Forgiveness
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
Should forgiveness be unconditional, or does it depend on the wrongdoer's repentance?
Forgiving without condition can free the victim, but seems to wipe away the wrong and ask nothing of the offender; reserving it for repentance preserves justice, but chains the one who suffered to the other's remorse. To take a position is to say whether forgiveness is a gift one grants oneself or a debt the guilty must first redeem.
Why punish: to repay the wrong, to deter, or to rehabilitate?
Punishing to make the guilty pay can be mere vengeance dressed as justice; punishing only to deter or for efficiency can sacrifice the offender to the common good. Depending on the answer, the penalty looks toward a past to settle or a future to protect. To take a position is to say what we are really doing when we punish.
Can violence be legitimate?
In the face of aggression, injustice, and oppression, resort to force always ends up presenting itself, as a temptation or a necessity. Refusing all violence on principle, admitting it as a last resort under strict rules, treating it as the ordinary instrument of politics, or seeing in it the oppressed's path to liberation: each answer commits a conception of morality, power, and history.