The Realm of Grace

Abstract

This dissertation examines three familiar interpersonal phenomena—repentance after wronging another, forgiveness in the wake of being wronged, and reciprocation after being helped—and what they teach us about moral obligation in general.

When a wrongdoer sincerely repents, we tend to see that as a reason to forgive them. But why? Chapter 1 offers an answer that I call the ‘Redemptive View’. Repentance, I contend, involves changing how one relates to a past misdeed, acknowledging its wrongness and committing to moral betterment. Consequently, the wrong comes to play a new role in the wrongdoer’s life, becoming a source of moral learning and an impetus towards moral growth. As a result, the wrong is imbued with a new, positive significance that it lacked so far, generating a reason to forgive.

But are we ever obliged to forgive our wrongdoers? Many think not. On the orthodox view, all obligations to others correlate with demandable or enforceable rights, and since no one has the standing to demand or enforce forgiveness, no one can be owed it. Chapter 2 disputes this orthodoxy, arguing that forgiveness is sometimes obligatory, even if no wrongdoer has a right to it. In particular, if you’ve previously accepted a gracious offer of forgiveness and are now in a position to extend an equally or less gracious offer to one of your wrongdoers, then you must forgive. Otherwise, you would be imposing on others a harsher standard than you accepted for yourself. It turns out that disparate instances of forgiving and being forgiven within a life are connected in surprising ways: accepting forgiveness in the past can bear on whether present forgiveness is discretionary or obligatory.

Chapter 3 turns to cases of standing in debt to someone who helps us—debts we can repay by reciprocating. Some debts are transactional: they can be claimed or waived, and once repaid, the parties return to the status ex ante. Others resist this structure: they cannot be claimed or waived, and reciprocation only generates a persisting, often alternating cycle of mutual aid. What explains this distinctive normative profile? I argue that such non-transactional debts arise when an act of 2 care tacitly proposes a more intimate relationship. When the beneficiary responds in kind, the relationship is reshaped, and new constitutive norms take hold. These norms ensure persistence, but also a normatively healthy pattern of alternation: after all, each act in the cycle is an undemandable gift extended in a time of need, and each response an act of due gratitude.

In all, this dissertation challenges the orthodoxy that if we owe something to others, they must have a right to it. We learn that the moral landscape isn’t exhausted by the realm of rights. There is also a ‘realm of grace’—a realm in which we are required to do much for others that they cannot demand of us.