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Hume on Forgiveness and the Unforgivable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2007

GLEN PETTIGROVE
GLEN PETTIGROVE*
Affiliation:
Massey University, New ZealandG.Pettigrove@massey.ac.nz
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Abstract

Are torture and torturers unforgivable? The article examines this question in the light of a Humean account of forgiveness. Initially, the Humean account appears to suggest that torturers are unforgivable. However, in the end, I argue it provides us with good reasons to think that even torturers may be forgiven.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 447 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

1 Tutu, Desmond, No Future without Forgiveness (New York, 1999), p. 126Google Scholar.

2 Sartre, Jean Paul, ‘Introduction’, The Question, ed. Alleg, Henri (New York, 1958), p. 23Google Scholar.

3 Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (New York, 1998)Google Scholar, Dialogue, paragraph 21. Subsequent references to ‘the Enquiry’ will be to the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.

4 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature (New York, 2003)Google Scholar, Book 2, Part 2, Section 1, paragraph 6 (hereafter cited as 2.2.1.6).

5 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.1.5.

6 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.1.6.

7 ‘[I]ndependent of the opinion of iniquity, any harm or uneasiness has a natural tendency to excite our hatred’ (Hume, Treatise, 2.2.3.9).

8 Cf. Hume, Treatise, 2.2.2.9.

9 Cf. Norvin Richards, ‘Forgiveness’, Ethics 99 (October 1988), 77–97.

10 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.3.5.

11 Cf. Hume, Treatise, 2.2.3.3. Of course, once one has begun to hate the other driver, one's readiness to be convinced that the accident was not due to his faulty character will be greatly reduced.

12 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.6.3.

13 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.6.5–6.

14 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.7.1.

15 Jean Hampton draws a distinction of this sort in ‘The Retributive Idea’, Forgiveness and Mercy, ed. Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton (New York, 1988). However, she does not characterize mercy quite as dispassionately as is sometimes done. She defines the contrast between forgiveness and mercy as follows: ‘Whereas forgiveness is a change of heart towards a wrongdoer that arises out of our decision to see him as morally decent rather than bad, mercy is the suspension or mitigation of a punishment that would otherwise be deserved as retribution, and which is granted out of pity and compassion for the wrongdoer’ (p. 158).

16 Hume, David, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 (Indianapolis, 1983), vol. 2, ch. 14, p. 155Google Scholar, and ch. 18, p. 342. Subsequent references to the History will identify the volume, chapter and page numbers as follows: 2.14.155 and 2.18.342.

17 Hume, History, 2.18.342.

18 Cf. Hume, History, 1.4.196, 201 and 220; 2.22.473; 3.25.70; 4.41.186.

19 Hume, History, 1.4.201 and 220; 2.12.64; 3.31.224.

20 For example in Psalms 85, 86 and 103.

21 The entries for ‘mercy’ in the Oxford English Dictionary show the clear influence of the Bible on the language of mercy and forgiveness and the interchangeable usage of the two terms dating back at least to the fourteenth century.

22 Cf. Butler, Joseph, ‘Upon Forgiveness of Injuries’, Sermon IX in Fifteen Sermons (Charlottesville, Va., 1993), p. 112Google Scholar; and Wesley, John, Sermon 26, Wesley's Works, 3rd edn. [1831] (Grand Rapids, 1979), vol. V, p. 340Google Scholar.

23 Cf. Hume, History, 3.31.238; 3.32.264; 3.37.437; 5.Note R.563; 6.60.26. Cf. Wesley, Sermon 26 (Wesley's Works, vol. V, p. 338).

24 Hume, Enquiry, 2.1. Hume likewise refers to King Charles’ forgiveness of those who have called for his execution as ‘an act of benevolence towards his greatest enemies’ (History, 5.59.542). For a more extensive discussion of Hume on benevolence, see Radcliffe, Elizabeth, ‘Love and Benevolence in Hutcheson's and Hume's Theories of the Passions’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12.4 (2005), pp. 631–53Google Scholar; Vitz, Rico, ‘Hume and the Limits of Benevolence’, Hume Studies 28.2 (November 2002), pp. 271–95Google Scholar and ‘Sympathy and Benevolence in Hume's Moral Psychology’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.3 (2004), pp. 261–75.

25 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.6.3.

26 Hume, The Letters of David Hume, vol. 2, ed. J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford, 1932), letter 346, p. 78. In a letter to Adam Smith, Hume thanks Smith for his ‘friendly Resentment against the Right Reverend’ John Oswald and informs Smith that he has now forgiven Rev. Oswald's brother, James, for having failed to apologize for his brother John's behaviour (Letters, vol. 2, letter 406, p. 163).

