One can love and not forgive or out of love decide not to forgive. Or one can forgive but not love, or choose to forgive but not love the ones forgiven. Love and forgiveness follow parallel and largely independent paths, a truth we fail to acknowledge when we pressure others to both love and forgive. Individuals in conflict, sparring social and ethnic groups, warring religious communities, and insecure nations often do not need to pursue love and forgiveness to achieve peace of mind and heart. They need to remain attentive to the needs of others, an alertness that prompts either love or forgiveness to respond. By reorienting our perception of these enduring phenomena, the contributors to this volume inspire new applications for love and forgiveness in an increasingly globalized and no longer quite secular world. With contributions by the renowned French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, the poet Haleh Liza Gafori, and scholars of religion (Leora Batnitzky, Nils F. Schott, Hent de Vries), psychoanalysis (Albert Mason, Orna Ophir), Islamic and political philosophy (Sari Nusseibeh), and the Bible and literature (Regina Schwartz), this anthology reconstructs the historical and conceptual lineage of love and forgiveness and their fraught relationship over time. By examining how we have used—and misused—these concepts, the authors advance a better understanding of their ability to unite different individuals and emerging groups around a shared engagement for freedom and equality, peace and solidarity.

Why is revenge such a pervasive and destructive problem? How can we create a future in which revenge is less common and forgiveness is more common? Psychologist Michael McCullough argues that the key to a more forgiving, less vengeful world is to understand the evolutionary forces that gave rise to these intimately human instincts and the social forces that activate them in human minds today. Drawing on exciting breakthroughs from the social and biological sciences, McCullough dispenses surprising and practical advice for making the world a more forgiving place. Michael E. McCullough (Miami, Florida), an internationally recognized expert on forgiveness and revenge, is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, where he directs the Laboratory for Social and Clinical Psychology.

This book explores forgiveness as a philosophical matter. Responding to the curious omission of forgiveness in much of Western philosophy, it examines common themes and divergences on forgiveness in the works of Augustine, Kierkegaard, and Arendt. These writers understood forgiveness as a paradox—it must be contained to be given (Augustine), granted-yet-not-granted (Kierkegaard), and forgotten the moment it is given, as if never given at all (Arendt). Drawing on these insights, can forgiveness be then thought of as a hidden existential capacity and not as a magnanimous display of mercy? Can we imagine forgiveness as undoing the transgression we see, and secretly engaging with the imperceptible impossibility of undoing what has indeed been done?

How can the church be a healing force in the world? In this longtime bestseller, now revised and updated, authors Jerry Cook and Stanley C. Baldwin suggest that it is only when believers admit their own brokenness that they can love, accept, and forgive those who are hurting around them and put out the welcome mat to their community. They offer clear teaching about the church in a hurting world. As veteran leaders who practice these principles, they speak from experience, not theory. Through touching true stories and practical guidelines for connecting with fallen, sinful people, Cook and Baldwin announce the good news. The church is not broken, and it is the broken people who can change the world.

Volume II of Vernon Press’s series on the Philosophy of Forgiveness offers several challenging and provocative chapters that seek to push the conversation in new directions and dimensions. Volume I, Explorations of Forgiveness: Personal, Relational, and Religious, began the task of creating a consistent multi-dimensional account of forgiveness, and Volume II’s New Dimensions of Forgiveness continues this goal by presenting a set of chapters that delve into several deep conceptual and metaphysical features of forgiveness. New Dimensions of Forgiveness creates a theoretical framework for understanding the many nuanced features of forgiveness, namely, third-party forgiveness, forgiveness as an aesthetic process, the role of resentment in warranting forgiveness, the moral status of self-forgiveness, epistemic trust, forgiveness’s influence on the moral status of persons, forgiveness in time, the status of Substance and Subject within a Hegelian framework, Jacques Derrida’s “impossible” forgiveness, and the use of imaginative “magic” to become a maximal forgiver. Readers will be challenged to question and come to terms with many oft-overlooked, yet important philosophical dimensions of forgiveness.

This book presents critical engagements with the work of Hent de Vries, widely regarded as one of the most important living philosophers of religion. Contributions by a distinguished group of scholars discuss the role played by religion in philosophy; the emergence and possibilities of the category of religion; and the relation between religion and violence, secularism, and sovereignty. Together, they provide a synoptic view of how de Vries’s work has prompted a reconceptualization of how religion should be studied, especially in relation to theology, politics, and new media. The volume will be of particular interest to scholars of religious studies, theology, and philosophy.

The concept of the atonement is one of the defining doctrine of Christianity. Over the course of many centuries, theologians, church forefathers, philosophers and more have proposed a huge expanse of interpretations of Christ's sacrifice for humanity, each different to the next. In this ambitious study, Eleonore Stump uses the context of this history of interpretation to reconsider the doctrine afresh with philosophical care. Whatever exactly the atonement is, it is supposed to include a solution to the problems of the human condition, especially its guilt and shame. Stump canvasses the major interpretations of the doctrine, highlighting their shortcomings as an explanation for this solution. In their place, she argues for an interpretation that is both novel whilst still using traditional theology, including Anselm's well-known account of the doctrine. Atonement is a rich exploration of the doctrine and all that it covers: love, union, guilt, shame, forgiveness, retribution, punishment, shared attention, mind-reading, empathy, and various other issues in moral psychology and ethics.

For Giving Love gives you the tools for giving yourself the unconditioned love and happiness you've always wanted. This book addresses specifically how YOU can bring the very tangible power of love and forgiveness into your world. You will learn why forgiveness works, not just in metaphysical terms, but also biologically. You will come to recognize the patterns and beliefs that create resistance to forgiveness, and you will see clearly how easy it is to overcome this resistance once you understand what a powerful force forgiveness is. You will learn how to practice "presence" so that who you really are can compassionately transcend who you "think" you are. And, you will learn a simple, easy-to-use process to help you forgive and free yourself from past limitations and stories to finally be who you really are. You will also have the opportunity to unconditionally love and accept yourself - and in so doing, become a light unto the world. Thank you in advance for joining me on this transformational journey, and may the power of Love light your way.

An inquiry into the problematic of perjury, or lying, and forgiveness from one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. “One only ever asks forgiveness for what is unforgivable.” From this contradiction begins Perjury and Pardon, a two-year series of seminars given by Jacques Derrida at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris in the late 1990s. In these sessions, Derrida focuses on the philosophical, ethical, juridical, and political stakes of the concept of responsibility. His primary goal is to develop what he calls a “problematic of lying” by studying diverse forms of betrayal: infidelity, denial, false testimony, perjury, unkept promises, desecration, sacrilege, and blasphemy. Although forgiveness is a notion inherited from multiple traditions, the process of forgiveness eludes those traditions, disturbing the categories of knowledge, sense, history, and law that attempt to circumscribe it. Derrida insists on the unconditionality of forgiveness and shows how its complex temporality destabilizes all ideas of presence and even of subjecthood. For Derrida, forgiveness cannot be reduced to repentance, punishment, retribution, or salvation, and it is inseparable from, and haunted by, the notion of perjury. Through close readings of Kant, Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, Plato, Jankélévitch, Baudelaire, and Kafka, as well as biblical texts, Derrida explores diverse notions of the “evil” or malignancy of lying while developing a complex account of forgiveness across different traditions.

Regina Schwartz asks why love is considered a 'soft' subject, fit for the arts but not for boardrooms, parliamentary debates, and courtrooms engaged in the 'serious' discourse of justice.