Because I am Emily, I was a couple of minutes late to the lecture (had to find the room it was in), so there will be no catchy introduction/funny icebreaker joke to start off. (btw, yes, I've gotten behind in this blog. I swear I will make up for it by writing a couple of posts around this weekend) Also, I could litter this posts with "he saids," but I'm not going to, because that would get tedious. Just assume everything I say is preluded with a "he said." Because it really is. He begins with describing what types of forgiveness existed in Ancient Greece, then talks about forgiveness in the Bible as a comparison, and finally where our modern day word comes from. It's long, but it's worth it.
Ok, so to start. Dr. Konstan began by analyzing the modern-day definition of "forgiveness," and the required circumstances for one person to forgive another. Forgiveness must be the result of an intentional harm, for which the wrongdoer feels guilt. You can't forgive someone if they do something unintentionally, because then they really didn't do anything wrong. Even if they feel guilt, forgiveness would imply that they did something quite intentional and voluntary. An example is someone committing a crime. If you rob a bank and later feel remorse, the owner of the bank may forgive you. However, if someone held your significant other to gunpoint and ordered you to rob the bank in order to save your their life, then it really isn't your fault at all, and you don't need to be forgiven. Neither can you be forgiven if you commit a crime and later feel no remorse. What both of these scenarios have in common is that the you-- as the criminal-- would do the same thing again if similar circumstances came about.
Now, this is theoretical. In reality, nobody distinguishes between these different circumstances. Perhaps slightly (a criminal acting under gunpoint may win more sympathy than a criminal committing a voluntary crime), but forgiveness is really up to the person who was wronged. Indeed, it is viewed as noble if the victim forgives the remorseless criminal for the crime.
In Ancient Greece/Rome, the difference between an intentional and an unintentional act was very clear and understood. The Greek word signomi means "excuse me" today (as in, "excuse me, sorry for bumping into you"), but the ancient definition was quite different. It was a word of forgiveness for an excusable ignorance, actually somewhat comparable to the word for "pity." Involuntary acts are performed under force or ignorance; an evil tyrant tortures you and forces to give you names would result in an act worthy not of praise, but of signomi. Plato called an act like that (something you wouldn't regret later-- while you regret it, you would do the same thing again), not involuntary, but "not voluntary," and there was a difference between the two. An involuntary act could even be praised, but a "not voluntary" act removed the blame from the doer.
An example of something a bit different from our modern-day ideas of excuses would be the actions of an inebriated person. Being drunk does not justify your actions-- Aristotle himself said that you chose to be drunk-- but it does introduce ignorance into your system. When you are drunk, you are less aware of your actions, and therefore you may be allowed signomi.
The idea behind this is the Greek metastasis which means the passing of something onto the next (ie, putting the blame on something else). Today, this act is rather frowned upon. Someone who tries to put the blame on something else is trying to get out of a situation. But it meant something different at the time: if you could put the blame on something else, you still committed that act, but you were no longer responsible for it. The alcohol is responsible for your actions when you are drunk, even if you chose to drink. Other excuses used were madness (such as in the Aenid, during which an evil tyrant tortures his subjects; Aeneas calls him mad. The tyrant is still evil, but he may have signomi because his madness keeps him from being completely responsible for his actions). A good translation of signomi is "excuse," or to "exonerate."
Two other proofs of signomi in Ancient Greek lit:
1. Agamemnon in Homer's Iliad, who says that Zeus made him "mad" so that he wasn't responsible for humiliating Achilles in front of the other soldiers, and he apologizes by showering Achilles with gifts. In shifting the blame to Zeus, he makes himself more understandable, and while he isn't absolved of his crime, he doesn't want forgiveness, he wants signomi.
2. Theseus's wife Phaedra fell in love with her stepson, who rejected him. She then kills herself, leading Theseus to cures his son, who dies. before his son dies, Theseus gets signomi from Artemis, who says that Aphrodite wanted this sequence of events to take place. Therefore, Theseus may pick up his son's body and receive signomi, but not forgiveness.
Now for examples of forgiveness in the Bible.
1. King Solomon's payer in 1 Kings chapter eight: "When your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you, and when they turn back to you and give praise to your name, praying and making supplication to you in this temple, 34 then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them back to the land you gave to their ancestors."
2. Isaiah 55:7: Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
1. Agamemnon in Homer's Iliad, who says that Zeus made him "mad" so that he wasn't responsible for humiliating Achilles in front of the other soldiers, and he apologizes by showering Achilles with gifts. In shifting the blame to Zeus, he makes himself more understandable, and while he isn't absolved of his crime, he doesn't want forgiveness, he wants signomi.
