Anger and Forgiveness. Resentment, Generosity, and Justice

We live in a culture of apology and forgiveness. But while there are a few thinkers who are critical of forgiveness as being too supine, and extol the virtues of retribution and ´getting even,´ philosopher and intellectual Martha C. Nussbaum criticizes forgiveness from the other side: that in the realm of personal relations, forgiveness is at its heart inquisitorial and disciplinary. In this volume based on her 2014 Locke Lectures, Nussbaum paints a startling new portrait that strips the notion of forgiveness down to its Judeo-Christian roots, where it was structured by the moral relationship between a score-keeping God and penitent, self-abasing, and erring mortals. The relationship between a wronged human and another is, she says, based on this primary God-human relationship. Nussbaum agrees with Nietzsche in seeing in forgiveness a displaced vindictiveness and a concealed resentment that are ungenerous and unhelpful in human relations. She says forgiveness can give aid and comfort to a certain narcissism of resentment that a loving and generous person should eschew-in favor of a generosity that gets ahead of forgiveness and prevents its procedural thoughts from taking place. With a wide range of literary and classical references as background, Nussbaum pursues her penetrating and wide-ranging exploration of anger and forgiveness from the personal realm into the political, as well as into a so-called middle realm where we interact with people and groups who are not our close friends or family. A great deal of resentment toward others is in this middle realm, and she argues that the Stoics were right-we should try and understand how petty most slights are, and avoid anger to begin with.