Abraham Mathew

Abstract: Philosophical orthodoxy has it that forgiveness is always discretionary—a gift we are free to extend to those who wrong us, but one that we are never morally required to offer. I dispute this orthodoxy, arguing that forgiveness is sometimes obligatory, even though wrongdoers can never demand or otherwise extract it from us. In particular, I argue that having accepted forgiveness in the past sometimes makes it obligatory to forgive one’s future wrongdoers. The obligation to forgive because one was forgiven is grounded, not in a correlative right to forgiveness held by one’s wrongdoer, but in a moral norm of consistency that applies to how we accept and extend forgiveness. The resulting account sheds new light on the nature and scope of our discretion to forgive and on the possibility of obligations to others without correlative rights.

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This paper examines cases in which we stand in debt to someone who has helped us—debts we “repay” by reciprocating. Some are transactional: they can be claimed or waived, and once repaid, the parties return to their prior standing. Others are non-transactional: they cannot be claimed or waived, and reciprocation instead sustains an ongoing cycle of further debts. I argue that such non-transactional debts arise when an act of care tacitly proposes a more intimate relationship. Once that proposal is accepted, what each owes the other is no longer a discrete favour to be returned but a matter of living up to the terms of the new relationship. This account explains both the persistence of non-transactional debts and the benefactor’s lack of authority to claim or waive them, while showing that transactional debts are a truncated form of the same relationship-reshaping process. All reciprocation, in the end, is a matter of relationship, not repayment.

Abstract: Economists tell us that human beings tend to be near-biased: we tend to prefer that pleasant things happen to us sooner rather than later, and unpleasant things later rather than sooner. Philosophers from Socrates to Sidgwick to Rawls have argued that this tendency is irrational.

I argue that the rationality of near bias can be vindicated on the basis of a popular view in metaphysics: that at any given moment, a person coincides with a multitude of 'personites'—shorter-lived entities that share their current physical and mental states but have different past and future histories. This thesis, I argue, gives rise to a special kind of de se uncertainty that justifies us caring more about events in our lives that are closer to the present than those that are farther away from it. It turns out that rather abstract questions in metaphysics—like whether personites exist—bear on mundane matters of everyday life—such as whether I should prefer a dental appointment to be scheduled next week or next month.

Abstract: I argue that we should reject a popular view of repentance, on which it functions to sever the connection between the wrongdoer and wrongdoing once the former ceases to endorse or identify with the latter. It is often thought that this separation of deed and doer is what makes it apt to forgive the wrongdoer. This 'Dissociative View' of repentance, I contend, wrongfully neglects the continued significance of the misdeed, both in the wrongdoer's life and in the relationships affected by their act.

I offer an alternative: the 'Redemptive View'. Repentance, I argue, involves changing how one relates to a past misdeed by acknowledging its wrongness and committing to strive for moral betterment. Hereafter, the wrongdoing plays a new role in the wrongdoer's life—it shapes their character towards moral betterment—and thereby imbues it with a positive significance that it hitherto lacked. It is due to this, new positive significance that repentant wrongdoers are apt to be forgiven.

In this paper, I challenge the ‘Correlativity Thesis’ about rights and duties, or the idea that every duty owed to another correlates with a claim-right on their part, giving them the standing to demand or enforce its performance. I argue that, as essentially vulnerable and dependent creatures, we sometimes have weighty interests in receiving certain goods we cannot secure for ourselves—goods like forgiveness, generous aid, hospitality, and self-sacrifice. At particular moments, these interests can be weighty enough to ground duties for others to provide them. Yet, these goods are also characteristically gracious: their provision goes beyond what their recipients are entitled to demand in the manner characteristic of rights. To accommodate this aspect of our moral lives, I develop a two-domain framework of directed duties: the realm of rights, containing duties grounded in our interests as autonomous agents and correlated with claim-rights, and the realm of grace, containing duties grounded in our interests as vulnerable and interdependent beings but lacking correlative rights. Together, these two realms offer a more complete account of what we owe to one another.

In this paper, I develop an account of what it means to forbear or ‘bear with' someone who has wronged us. I argue that forbearance is distinct from forgiveness and tolerance, and that love gives us distinctive, sometimes insistent reasons to graciously bear with others, preserving intimacy without turning every interpersonal failure into an occasion for blame or absolution.

Suppose one's existence depends on the occurrence of a horrific past event. Can one rationally regret that event, wishing never happened? Or must one 'progret' it and be glad that it happened? I defend a middle view, arguing for the rationality of 'partial attitudes' towards past events. You can rationally regret the horrific event in one sense and progret it in another, and have no all-things-considered attitude towards it.

Abstract: In the musical Les Misérables, the Bishop forgives Jean Valjean for stealing his silver and then implores him to be honest in his dealings with all others: “But remember this, my brother / See in this some higher plan / You must use this precious silver / To become an honest man.” On the standard philosophical treatment of forgiveness, your forgiveness of me bears just on our relationship that was damaged by my wrongdoing. It says nothing about how I should relate to others. On this view, the Bishop’s words are puzzling: Why must being forgiven move Valjean to be honest in his dealings with all others, not just in his future dealings with the Bishop?

Yet in everyday life, we do expect forgiveness to spark broader moral change, affecting not just the relationship with one’s forgiver, but in how we treat others as well. I try to make sense of this imperative, starting from the commonplace idea that forgiveness is a gift. Unlike a reward, a gift is not something that a recipient earns or merits. Instead, it is given freely, in hope that that the recipient will use it well and not cause the giver to regret their generosity. Analogously, in paradigmatic cases of forgiveness, a victim forgives her wrongdoer in hope that that he will not take advantage of her good will in releasing him from his duties of repair by choosing to return to his ways of wrongdoing, whether towards her or others in her moral community. In accepting her forgiveness, a wrongdoer commits himself to living up to this trust, which in turn obliges him to strive towards moral betterment across all his relationships. Forgiveness, it turns out, is a gift we should use well.

You can read my review of this anthology on forgiveness here.