Forgiveness and decision-making by victims of harm: Education for forgiveness as a dimension of moral education

ABSTRACT

The significance of harm to the life and development of victims results from the deprivation of certain goods and the violation of their dignity. The experience also impacts the decisions made by the victims regarding the perpetrators and others and, thus, their moral development. In this article, the relationship between the forgiveness and moral reasoning of victims of harm to life is discussed and the unusual and controversial thesis is proposed: Forgiveness is a condition for making morally good decisions. Consequently, from the perspective of victim morality, forgiveness can be considered not as an act of supererogation, but as a necessary act. To confirm this thesis, the misconceptions about forgiveness, which blur the lines between forgiveness and acts such as excuse and pardon, are discussed. Thereafter, how forgiveness conditions the moral reasoning of the victims is shown.

KEYWORDS:

• Harm
• victim
• forgiveness
• moral reasoning
• moral development

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Jarosław Horowski

Jarosław Horowski is an associate professor in Institute of Education Sciences, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, and editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Paedagogia Christiana. He is author of Moral Education According to neo-Thomistic Pedagogy (in Polish, WN UMK, 2015). He is interested in philosophy of education, moral and religious education, neo-Thomistic notion in pedagogy, education for moral virtues, and education for forgiveness.