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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
There are many ways of doing philosophy of religion. No doubt all of them have need of abstract concepts and passages where reflection is more technical than it usually is, say in everyday thought and reflection. But it is well known that, in this area of philosophy, and not only in this area of philosophy, abstract reflection can run the risk of losing contact with the ins and outs, the finer-grained details, of the lived experience of reality. One way to seek to reduce this risk is to approach abstract or general reflection through philosophical reflection on specific cases. This is what I intend to do in this paper. My aim is to explore in detail a specific and, in my view, extraordinarily striking example, in this case, an example of forgiveness in a religious, indeed, Christian context, drawing out where possible general or abstract conclusions, but seeking always to root reflection in the specific case in order to understand better from a philosophical point of view what is at stake, what is important, when thinking about the issue in question. Of course, I shall be seeking primarily to elucidate philosophically the example I shall discuss, but, by implication, I hope that the kinds of questions, worries and concerns I discuss might raise consciousness – philosophical consciousness – of the kinds of questions that we might explore in other examples, specifically those which involve forgiveness in a religious context.
1 Même les Bourreaux ont une âme, Girtanner, Maïti avec Guillaume Tabard (Tours: Éditions CLD, 2010). All translations from this text are mine.
2 Ibid., 14
3 Ibid., 176
4 Ibid., 176
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., 178
7 Ibid., 18
8 Ibid., 19
9 Ibid., 20
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 21
12 Orwell, George, ‘Reflections on Gandhi’ in The Penguin Essays of George Orwell (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984): 469; 465
13 Wood, James, ‘Sir Thomas More: a man for one season’ in The Broken Estate (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999): 1
14 Op. cit., note 1, 22
15 Ibid., 60
16 Ibid., 138
17 Ibid., 79
18 Ibid., 138
19 Ibid., 77
20 Ibid., 164
21 Ibid., 177
22 Ibid., 37
23 Ibid., 164
24 Ibid., 170
25 Ibid., 173
26 Ibid., 165–171
27 Ibid., 149–50
28 Frank, Arthur, The Wounded Storyteller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)
29 Quoted in Alain Finkielkraut, La mémoire vaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1989): 44–5
30 Op. cit., note 1, 177
31 Ibid., 178
32 Levi, Primo, I sommersi e i salvati (Torino: Einaudi, 2009): 34–5, my translation. Levi's text had been translated into English by Raymond Rosenthal under the title The Drowned and the Saved (London: Abacus, 1989).
33 Levi, Primo, I sommersi e i salvati: 109, quoting Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2008): 141–2, my translation. Améry's text has been translated into English by Stella P. Rosenfeld and Stanley Rosenfeld under the title At the Mind's Limits (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998)
34 Levi, Primo, I sommersi e i salvati: 110, my translation
35 Op. cit., note 1, 176
36 Levi, Primo, Se questo è un uomo (Torino: Einaudi, 2013): 116, my translation. A more literal translation of Levi's words would be: ‘I would spit Kuhn's prayer to the ground’.
37 Op. cit., note 1, 154
38 Ibid.,19
39 Levi, Primo, I sommersi e i salvati: 63, my translation.