27 Hume, History, 1.9.363; 3.31.221; 5.59.540–2.

28 Hume, History, 1.10.400; 2.22.473; 4.41.220; 5.51.187.

29 Hume, History, 1.8.327; 1.4.220; 3.36.425; Letters vol. 1, letter 259, pp. 277–9, vol. 2, letter 280, p. 128.

30 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.3.4.

31 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.3.4.

32 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.3.4.

33 Hume, Treatise, 2.3.2.7.

34 Hume, Treatise, 3.1.2.1.

35 Hume, Treatise, 3.3.1.15. Cf. 3.3.1.30.

36 For more on the role of the common point of view in Hume's ethics, see Rachel Cohon, ‘The Common Point of View in Hume's Ethics’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57.4 (December 1997), pp. 827–50; and Christine Korsgaard, ‘The General Point of View: Love and Moral Approval in Hume's Ethics’, Hume Studies 25.1 (April/November 1999), pp. 3–41.

37 Cf. Joseph Butler, ‘Upon Forgiveness of Injuries’.

38 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.9.19.

39 For a discussion of our ability to resent those who harm others, see Annette Baier, ‘Hume on Resentment’, Hume Studies 6 (November 1980), pp. 133–49.

40 It is another case of Hume's stylistic use of the superlative which is meant to add emphasis but need not refer to that which is the greatest in its class.

41 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.7.1.

42 Hume, Treatise, 2.1.6.2.

43 Hume, Enquiry, 7 footnote to paragraph 2.

44 Hume, Treatise, 2.1.6.7.

45 Hume, Enquiry, 7.10.

46 Hume, Enquiry, App. 1.7. While not all cases of the attitude and conduct Hume describes in this passage are cases of forgiveness, all cases of forgiveness would be instances of this sort.

47 Hume, Enquiry, App. 1.7.

48 Hume, Enquiry, 7.4.

49 Hume, Treatise, 3.3.2.13.

50 Hume praises Sir Thomas More and King Charles I for displaying magnanimity by forgiving their executioners even as they stood before the executioner's block (History, 3.31.221; 5.59.540–2).

51 Cf. Hieronymi, Pamela, ‘Articulating an Uncompromising Forgiveness’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62.3 (May 2001), pp. 529–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aurel Kolnai, ‘Forgiveness’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 74 (1973/4), pp. 91–106; Jeffrie Murphy, ‘Forgiveness and Resentment’, in Forgiveness and Mercy, ed. Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton (New York, 1988), pp. 14–34; Novitz, David, ‘Forgiveness and Self-Respect’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58.2 (June 1998), pp. 299–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wilson, John, ‘Why Forgiveness Requires Repentance’, Philosophy 63.246 (October 1988), pp. 534–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although in Getting Even: Forgiveness and its Limits (New York, 2003), Murphy follows Butler in speaking of the ‘virtue’ of forgiveness, even the chapter entitled ‘Forgiveness as a Virtue’ spends most of its time discussing how a change in the wrongdoer, viz., repentance, enables us ‘to reap the blessings of forgiveness without sacrificing our self-respect or our respect for the moral order in the process’ (p. 35).

52 Hume, History, 3.30.195.

53 Gloucester had ‘received from his rivals a cruel mortification, which he had hitherto born without violating public peace, but which it was impossible that a person of his spirit and humanity could ever forgive’ (Hume, History, 2.20.419). The two instances in which Hume speaks admiringly of someone being unable to forgive both involve a wrong done to X by way of a wrong done to Y. In Gloucester's case, his wife was injured in order to injure him. In the case of the Earl of Richmond, Elizabeth, the woman he expected to marry, was given by her mother, the queen-dowager, to Richard III, in an attempt to secure the queen's position of power and in spite of the fact that Richard had murdered the queen's brother and her three sons (Hume, History, 2.23.513).

54 Hume, Treatise, 3.3.1.17.

55 Hume, Treatise, 2.3.9.8.

56 For further discussion of this claim see Downie, R. S., ‘Forgiveness’, Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1965), pp. 128f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower [1969], revised and expanded edition (New York, 1998), pp. 64ff.; and Murphy, ‘Forgiveness and Resentment’, p. 21.

57 Hume, History, 5.59.542.

58 Hume, History, 5.59.537.

59 Hume, Enquiry, 5.40. Hume discusses with admiration another instance in which the public good provided reason for a prince of ‘great virtues and shining talents’ to forego resentment in his account of the reign of Alfred (History, 1.2.62ff.).

60 I am grateful to Elizabeth Radcliffe, Dillon Emerick and Jeremy Wisnewski for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.