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Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback
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Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 August 2019) | Viewed by 25103

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Diana Fritz Cates

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Religious Studies, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA
Interests: religious ethics and moral psychology; virtue and vice; emotion; bioethics; Thomistic ethical tradition

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Many people across diverse cultures believe that, just as one good turn deserves another, so a wrongful injury deserves payback (Atwood 2008). How shall we assess the desire to inflict pain on someone as payment for the pain they caused us? Does such a desire reflect a commitment to justice? Or is it an expression of sadism? What impact do people’s religious beliefs have on the ways they think about payback and evaluate the desire to carry it out?

In Anger and Forgiveness, Martha Nussbaum argues that the emotion of anger includes the thought that it would be good if the person who injured us were to suffer for what he or she did. Anger includes more specifically the thought that the suffering of the offender (whether at our hands or, less directly, at the hands of others or simply at the hands of fate) would compensate for our suffering. It would give us back something of value that we lost. Or it would restore a cosmic balance that was set off-kilter by the injury. Nussbaum argues that such thoughts are irrational. Granted, it can be rational to punish a wrongdoer, and punishment is generally painful; but the idea that the pain inflicted on us can be paid for in the currency of the offender’s pain is irrational. It is an expression of magical thinking. The world simply doesn’t work this way (Nussbaum 2016).

Or does it? Many religions teach that some principle, powers, or factors at work in the universe make it possible for victims to recover important goods or enjoy due compensation for wrongful injuries. These forces may also require that an offender (or a substitute) suffer as payment for the suffering that he or she caused others.

This Special Issue of Religions concerns the ways in which religious beliefs can affect how people think and feel about the moral value of payback for wrongful injuries. Essays may be descriptive, analytical, historical, or constructive. They may focus on one or more traditions. They may be anthropological, philosophical, theological, literary–theoretical, or mixed in method; but, in any case, they should include critical analysis of underexamined links between religious accounts of the way the world really works (Reeder 1997) and moral judgments or sensibilities regarding payback. While the focus is on whether the desire for payback is worth consenting to, analyses of related actions may also be appropriate. The purpose of this volume is to demonstrate the usefulness of the multi-disciplinary study of religion and morality for assessing possibly problematic cultural practices (Miller 2016).

Prof. Dr. Diana Fritz Cates
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

References:

  1. Atwood, Margaret. 2008 Payback. Toronto: House of Anansi Press.
  2. Miller, Richard B. 2016 Friends and Other Strangers. New York: Columbia University Press.
  3. Nussbaum, Martha C. 2016 Anger and Forgiveness. New York: Oxford University Press.
  4. Reeder, Jr., John P. 1997 What is a Religious Ethic? Journal of Religious Ethics 25.3: 157-181.

Keywords

  • Religious Beliefs
  • Morality
  • Payback
  • Desire
  • Justice
  • Sadism
  • Ethics

