O.G. Rose | On Forgiveness (Part II) by O.G. Rose @O.G.Rose.Michelle.and.Daniel | Uploaded February 2024 | Updated October 2024, 12 hours ago.
As Agnes Callard argues (as brought to my attention by Joel Carini), ‘[i]f you have a reason to be angry with me, you will have a reason to be angry with me forever.’ Yes, if I could make you realize that your reason for being angry was false or based on a misunderstanding, then your anger might go away, but I would accomplish this ‘by showing you that you never had any reason to be angry with me […] If you did have a reason, you’d have it forever.’ Hence, if we have reason to efface Hegel’s “Absolute Spirit,” we’ll always have a reason to avoid Religion (as we’ll discuss). A single act of pain is a timeless reason to prevent Absolute History. The odds favor Land.
In her essay, Dr. Callard is not trying to tell us that we are doomed to an eternal anger we can never escape; rather, she is trying to show that if we ever escape anger, we must ‘leave the original reason to be angry in place.’ Our reason for rage can never go away, a logic which of course applies to “our reason for not forgiving”: if we have a reason not to forgive, we will always have a reason not to forever (hurt keeps its place) — the reason is timeless (perhaps like hell). She calls this “the eternal anger argument,” which could also be “the eternal unforgiveness argument” or “the eternal non-forgiveness argument” (the latter of which is what I think most fall into, Drifting). Critiquing this might be those who claim that anger can actually prove useful as a ‘productive management of the aftershocks of [a] wrong action,’ which is to say that anger motivates us into action to do something about a wrong. This could be true, but not necessarily, and even if we do respond to the anger in a constructive way, if there was indeed an actual reason to be angry, that never changes (even if there was a simple misunderstanding, the reality that this misunderstanding occurred is constant, and we could always ask why the other didn’t do more work to avoid that misunderstanding in the first place). Also, Dr. Callard suggests that anger we “productively manage” is likely not the intense anger which provokes us into a desire for revenge: anger comes in many forms to many intensities, and failure to appreciate “the eternal anger argument” might contribute to us being too sanguine about the problem...
For the full essay, please visit:
ogrose.substack.com/p/on-forgiveness-part-ii
Medium:
o-g-rose-writing.medium.com/on-forgiveness-part-ii-00ba0d777bcb
For more by O.G. Rose:
ogrose.com
Photo by Mike Marrah
As Agnes Callard argues (as brought to my attention by Joel Carini), ‘[i]f you have a reason to be angry with me, you will have a reason to be angry with me forever.’ Yes, if I could make you realize that your reason for being angry was false or based on a misunderstanding, then your anger might go away, but I would accomplish this ‘by showing you that you never had any reason to be angry with me […] If you did have a reason, you’d have it forever.’ Hence, if we have reason to efface Hegel’s “Absolute Spirit,” we’ll always have a reason to avoid Religion (as we’ll discuss). A single act of pain is a timeless reason to prevent Absolute History. The odds favor Land.
In her essay, Dr. Callard is not trying to tell us that we are doomed to an eternal anger we can never escape; rather, she is trying to show that if we ever escape anger, we must ‘leave the original reason to be angry in place.’ Our reason for rage can never go away, a logic which of course applies to “our reason for not forgiving”: if we have a reason not to forgive, we will always have a reason not to forever (hurt keeps its place) — the reason is timeless (perhaps like hell). She calls this “the eternal anger argument,” which could also be “the eternal unforgiveness argument” or “the eternal non-forgiveness argument” (the latter of which is what I think most fall into, Drifting). Critiquing this might be those who claim that anger can actually prove useful as a ‘productive management of the aftershocks of [a] wrong action,’ which is to say that anger motivates us into action to do something about a wrong. This could be true, but not necessarily, and even if we do respond to the anger in a constructive way, if there was indeed an actual reason to be angry, that never changes (even if there was a simple misunderstanding, the reality that this misunderstanding occurred is constant, and we could always ask why the other didn’t do more work to avoid that misunderstanding in the first place). Also, Dr. Callard suggests that anger we “productively manage” is likely not the intense anger which provokes us into a desire for revenge: anger comes in many forms to many intensities, and failure to appreciate “the eternal anger argument” might contribute to us being too sanguine about the problem...
For the full essay, please visit:
ogrose.substack.com/p/on-forgiveness-part-ii
Medium:
o-g-rose-writing.medium.com/on-forgiveness-part-ii-00ba0d777bcb
For more by O.G. Rose:
ogrose.com
Photo by Mike Marrah
