ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses forgiveness as an alternative moral-emotion response to trauma next to retaliatory revenge, justice, and non-forgiveness. Amidst a widespread emotional climate of cynicism on the one hand, and a permeating therapeutic culture on the other, forgiveness stands as a moral virtue to be differentiated from ostensible apologies and pardons premised on political imperatives in post-conflict societies, as well as from forgetting and social amnesia. With respect to trauma drama, the affectivity of forgiveness is related to mourning, emotional reflexivity and free will. Drawing, among others, from Jankélévitch, Arendt, Ricœur, Derrida, and Nussbaum, the chapter keeps a distance from the Abrahamic tradition, assessing forgiveness as a secular moral virtue, as an ‘imperfect duty’, to be performed toward the right persons, in the right manner and at right times.