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Published Papers (8 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 260 KiB  
Article
Political Atrocities, Moral Indignation, and Forgiveness in African Religious Ethics
by Simeon Ilesanmi
Religions 2020, 11(11), 620; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11110620 - 20 Nov 2020
Viewed by 2167
Abstract
Scholarship on transitional justice has oscillated between the pedagogical value of moral magnanimity, shown by victims of past atrocities who choose to forgive their wrongdoers, and the deterrent effect of imposing punishment on the offenders, which includes making restitution to the victims of [...] Read more.
Scholarship on transitional justice has oscillated between the pedagogical value of moral magnanimity, shown by victims of past atrocities who choose to forgive their wrongdoers, and the deterrent effect of imposing punishment on the offenders, which includes making restitution to the victims of their wrongful actions. This article examines the views of two African thinkers on this issue, Archbishop Desmond Tutu who argues for forgiveness, and Wole Soyinka who defends restitution as a better way to express respect for the dignity of both the victims and the rule of law. The article contends that while traditional African values play important roles in the perspectives of these thinkers, they do not, in themselves, justify either of the two positions they advance. The article further contrasts the positive role Tutu and Soyinka assign to historical memory and truth-telling with the strategies of social forgetting and public silence embraced in Sierra Leone and Mozambique in their quest for political reconciliation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback)
16 pages, 257 KiB  
Article
Is There, If Not Virtue, Any Moral Value to Be Found in Payback?
by Andrew Flescher
Religions 2020, 11(1), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11010028 - 6 Jan 2020
Viewed by 2750
Abstract
Can payback, punitive action fueled by the desire to hurt an offending aggressor, ever be justified? In Anger and Forgiveness, Martha Nussbaum emphatically answers “no”, arguing that payback and the anger on which it is based, even following severe loss, distracts one [...] Read more.
Can payback, punitive action fueled by the desire to hurt an offending aggressor, ever be justified? In Anger and Forgiveness, Martha Nussbaum emphatically answers “no”, arguing that payback and the anger on which it is based, even following severe loss, distracts one from pursuing the betterment and loving nature one should be striving to cultivate instead. Timothy Jackson admires Nussbaum’s appreciation for such a beautiful spiritual ideal but criticizes her for denying credit to the potential feeler of anger for overcoming the temptation to engage in payback, the initial presence of which is critical for a graceful and triumphant self-transformation. Diana Cates, qualifying Jackson, maintains that we should not assume in payback scenarios that it is suffering that is aimed at, even if the experienced pain of an offender is foreseeable. Granting the worthwhile high road Nussbaum and her respondents seek to travel, one may still ask: is there also a positive case to be made for desiring payback in the extreme case of responding to an egregious offense, i.e., an offense that is violent, paralyzing, and life-altering? Payback will not bring a lost loved one back from the dead, but can it bring oneself back from the dead? This essay explores the merits of this possibility, honing in on the therapeutic aspect of the desire—and occasionally the acting out of the desire—for a victim to pay her aggressor back in kind. Drawing on the work of the Christian realist Reinhold Niebuhr, the Judaic thinker and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, and the Christian ethicist and feminist Giles Milhaven, I argue that while no moral principle ever ought to be adopted out of retributive action—such action is by definition bereft of virtue—we should nevertheless not dismiss too quickly the notion of there being any moral value in desiring payback, for desiring payback might be an egregiously offended victim’s only alternative to the paralysis induced by malice. On this exceptional basis, payback strictly limited to its therapeutic scope may become, for the sake of preserving self-worth, not only tolerable, but a victim’s most preferable alternative. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback)
31 pages, 1237 KiB  
Article
Rethinking Anger as a Desire for Payback: A Modified Thomistic View
by Jan Rippentrop Schnell and Diana Fritz Cates
Religions 2019, 10(11), 618; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10110618 - 7 Nov 2019
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3809
Abstract
This essay takes a fresh approach to a traditional Western philosophical account of anger, according to which anger is best defined as a desire for payback, namely, a desire to make an offender pay a price, in the currency of unwanted pain, for [...] Read more.
This essay takes a fresh approach to a traditional Western philosophical account of anger, according to which anger is best defined as a desire for payback, namely, a desire to make an offender pay a price, in the currency of unwanted pain, for the pain he caused someone else. The essay focuses more specifically on the work of Thomas Aquinas, whose account of anger is often thought to center on a desire for ‘just vengeance.’ It analyzes and extends aspects of Aquinas’s account that have previously been treated too narrowly. It distinguishes three forms of anger, each of which has important features in common, which justify characterizing it as anger. Only one of these forms involves a desire to make an offender suffer for what he did. Even as this essay argues for articulating different forms of anger, it emphasizes the fluidity of anger’s forms, features, and relationships to other emotions. It briefly engages philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspectives while working principally in the domain of religious ethics and moral psychology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback)
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13 pages, 219 KiB  
Article
Justice, Anger and Wrath: Tracing the Im/Moral Dimensions of Payback
by Celia E. Deane-Drummond
Religions 2019, 10(10), 555; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10100555 - 26 Sep 2019
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2694
Abstract
Martha Nussbaum’s Anger and Forgiveness makes explicit claims about the moral valence and irrationality of the desire for payback. This article explores the roots of that desire through an analysis of research on inequity aversion in primates, and the sociocultural developmental context for [...] Read more.
Martha Nussbaum’s Anger and Forgiveness makes explicit claims about the moral valence and irrationality of the desire for payback. This article explores the roots of that desire through an analysis of research on inequity aversion in primates, and the sociocultural developmental context for expressions of anger. It explores the content of different expressions of anger and their relationship to rationality by engaging in the work of Thomas Aquinas. I argue that the desire for payback has biosocial roots in cooperation, and that these habits are prerequisites for the development of human moral sensibilities. However, the explicit desire for payback, like anger in general, is morally ambiguous. Anger may be laudable insofar as it is tied to constructive efforts, but the desire to see another person suffer is in itself morally repugnant. Christian religious interpretations of payback further complicate the narrative, since unappealing instances of this desire are thought by some Christians to be nonetheless justified under the banner of God’s wrath. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback)
