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It is easy to see why forgiveness is typically regarded as a virtuE.Forgiveness is not always a virtue, however. Indeed, if I am correct in linking resentment to self-respect, a too ready tendency to forgive may properly be regarded as a vice because it may be a sign that one lacks respect for oneselF.Forgiveness may indeed restore relationships, but to seek restoration at all cost--even at the cost of one's very human dignity--can hardly be a virtuE.And, in intimate relationships, it can hardly be true love or friendship either the kind of love and friendship that Aristotle claimed is an essential art of the human lifE.If I count morality as much as anyone else (as surely I do), a failure to resent moral injuries done to me is a failure to care about the moral value in my own person (that I am, in Kantian language, an end in myself) and thus a failure to care about the very rules of morality. To put the point in yet another way: If it is proper to feel indignation when I see third parties morally wronged, must it not be equally proper to feel resentment when I experience the wrong done to myself? Morality is not simply something to be believed: it is something to be cared about. This caring includes concern about those persons (including oneself) who are the proper objects of moral attention.
Interestingly enough, a readiness to forgive--or even a refusal to display resentment initially--may reveal a lack of respect not just for oneself by for others as well. The Nietzschean view, for example, is sometimes portrayed like this: There is no need for forgiveness because a strong person will never feel resentment in the first placE.Why? Because he is not so weak as to think that other people--even those who harm him--matter enough to have any impact on his self-respect. We do not resent the insect that stings us (we simply deal with it), and neither should we resent the human who wrongs us.
Although there is something attractive and worth discussing about this view, most of us would probably want to reject it as too demeaning of other human beings and our moral relations with them. I shall thus for the present assume the following: that forgiveness is acceptable only in cases where it is consistent with self-respect, respect for others as responsible moral agents, and allegiance to the rules of morality, that is, forgiveness must not involve complicity or acquiescence (默认) in wrongdoings.
Which of the following best states the main idea of the text?
A.Too ready to forgive is no more a real virtue than an evil.
B.The consistency between self-respect and forgiveness is important.
C.Rules of morality may guide the correct use of forgiveness.
D.Caring about others and oneself demands generous forgiveness.