Letting go of blame

Abstract

Most philosophers acknowledge ways of overcoming blame, even blame directed at a culpable offender, that are not forgiving. Sometimes continuing to blame a friend for their offensive comment just isn't worth it, so we let go instead. However, despite being a common and widely recognised experience, no one has offered a positive account of letting go. Instead, it tends to be characterised negatively and superficially, usually in order to delineate the boundaries of forgiveness. This paper gives a more complete and systematic account of this important practice. We argue that the basic distinction between forgiving and letting go of blame follows from distinctions that many philosophers already accept. We then develop a positive account in terms of the reasons one has to let go rather than forgive and show that letting go is as valuable a part of our shared moral lives as forgiveness.

Forgiveness and Letting Go: Ways of Changing the Normative Landscape

“…In fact, I believe that we can account for a host of cases and mark an important theoretical line if we draw the distinction as follows: where forgiveness is a release of obligations, a consequent relinquishing of the right to press for their fulfillment, letting go is, in contrast, the formation of an intention not to press for their fulfillment, together with some success in following through. Drawing the distinction in this way allows us to make sense of the idea that sometimes in letting go we are guided by the idea that "it just isn't worth it" (Brunning and Milam 2022). Letting go is also consistent with our thinking that other people will deal with the issue so that we don't have to, and with thinking that the offender is likely to come around to fulfilling whatever obligations there are on their own eventually.…”

“…So this is a reason to embrace a kind of pluralism in the special sense that there are overlapping phenomena that, somewhat inconveniently, go by the same name. 7 It might be that, as I hope to explore in greater detail in the future, we should instead (or in addition) embrace a kind of core and syndrome account with landscape change at the core and emotion and relationship changes as part of the syndrome. 8 For purposes of this paper, I try to remain agnostic for as long as possible about which way we should go here.…”

“…Per-Erik Milam and Luke Brunning (2022) have recently offered the most detailed and systematic philosophical account of a distinction between forgiveness and letting go, together with the first in-depth account of letting go in its own right. Where others take for granted some intuitive understanding of what it is to "let go", Milam and Brunning attempt to explicate it in some detail and begin to identify norms of the practice.…”

“…Whether or not these questions can be answered, the insight that a plausible account of forgiveness might not be captured exclusively in one camp or the other is an important one. Despite these differences, my use of the label "landscape change" takes its inspiration to Owens' 2012 book 7. It is worth noting that nothing follows about whether we should adopt pluralism about blame.…”

Forgetting to Un-Forgive

“…Interestingly, on Wonderly's view, Emma's reasons to un-forgive Olivia can justify rescinding her forgiveness and blaming Olivia again even if, in initially forgiving Olivia, she made a commitment to refrain from blaming Olivia in the future. 4 This is because un-forgiveness can be a significant source of moral value, which can justify violating (defeasible) commitments to refrain from blame going forward. What is the moral importance of un-forgiveness?…”