ABSTRACT
In his article on ‘Inherited responsibility, karma and original Sin’2 Peter Forrest made the interesting observation that a person is by definition constituted in relation with other fellow beings, and therefore whatever good or benefit I as an individual derive from the labours of others I share in the responsibility for their exploitation, oppression, whatever. This phenomenon may be called ‘group or collective karma’. Through this reasoning, Forrest indicted himself for being, in part at least, responsible for the dispossession and exploitation of the Aborigines of Australia by the British colonists. He draws an analogy between this kind of responsibility and the responsibility of an elderly person for some crime committed in youth, repentance and remorse notwithstanding, whence we judge that restitution should be made. Forrest concludes, ‘sharing in the crimes of our ancestors must be like that if it is to be a matter of retributive justice rather than a rhetorical trick intended to ensure distributive justice’. The law of karma, he avers, appeals to just such a principle of retributive justice: ‘as you sow, thus you shall reap’. This is Forrest’s statement on how past wrongs might continue on and affect the lives of individuals. It may not be all about afflicted crimes and misdemeanours; the impersonal law may equally apply to good deeds and virtues and other such ‘traces’. Since my actions are actions of various person-like entities of which I, of necessity, form part, my vices, my sorrows, my joys, my virtues are components of the (poorly integrated) character, personality-traits and deeds of these, perhaps long since gone, personlike entities. In Forrest’s view, this reconstruction of inheritance and succession of collective action helps set aside rebirth (or reincarnation) as well, thus: ‘It is not that I, an individual human being, shall be reincarnated, but rather that a moral person
I shall not here respond to this argument in any direct way, but draw on what I believe to be a very important insight underscored in Forrest’s reconstruction, in an attempt to make further sense of the doctrine of karma, as it is given in traditional understanding, against the challenges of the so-called problem of evil and God’s omnipotence. The speculative reconstruction that I venture upon responds to the articulation of these specific challenges towards a viable theodicy.