17 pages, 267 KiB  
Article
Spinoza, Sin as Debt, and the Sin of the Prophets
by Keith Green
Religions 2019, 10(10), 552; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10100552 - 26 Sep 2019
Viewed by 2683
Abstract
In Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, Margaret Atwood examines different forms of debt and their various interrelations. Her work invites, but does not provide, an account or philosophy of debt or its deep implication in Christian beliefs such as [...] Read more.
In Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, Margaret Atwood examines different forms of debt and their various interrelations. Her work invites, but does not provide, an account or philosophy of debt or its deep implication in Christian beliefs such as sin, satisfaction, and atonement. This paper aims to bring to light insights into the link between debt and some aspects of Christian belief, especially the ideas of sin and satisfaction. It draws upon another unlikely source-the Ethics and political treatises of Spinoza. Spinoza’s view at least implies that the idea that sin (understood as the voluntary actions of a free agent) creates a ‘debt’ that is ‘paid’ by punishment is a potentially dangerous ‘fiction.’ Spinoza intuits that the subsumption of the idea of debt into notions of retribution, vengeance, satisfaction, or atonement, are driven by ‘superstition,’ envy, and hatred, and through imitating others’ hateful ideas of oneself. The idea of ‘debt’ is an artefact of civil authority that can only assume affective, normative purchase through internalizing fear of the implicit threat of punishment inherent in law. I will seek, finally, to suggest an implicit critique in Spinoza of the imaginative subsumption of debt into the space of religio. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback)
16 pages, 236 KiB  
Article
Payback, Forgiveness, Accountability: Exercising Responsible Agency in the Midst of Structured Racial Harm
by Michael P. Jaycox
Religions 2019, 10(9), 528; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10090528 - 13 Sep 2019
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3544
Abstract
In a context of political conflict, the practice of vengeance, the paying back of harm in exchange for harm suffered, is obviously an ethical problem. The practice of forgiveness is equally though differently problematic when applied to political conflict despite the fact that [...] Read more.
In a context of political conflict, the practice of vengeance, the paying back of harm in exchange for harm suffered, is obviously an ethical problem. The practice of forgiveness is equally though differently problematic when applied to political conflict despite the fact that it is a moral ideal. A third approach, the practice of moral accountability, is more ethically justifiable, yet it remains unclear what it is conceptually and what it would involve practically in a particular context. In this essay, the author develops a conceptual framework for moral accountability, grounded in a broader understanding of justice as responsibility to conflictual and unchosen relationships. Drawing on contemporary sources in Christian ethics, as well as insights from anti-racism community organizing, the author argues that practices of moral accountability restructure the pattern of these relationships, such that perpetrators and guilty bystanders are more likely to assume, rather than avoid, responsibility for causing structured racial harm. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback)
8 pages, 190 KiB  
Article
The West Nickel Mines Amish School Murders and the Cultural Fetishization of “Amish Forgiveness”
by Darcy Metcalfe
Religions 2019, 10(9), 524; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10090524 - 11 Sep 2019
Viewed by 3364
Abstract
In the days and weeks following the West Nickel Mines Amish school murders, hegemonic U.S. cultural discourse largely fetishized the Amish response of forgiveness in revealing ways. Within this discourse, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 were referenced in articles and commentaries [...] Read more.
In the days and weeks following the West Nickel Mines Amish school murders, hegemonic U.S. cultural discourse largely fetishized the Amish response of forgiveness in revealing ways. Within this discourse, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 were referenced in articles and commentaries which sought to weigh the moral value of forgiveness in response to extreme violence. In this way, understandings of Amish forgiveness were largely “strip-mined” from the Nickel Mines community and “transported wholesale” to other counter-cultural settings. In dominant U.S. capitalistic and consumeristic culture, Amish forgiveness quickly became a fluctuating material commodity that was fetishized in ways which revealed the destabilized moral consciousness of a nation. Dominant cultural discourse exposed this destabilization while it also worked to interrogate it. I conclude that the fetishization of forgiveness following the Amish school murders reflected collective concerns that reached far beyond the immediate context of the Nickel Mines Amish community. The U.S. cultural fetishization of forgiveness revealed, instead, a cultural consciousness that desperately sought relief from the chaos and confusion of what it means to be a citizen of nation that exists in and by the normativity of extreme violence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback)
9 pages, 182 KiB  
Article
“The Road of Payback” and Rabbinic Judaism
by Jonathan Schofer
Religions 2019, 10(6), 387; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10060387 - 18 Jun 2019
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2806
Abstract
In Anger and Forgiveness, Martha Nussbaum argues against the claim that the suffering of the wrongdoer restores, or partially restores, what was damaged by the wrongdoing. Making this mental mistake sets a person on “the road of payback,” and following this path [...] Read more.
In Anger and Forgiveness, Martha Nussbaum argues against the claim that the suffering of the wrongdoer restores, or partially restores, what was damaged by the wrongdoing. Making this mental mistake sets a person on “the road of payback,” and following this path is normatively problematic. What contribution can the canonical writings of Judaism, the Talmud and Midrash, make to the case against payback, when these writings reflect the view that a single deity establishes a divine justice in the world, such that ultimately the good are rewarded and the bad punished? This article argues, in light of recent research into rabbinic law and judicial process, as well as rabbinic theology of divine justice, that several components of these sources can help to meet the challenge. The texts recommend particular subjective states in the context of the human judiciary procedure and in consideration of divine justice, which do not intend “the suffering of the wrongdoer.” Rabbis seek authority, control over uncertainty, and a correct judicial procedure in their legal processes. Regarding the human relationship to the deity, rabbis both prescribe reverence and protest questionable divine acts based on their own ethical standards. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Beliefs and the Morality of Payback)
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