Session 6(b): Evil, Repentance and Reconciliation
Concurrent Session 6b: Evil, Repentance, and Reconciliation
Chair: Ewan Kirkland
You’ve Got to Change Your Evil Ways: The Limits on Forgiving Evil
David White
Department of Philosophy, University of Calgary, Canada
“Evil” is a word that is used to describe people and actions in both religious and secular contexts. It is also a term that sometimes is applied to individuals and their actions and sometimes to groups of people. In this paper I will discuss only evil as a secular idea and as it applies to individuals and their actions. With this in mind, there are several questions that we can ask about evil people and evil actions. Are there acts so evil that they justify being called unforgivable? If so, are all evil actions unforgivable or just some? Are there some people who are so evil that they can never be redeemed? Is evil a characteristic that, once acquired, no person can ever eliminate? In order to answer these questions, we should begin by examining the concept of forgiveness in general (again, in the secular context) and then looking to see if it can accommodate the evil person or evil actions. So this paper begins with a general discussion of what it means for one person to forgive another and what criteria must be met in order for a person to have earned forgiveness. This is followed by an examination of some paradigm cases of what we can reasonably call evil actions and evil people. Finally, these two discussions will be brought together to assess whether or not anyone or anything is truly unforgivable. It will be argued that no person or action is unforgivable in principle, but that as a practical matter many people who have committed evil acts will be unable to earn the right to be forgiven.
Building the Rainbow Nation: The Practice Of Transformation and Reconciliation
Ursula Scheidegger
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
South Africa is an example of a relatively successful transition. Comprehensive change was attained without the break down of law and order, the decay of institutional capacity and the loss of state control. The pervasive transformation process not only promoted new values and ethical and moral standards but also rearranged social hierarchies and the access to power and resources.
However, the various population groups are affected by these changes in very different ways. Worldviews, social barriers and prejudices are more resilient to change; they were shaped by history, state ideology, socialisation and personal experiences and influence perceptions of personal realities and the validation of other population groups. Due to the magnitude of inequality, the empowerment of one group comes at the expense of another. Inevitable biases in resource allocation and legislative measures in favour of previously disadvantaged population groups emphasise race and perpetuate racial categories. Furthermore, there is still little belief in the effectiveness of the state and its democratic institutions, in particular because of the current imbalance of power and incidences of arrogant leadership. This is a challenging environment for overcoming the evils of the past, for reconciliation and the accommodation of diversity and for building a just and free society, as depicted in the metaphor of the rainbow nation.
The empirical part of the paper is based on fieldwork in different formerly white residential areas in Johannesburg, which experienced considerable demographic changes over the past years.
Academic Evil and Scholarly Sins: Ricoeur on Correcting Errors in Method and Approach
Rachel Waterstradt
Department of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount University, USA
This conference brings together scholars from multiple fields with the intent of addressing and discussing evil in all its horrific forms, but our discussions ought to press still further to also scrutinize the very methodologies we employ in our examinations. It is not acceptable to merely be working on the understanding and addressing the issue of evil if the work that we are doing might itself be leading to more evil. If we are failing to include relevant questions and issues, or only focus too narrowly on a specific way of considering the problem, then aren’t we guilty of a sort of “academic evil.” To avoid this sort of scholarly sin, the methodology that we employ in weighing out the issue of evil has to avoid many pitfalls, but mainly our focus has to keep us from limiting ourselves to an “either-or” position in favor of a “both-and” position. One thinker who argues for this sort of approach is Paul Ricoeur. In his long career, he staunchly argues for a specific approach to problems and issues that takes into consideration both the insights from philosophy and from other disciplines, considering the responsibility of both the individual and the collective for action and inaction, clearly laying out the need for both academic study and action to intervene to stop atrocity.
In this paper I intend to closely examine the methodology Ricoeur provides us in his early text Freedom and Nature, and two of his later works, The Just and Memory, History, and Forgetting. Once his methodology is clearly provided, I would like to take into consideration how this methodology can correct some of the worst examples of academic evil and scholarly sin out there, including the danger of just letting these cases slide. Last, I hope to carefully open a critique of Ricoeur himself showing how some of his own political insights might fall short of his own standards provided in his methodology and also how he sought to correct one of these issues in his last work. I would also like to carefully run my own analysis ‘through the ringer’ to make sure that I am not falling into the very pitfalls that I argue against (and if I am, I would hope that someone would let me know).
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