times seven," then we have reverted to the rational choice model, which is that I forgive because Jesus has increased my utility for forgiving, and so I will forgive despite me not liking it.  Forgiving, in such a situation, really degenerates into an excuse.

Thus, forgiveness in this model is not so much an action, but an ontological state.  In the Christian tradition, we are taught to forgive "seventy times seven" not in the pietist, gotta-do-it-or-else way.  I think we're not even taught to be forgiving.  We are taught to be forgiveness.  We are forgiveness when Others' stories become part of us, and we realize that we are images of the Others in our lives.  And that is why the Holocaust and other historical instances of evil beyond comprehension poses important impediments to forgiveness, because if I forgive Heinrich Himmler (assuming I were, say, a Holocaust survivor) I am essentially making the case that Himmler's story is image-able unto mine.  Thus, yes, I agree with Jankélévitch insofar as forgiveness died in the death camps.  Note, I'm not talking about the camp commandant who asked Corrie Ten Boom for forgiveness; I'm talking Himmler, Eichmann, even Hitler himself!  

But we need to note one wrinkle in the model, namely, that forgiveness can be employed in such a way that questions of power come into play.  Of course, this would no longer fall into the category of true forgiveness, but it is important to reflect on it.  Suppose in my example above, Sandy withholds forgiveness from me.  No, we ain't cool, and we are not going to be reconciled until you are fired from the University and reduced to a sorry hobo wandering the streets of Chicago's South Side.  What is happening here?  In essence, Sandy has given her story a valuation, one indubitably much higher than my story.  Thus is foreclosed the possibility of me living forgiveness.  But it must be noted that in doing so, she has foreclosed her possibility of the same.  We live forgiveness mutually, and it is enactable when both the victim and the offender open themselves to accepting each others' stories of imperfection.  

That is why forgiveness must, in critical theoretical construction, be located in liminal space.  Somewhere, somehow, the story I want to image onto Sandy must be one in which she accepts, and that liminal space is where we negotiate what that story should be.  This, however, requires forgiveness to be flexibly located.  If we insist that it's my story or the highway, we condemn forgiveness to die, and under much more innocuous circumstances relative to Auschwitz.  Sandy must desire forgiveness - she must desire that I get the story right so she can say, Yes - this describes me if I made the error.  

Thus, the epic scandal of God's forgiveness in Jesus is that Jesus takes our imaging into his domain - a scandalous notion!  After all, is Jesus not to be lifted high above on a metaphysical dais, high above human influence?  No - Jesus is God made immanent, perhaps too immanent for our comfort.  And on the cross, Jesus takes on our imperfection so we can enact forgiveness in our communities.  Forgiveness does not thrive on rhetoric of moral perfection; it is enabled when sin is real and is addressed by sinners and for sinners.  Perhaps Derrida might have been too strong in asserting that forgiveness paradoxically is enacted in the unforgivable, but it begins in the space of weakness.