Kantian forgiveness: fallibility, guilt and the need to become a better person: reply to Blöser
Abstract
In ‘Human Fallibility and the Need for Forgiveness’, Claudia Blöser (Philosophia 47:1-19, 2019) has proposed a Kantian account of our reasons to forgive that situates our moral fallibility as their ultimate ground. Blöser argues that Kant’s duty to be forgiving is grounded on the need to be relieved from the burden of our moral failure (guilt), a need that we all have in virtue of our moral fallible nature, regardless of whether or not we have repented. Blöser claims that Kant’s proposal yields a plausible account of the normative status of forgiveness. Kant classifies the duty to be forgiving as a wide (imperfect) duty of virtue, and according to Blöser, this means that Kantian forgiveness is elective in the sense that forgiveness is good in general (i.e. an attitude that we have moral reason to adopt) but without being obligatory in each particular case. In the course of presenting her own reconstruction of Kant’s account, Blöser also objects to some aspects of an interpretation of Kant’s theory of forgiveness which I had previously defended in my paper ‘Forgiveness and Moral Development’ (Philosophia 44:1029–1055, 2016). Although there are a lot of points of agreement between our interpretations, the aim of this article is to highlight four key points of disagreement. These issues are worth discussing because they have implications not only for a plausible interpretation of a recognisable Kantian account of forgiveness but also for wider debates in the contemporary literature on forgiveness. First, I show that Kant is not committed to a form of weak situationism as suggested by Blöser and that Kant’s grounding of the duty to be forgiving does not appeal to moral luck. Second, I argue that although Kant’s duty to be forgiving is elective in one sense of the term, it is not elective in another important sense of the term, and that it is in fact better not to interpret Kantian imperfect duties as being elective. Third, I show that awareness of moral fallibility per se does not provide a morally appropriate ground for forgiveness and offer an alternative reconstruction of Kant’s account- in which fallibility plays a role, but it is not the main reason to forgive. Finally, I argue that Blöser’s account of the need to be forgiven is not recognisable Kantian because, from a Kantian perspective, repentance is a necessary condition for the desirability and, in fact, the very possibility of ameliorating our own guilt.Citation
Satne, P. (2020) Kantian forgiveness: fallibility, guilt and the need to become a better person: reply to Blöser, Philosophia (2020), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00188-4Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLCJournal
PhilosophiaAdditional Links
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11406-020-00188-4Type
Journal articleLanguage
enDescription
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in Philosophia on 10/03/2020, available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00188-4 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.ISSN
0048-3893EISSN
1574-9274ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1007/s11406-020-00188-4
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