Forgivers Assemble!

So the next essay in “The Avengers and Philosophy” is “Forgivers Assemble” by Daniel P. Malloy. This seems to be inspired by a play on words, with the team being named “The Avengers” but having a number of storylines where forgiving is what is happening instead of avenging, particularly the case where the original members all step aside leaving Captain America leading a team of three reformed criminals. Malloy’s essay asks the question of who can forgive them for their crimes and so allow them to change from villains to heroes, making a relatively standard argument that the person wronged is the one who must forgive them, but also arguing for cases where someone can be forgiven by proxy from someone else. All of these considerations are important ones in this new world of public condemnation and apology, as we hear more public demands for apology and more public insistence that the apology must be satisfactory to earn forgiveness. Malloy doesn’t make those arguments, but the idea that only the person who is wronged can forgive the person who committed the wrong is in a similar vein, especially given that Malloy is reluctant to find any case where the person wronged should be obligated to forgive, tying into the argument that if the person wronged decides not to forgive that person, for any reason, then that person is not forgiven and, arguably, cannot be considered redeemed.

For me, it seems that what we are doing here is conflating three very different ideas here, that have three different connotations. The first is the case where someone who has wronged someone else asks that person for forgiveness for their wrong. In this case, clearly forgiveness cannot happen if the person who was wrong doesn’t actually forgive them. But in this case, it does seem that if the person who committed the wrong is genuine in asking for forgiveness and the person wronged believes that they are genuine in asking for forgiveness, then it seems that withholding forgiveness in that case is irrational at best and petulant at worst. This is where I think many of the demands for restitution and the insistence that someone can’t be forgiven unless they can make restitution go wrong. The reason we generally ask for restitution in these cases is that if someone is genuinely sorry for what they did and understand that what they did is wrong, in general they’d want to “make up” for the harm they did, to the extent that they are able. If they didn’t want to make restitution at all, then, we can legitimately doubt whether or not they are genuine in asking for forgiveness. But in cases where that can’t be done we still could come to reasonably believe that they are genuine in asking for forgiveness, and so if that was the case then again withholding it would be irrational at best and petulant at worst.

Okay, so what happens in the case where someone asks for forgiveness and is willing to make restitution, but the person wronged refuses to accept it on the grounds that the person asking for forgiveness won’t give them the restitution that they are asking for. Again, most of the time, at least nowadays, the claim ends up being that the only person who can decide what is the appropriate restitution is the person wrong. The problem is that, again, the point of restitution is to ensure that the person is genuine in accepting that what they did was wrong and wanting forgiveness. From this, the restitution required has to be reasonable and in line with what the offense actually was. This can be determined objectively. At a minimum, we can easily assess whether the restitution demanded is at least reasonable or if the wronged person is demanding too much. Someone who is genuinely sorry for the wrong they’ve committed is in no way obligated to accede to an unreasonable demand for restitution, as that would be the person being wrong taking advantage of them. So if someone asks for forgiveness but finds the demand for restitution too much, that doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve forgiveness. The person demanding that excessive restitution is again either being irrational or petulant, or even worse is trying to take advantage of the other person for their own gain.

The reason we put so much emphasis on what the person who is wronged feels is because the interaction is between the person who has committed the wrong and the person who was wronged. It is tempting, then, to simply allow that person to decide what is reasonable and what isn’t, and most of the time this works because the person wronged is generally not unreasonable. However, the person may be overcome by emotion and so act unreasonably, or they might be calculating in an attempt to use the other person’s guilt and desire for forgiveness for their own benefit. But we can see that in those cases we can call them out on it and say that they are acting unreasonably. So it is indeed the case that someone can deserve forgiveness in the first case even if the person being wronged is withholding it, if that person is withholding it unreasonably.

The second idea of forgiveness is more in line with the Christian idea of forgiveness, and occurs even if the other person cannot or will not ask for forgiveness. This is a concept more along the lines of “letting it go”. You understand that someone has done you wrong, but instead of chewing it over and thinking about how unjust their treatment of you was and looking for a way to pay them back, you instead simply understand that they have done that and move on with your life. This sort of forgiveness doesn’t mean that you have to pretend that it didn’t happen and treat them as if it didn’t. If the issue was that they violated your trust, for example, forgiving them doesn’t mean that you have to grant them the same amount of trust that you did before they violated it. But what you need to do is note it without rancor or emotion, treating it more like a historical fact than an active offense. Too often, if the other person isn’t apologetic for their actions — and even if they are — we get an emotional desire for revenge that impacts us going forward. This idea of forgiveness says that no matter how they feel, these sort of emotions are wrong, and so we should “forgive them their trespasses” so that we can move past it.

The third idea here is redemption. When can someone be considered to be redeemed, as Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver were in the Avengers comics? The key thing about redemption is that it’s generally not required for a particular incident. No, someone who gets redeemed is generally someone who has a pattern of doing bad things, so much so that it becomes a character or personality trait for them. Thus, what it means for someone to be redeemed or worthy of redemption is not asking for forgiveness from their victims, nor making restitution for them, but instead for them to overcome the flaws that caused them to commit the actions in the first place. Once they do so and realize that those were flaws, again they will want to seek forgiveness and will want to make restitution, but that’s not required for them to be redeemed. All they need to do is demonstrate that they understand the flaw that caused those actions and have worked to eliminated it.

So Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver could have at least demonstrated that they deserved a shot at redemption by helping out the heroes and, in some cases, by turning against those evil people they sided with in favour of doing good. This is also a big part of Wonder Man’s origin, working against the Avengers originally but sacrificing his life to save one of them when he realized his error. Once that was done, they were deserving of at least the chance to redeem themselves by continuing to act for good instead of for evil.

There is an interesting note here that with redemption you can’t ever really “make up” for what you did that makes you require redemption. The point of redemption is to prove that you’ve corrected the flaw that led to those actions, not to make up for what you did wrong. A consistent pattern of acting properly — especially in the context of having a strong temptation to act in the old way — is what is necessary to be redeemed. So while we tend to consider redemption to follow from making up for the wrongs one has committed, that’s not what redemption is. That only counts because someone who has truly understood their flaw is going to want to take actions to make up for the actions they took because of it, but if they can’t do that they can prove that they are redeemed by consistently acting in a manner that proves that they have overcome their flaws.

What is important about all of these is that while we tend to insist on restitution for all of them, restitution is not the point of forgiveness in any of these cases. At best, it’s a way to prove that the person’s claims are legitimate and genuine. So when we insist that restitution is required and must be deemed sufficient by the victims, we miss the point of the role of restitution in forgiveness. It’s only a guide, not the be-all-and-end-all of forgiveness. We can indeed forgive someone or claim them redeemed even if no restitution is possible … and the demand for restitution risks us sinking into a morass of anger and revenge instead of moving on. So we must not inflate the importance of restitution. No good can come from that.

Tags: Philosophy in Popular Culture