Jerome Neu

Why should understanding lead to forgiveness? What is it about knowledge of the cause of an offense that makes it not an offense or less of an offense? Does such knowledge affect the character of the harm inflicted or does the forgiveness depend on other conditions of anger? And when should understanding lead to forgiveness? After all, every action has some explanation. Is any explanation enough for forgiveness, or are only certain ones of the appropriate kind? Which? What are the implications of these questions for contemporary therapeutic movements that urge forgiveness (of self and others) as a step toward self-healing?

Christ would have us love our enemies. But can we choose what we feel? Can we make ourselves love someone because we think we should? What sort of “love” is it that is within our control? And ought we be so ready to foreswear resentment if it is based on moral wrongs? Self-respect, self-defense, and respect for the demands of morality may weigh against Christ’s injunction. There are questions of psychological possibility and of moral desirability—questions more inextricably intertwined than some might think. There are grounds for caution. Arguments on these matters from Nietzsche to Freud, Kant to Rawls, Bishop Butler to Jeffrie Murphy and Charles Griswold are explored. Most centrally: If forgiveness is a virtue, the motives matter. Can we determine the reasons that move us?

In response to critical discussion of my book, A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing: The Meanings of Emotion, I clarify and develop various aspects of my analysis of jealousy in particular and affectivity in general. In relation to jealousy, I explore the nature of pathology, the role of fantasy and of the rival, and the place of examples and of evolutionary theory. In relation to affectivity, I emphasize the difference between distinguishing emotions from other psychological states and distinguishing among, within and between, particular emotions (where affectivity may not be central). In addition, I emphasize the dangers of a version of G.E. Moore's error in demanding a nonreductive analysis of good in parallel demands for a nonreductive analysis of affectivity.