2. Theseus's wife Phaedra fell in love with her stepson, who rejected him. She then kills herself, leading Theseus to cures his son, who dies. before his son dies, Theseus gets signomi from Artemis, who says that Aphrodite wanted this sequence of events to take place. Therefore, Theseus may pick up his son's body and receive signomi, but not forgiveness.
Now for examples of forgiveness in the Bible.
1. King Solomon's payer in 1 Kings chapter eight: "When your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you, and when they turn back to you and give praise to your name, praying and making supplication to you in this temple, 34 then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them back to the land you gave to their ancestors."
2. Isaiah 55:7: Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
3. Luke 17:3,4: Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.4 Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
St. John says to commit sin is frightening, but worse to be proud of sin; come to church, repent, and tell God. You don't sin, but you are a sinner. Remorse, then, is perpetual mourning, and grief over your sin wipes away the sin itself. There is no place in the Bible that says forgiveness is unconditional.
To repent, you must first humble yourself; we (as humans) feel calm towards those humbling themselves before us because a humble person can also be perceived as inferior, which implies fear, and a fearful person would not commit the insult in the first place. However, being in front of a fearful person would inspire remission of anger, not forgiveness; therefore.
Now we are faced with a major question. Why is this idea of forgiveness so central to the Hebrew/Christian texts, but completely absent from Classical philosophy? The implication here is that forgiveness is something that only God can do. But that line from Luke says to forgive others! How does that work if the Son of Man on Earth is marked by his ability to forgive others? When Jesus cries out on the cross "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do!" Peter says something similar in another gospel, that the Romans acted in ignorance. This sounds suspicious like a plea for signomi, by laying the blame on something out of those people's control. However, Jesus says "forgive," which implies that there is, in fact, something to forgive.
An excerpt from the Lord's Prayer in Luke: "and forgive us our sins/transgressions, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us." While it uses the word "forgive" here, notice that it says forgive those who are "indebted" to us. The word used here is a forgiveness of debt, whereas the transgression is a slip. If someone commits a crime against us, we are supposed to forgive them what they owe us to pay for the crime; in other words, we release them from their debt. No human would ask another human for repentance; to do so would be an egregious blasphemy. Therefore, no human can forgive another human their sins; The Lord, however, can forgive sins, and this is where the concept of forgiveness originated (incidentally, the Greek word used for sin is original, and is never used before the Greek scriptures).
St. John says to commit sin is frightening, but worse to be proud of sin; come to church, repent, and tell God. You don't sin, but you are a sinner. Remorse, then, is perpetual mourning, and grief over your sin wipes away the sin itself. There is no place in the Bible that says forgiveness is unconditional.
To repent, you must first humble yourself; we (as humans) feel calm towards those humbling themselves before us because a humble person can also be perceived as inferior, which implies fear, and a fearful person would not commit the insult in the first place. However, being in front of a fearful person would inspire remission of anger, not forgiveness; therefore.
Now we are faced with a major question. Why is this idea of forgiveness so central to the Hebrew/Christian texts, but completely absent from Classical philosophy? The implication here is that forgiveness is something that only God can do. But that line from Luke says to forgive others! How does that work if the Son of Man on Earth is marked by his ability to forgive others? When Jesus cries out on the cross "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do!" Peter says something similar in another gospel, that the Romans acted in ignorance. This sounds suspicious like a plea for signomi, by laying the blame on something out of those people's control. However, Jesus says "forgive," which implies that there is, in fact, something to forgive.
An excerpt from the Lord's Prayer in Luke: "and forgive us our sins/transgressions, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us." While it uses the word "forgive" here, notice that it says forgive those who are "indebted" to us. The word used here is a forgiveness of debt, whereas the transgression is a slip. If someone commits a crime against us, we are supposed to forgive them what they owe us to pay for the crime; in other words, we release them from their debt. No human would ask another human for repentance; to do so would be an egregious blasphemy. Therefore, no human can forgive another human their sins; The Lord, however, can forgive sins, and this is where the concept of forgiveness originated (incidentally, the Greek word used for sin is original, and is never used before the Greek scriptures).
In conclusion, the modern day word for "forgiveness" is a secularization of the original, divine meaning, probably dating post-Enlightenment (or circa Enlightenment). However, it's origin is rooted firmly in the Judeo-Christian scripture.
Anyway, end of lecture. I thought it was very interesting, and I have so many questions about the words themselves! I wish I could grill the speaker a little more....anyway, hope you thought it was interesting, too. :)
Congratulations if you've read this far! As a reward, you get a cute picture of two cute baby tigers who clearly care about each other very much:
