Before Forgiveness
The Origins of a Moral Idea

David Konstan argues that the modern concept of interpersonal forgiveness, in the full sense of the term, did not exist in ancient Greece and Rome.

David Konstan (Author)

9780521199407, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 August 2010

206 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.7 cm, 0.4 kg

'Konstan's magisterial grasp of the relevant texts and thinkers from the ancient Greek and Roman periods through early Christian and Judaic sources to the Church Fathers is extraordinary. Contemporary discussions of forgiveness often make a number of unexamined assumptions about the historical sources of this crucial moral idea … It turns out, in Konstan's view, that the modern notion of interpersonal forgiveness – and with it a supporting web of ideas about morality, the emotions, and the self – is of quite recent vintage. Konstan also sheds light on crucial modern treatments of the idea such as those found in Shakespeare, Molière, Butler, Kant, and Derrida, among others. His remarkable book will challenge readers to rethink their assumptions, and therefore to sharpen their answer to the much-debated question – what is forgiveness? – that lies at the heart of his inquiry.' Charles L. Griswold, Boston University

In this book, David Konstan argues that the modern concept of interpersonal forgiveness, in the full sense of the term, did not exist in ancient Greece and Rome. Even more startlingly, it is not fully present in the Hebrew Bible, nor in the New Testament or in the early Jewish and Christian commentaries on the Holy Scriptures. It would still be centuries - many centuries - before the idea of interpersonal forgiveness, with its accompanying ideas of apology, remorse, and a change of heart on the part of the wrongdoer, would emerge. For all its vast importance today in religion, law, politics and psychotherapy, interpersonal forgiveness is a creation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the Christian concept of divine forgiveness was fully secularized. Forgiveness was God's province and it took a revolution in thought to bring it to earth and make it a human trait.

1. What is forgiveness?
2. Before forgiveness: Greeks and Romans on guilt and innocence
3. Did they forgive? Greek and Roman narratives of reconciliation
4. Divine absolution: the Hebrew and Christian bibles
5. Humility and repentance: the church fathers
6. Enter forgiveness: the self transformed.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], History of Western philosophy [HPC], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]