Kant on Forgiveness

The article reconstructs Kant's views on the problem of forgiveness. Despite the fact that the German philosopher speaks very little about forgiveness in his texts, showing remarkable restraint with regard to this topic, in the corpus of his works, nevertheless, one can find enough indirect indications that the problem of forgiveness was significant for him. This circumstance is one of the reasons why in this study the Kantian view of forgiveness is revealed in connection with a number of related problems that Kant touches upon in the development of his ethics and philosophy of religion. These are, first of all, such important moral, legal, and theological subjects as guilt and punishment, hatred and thirst for vengeance, autonomy and heteronomy of the will, the struggle between the good principle in man and the evil one, revolution of the heart and change in the cast of mind, and also divine grace and human mercy. The article shows that Kant considers forgiveness and peacefulness (placabilitas) to be a duty of virtue, that is a wide obligation. On the contrary, he considers the maxim of unforgiveness to be at variance with moral duty. The Kantian approach is based on the belief that all human beings need forgiveness because everyone bears the burden of guilt due to the radical propensity of human beings to evil. The study defends the thesis that forgiveness, according to Kant, involves an intelligible replenishment of the deficiency of time that the forgiver gives to the offender in response to the latter’s decision to morally transform himself and follow the path of virtue. At the same time, the article emphasizes that, for Kant, the case of forgiveness cannot in any way be the basis for the abolition of punishment since the deed done cannot be undone and guilt cannot be atoned for. The article also notes that Kant finds an elegant solution to the contradiction between the duty of forgiveness and the inevitability of punishment: he proposes the idea of doubling the moral subject.