Reparative justice and the victim’s burden

Why Accepting an Apology Is Not a Moral Obligation

Bibliographic Data

ID6250536
AuthorsCameron Hay (0000-0001-6327-6547, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, corresponding author), Colin Hay
Year2025
Volume24
Issue3
Pages372-389
Publication date2025-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueContemporary Political Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1470-8914 • E-ISSN: 1476-9336
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/s41296-024-00743-8
OpenAlexW4405930812
LanguageEN
References cited31

A number of authors make a seemingly compelling case for holding the victim of a wrong morally obliged to accept the genuine apology of the wrongdoer. This is a crucial issue in questions of reparative justice, since reparation typically requires not just the giving but also the acceptance of an apology. Yet it is a case that we should ultimately reject. If it is credible to think that the victim might suffer anew in exercising any duty of this kind, that suffering must be factored into the moral reckoning from the outset. It is only if we can be sure that the victim will not suffer again by attending to, and ultimately accepting, the wrongdoer’s apology that it would be right to impose upon her any duty of this kind. Yet, in all non-trivial cases, the victim’s burden is unknowable in advance and has the potential to be considerable. In such situations, I argue, the victim has no duty to accept the wrongdoer’s apology. There are limits, too, to the utility of the bipartite victim-wrongdoer account of reparation on which such arguments are typically predicated. For the harm the wrongdoer causes is not exclusively suffered by the immediate victim but also by the community of all potential victims. Genuine reparative justice requires more than a recalibration of the relative moral standing of the wrongdoer and the victim through the giving and receiving of an apology. I consider how this might be achieved without imposing upon the victim a burden that fails to achieve the moral reckoning anticipated

Duty · Economic Justice · Harm · Law and economics · Moral obligation · Obligation · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Forgiveness and Related Behaviors · Free Will and Agency · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology · Torture, Ethics, and Law

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