Public Apologies

This chapter offers a typology of public apologies and argues that these new forms that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century can tell us something about the nature of “publicity” in such public moral acts. After categorizing and giving examples of six forms of such public apologies—those offered by celebrities, those offered by corporations, those offered by diplomats, those offered by regimes, those offered in courts, and those offered for historical atrocities—the chapter ends by considering what it is that these public apologies can mean and what they can reveal about the most recent evolutionary transformation of the moral practice of apologizing.