After Injury: A Historical Anatomy of Forgiveness, Resentment, and Apology

305 Pages·2018·4.196 MB·English

by  Ashraf H. A. Rushdy

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AFTER INJURY
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AFTER INJURY
A Historical Anatomy of Forgiveness,
Resentment, and Apology
Ashraf H. A. Rushdy
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For My Beloved Sons,
Zidane Amgad and Aziz Senai
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
SECTION I: Forgiveness 
1. Forgiveness: Jesus and Paul 23
2. The Banality of Forgiveness 44
3. Forgiving Retribution 61
SECTION II: Resentment 
4. Resentment: The Wound of Philoctetes 99
5. The British Moral Tradition: Conscience 124
6. The Continental Cultural Tradition: Collective 146
SECTION III: Apology 
7. The Unforgiven Lives of Others 171
8. Private Apologies 195
9. Public Apologies 224
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Conclusion 256
Afterword: The Arts of Empathy 274
Index 283
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is a pleasure to thank all those who made this book possible, and those who
made it and my life immeasurably better.
At Oxford University Press, Peter Ohlin has been a thoroughly thought-
ful and supportive editor. I have read many, many books whose authors thank
him for doing what the best editors do. I am truly happy to add mine to that
list of books that have benefited—and been made possible—by his conscien-
tious attention. It has indeed been as much a pleasure as it is an honor to work
with him. Isla Ng has been enthusiastic and very helpful; I thank her, espe-
cially, for finding a way to get the permissions for the Ingres painting on the
cover. I would like to thank Andrew Pachuta for his painstaking copy-editing
work. Finally, I am grateful for the terrific work Rajesh Kathamuthu has done
as the project manager who has expertly and generously overseen the process
of producing this book.
I could not have been more fortunate in having the Press readers I have
had. Stephen Darwall is a philosopher for whom I have tremendous respect.
His work on the history of ethics and on the foundations of moral obliga-
tion has deeply informed and enlarged my thinking, as it has that of so many
others. One of the things that most impresses me in reading his essays and
books is both how brilliant and yet also how generous he consistently is in his
assessment of the ideas of other philosophers. I am deeply thankful to him for
his very helpful suggestions in improving my work, and for teaching me so
effectively through his own.
This book would not exist without Jeffrie Murphy. His always profoundly
illuminating and incisive essays first inspired me to think about the topics I
take up in this book. That is not surprising, of course, since no contemporary
philosopher has done more to inform the work of those who wrote after him
on the subjects of forgiveness and resentment. What I find even more inspir-
ing than his pioneering writing on those subjects, though, is the empathy,
integrity, and considerable open-mindedness he exhibits in that remarkable