Educated Insolence

Time to get philosophical. I’ve been reading a philosophy essay about forgiveness in book titled “Philosophy for Life.” While the essay is a compilation of two previous works of Rupert Read and cannot be obtained online, one of the previous works is available here (from what I can tell it has the same primary arguments as the work I read). To sum up the essay, the author states that forgiveness is something that cannot be understood and does happen, albeit rarely.

It’s a very interesting piece of work and one that has kept me thinking about the true nature of forgiveness. I read the first half of the essay in December and I just finished the second half. The first half was about the nature of forgiveness and if it actually happens. For the next two months I had a few in depth discussions with a good friend about the arguments Rupert Read constructs for what forgiveness truly is (such as forgetting about an incident isn’t truly forgiving). Our debates ranged across a variety of arguments yet we never resolved what forgiveness truly is. Having just finished the second half of the essay, it has become apparent that we settled upon one of his conclusions that we did not tacitly acknowledge, that forgiveness is an act that simply cannot be understood.

What startled me in the second half of the book was the inclusion of political efforts to bring about forgiveness with the author concentrating on the efforts of South Africa to move on from its apartheid regime. South Africa, after the fall of the apartheid, set up a government body titled Truth and Reconciliation Commission whose function is best described by Dullah Omar, South Africa’s former Minister of Justice, as an “exercise to enable South Africans to come to terms with their past on a morally accepted basis and to advance the cause of reconciliation.” At the heart of my startle is that I expected a commission more along the lines of an apartheid crimes tribunal rather than a commission looking at the broader issue of reconciliation. The TRC is impressive and a committee I want to look closer at. Finally, to bring this post to a close, represents to me the progress that has occurred in governments and societies since WWII.

More information can be found at

• Truth and Reconciliation Commission website (browse the subcommittees, particularly the Human Rights Violations Hearings).
• The Country of My Skull - Antjie Krug. A book about the TRC and South Africa’s quest for forgiveness.
• Reason Papers - A free source of philosophy articles.
• Forgiveness in Conflict Resolution - Another resource on the philosophy of forgiveness, applied particularly to the role it plays and should play in resolving conflicts.