Quinn White (Harvard University) will be the third speaker in The Conceptual Foundations of Conflict Project, organized by Mark Schroeder from the Philosophy Department, for their workshop series, with a talk titled "Forgiveness: Personal and Political.”

Abstract: Forgiveness is essential. Though not always, or even often, the correct response to wrongdoing, the power to forgive is one we cannot do without. Forgiveness, after all, offers a way past wrongdoing. It is not the only way to respond to wrongdoing; we might ignore, forget, condone, resent, or hold others to account. But it is a distinctive way of somehow putting a past wrong behind us without forgetting or condoning it. It is a way of confronting a past wrong head-on as wrong, while at the same time preventing that past wrong from defining the terms of one’s relationship with the wrongdoer, or at least of limiting its effect. Some have likewise suggested that forgiveness can play a similar role in politics—that the power of forgiveness to confront a past wrong and prevent it from defining the terms of a relationship makes it an essential tool for responding to political wrongdoing. In the waning months of South Africa’s transitional government, its famous Truth and Reconciliation Commission struggled to complete its work before the transitional period ended. Then Deputy President, soon to be President, Thabo Mbeki expressed a sentiment widely shared by the framers of the new republic: that the TRC’s work was essential and needed to be completed to pave the way for the establishment of a regular democratic order. One might question King’s or Mbeki’s political judgments—some argued against the compromises of the TRC or against the non-violent civil rights movement.