Humanitas and forgiveness
Clemency and humanity as a source of toleration. About the biological tendency to forgiveness, the humanity of Cicero, the source of Jesus' forgiveness, and about repentance and retribution.
In May 1942, a well-dressed woman entered the Ten Boom jewellery store on Barteljorisstraat in Haarlem. She had heard that the devout Calvinist Ten Boom family had provided aid to their Jewish neighbours. The woman was also Jewish. Her husband had been arrested, her son had gone into hiding, and she did not know where to go. The woman was given shelter in the house above the store, and subsequently, more people followed in hiding. A shelter was built, and the Ten Boom family became pivotal in helping Jewish people in hiding. An estimated 800 people survived the Holocaust thanks to the family.
Two years later, the Nazis raided the house; the family had been betrayed. Corrie ten Boom, her sister and her father were taken to prison. The father, the watchmaker, died ten days later. Corrie and her sister Betsie ended up in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Betsie died of hardship there. Twelve days later, Corrie was miraculously released due to an administrative error.
Inspired by her faith, Corrie had already decided in the concentration camp to devote the rest of her life to evangelism and to helping victims of the war, on either side. She saw forgiveness as her Christian duty. She had also forgiven the person who had betrayed the family, albeit at a distance. After the war she went to Germany to renovate a concentration camp. After a lecture in a church, a man approached her. She recognised him.
'No! she wanted to scream.
The man stopped in front of her, smiling. “What a fine message, Frau ten Boom! I’m so glad to hear our sins are forgiven.” This very man was at Ravensbrück! He was one of the guards who watched coldly as Corrie and Betsie filed past, naked and degraded. She remembered him distinctly. Corrie could not speak. She pretended to be preoccupied. Would he never go away? The man went on confidently,
'You mentioned you were at Ravensbrück. You won’t believe this, but I was a guard at Ravensbrück. However, after the war I became a Christian. God forgave me. Will you forgive me?” He extended his weathered, hairy hand. It was as repulsive as a snake.
Oh, how hard it is to be in Christ at times like this, thought Corrie. She had a thousand reasons to hate this evil man. Poor, sweet Betsie. But Betsie would have been first to forgive him. Corrie had to forgive him, or God would not forgive her. It was perfectly clear in the Bible. She looked at the man’s repulsive hand. Forgiveness was not an emotion one indulged. It was the will of God.
She extended her hand. “I forgive you.'
— Sam Wellman, Beautiful courage: The story of Corrie ten Boom (1995)
This newsletter is about humanitas and forgiveness as classical sources of toleration. Humanitas is about realising that we are all human klutz, that we are constantly stepping on each other's toes, whether intentionally or not. That misunderstandings are inevitable, and that harsh retaliation is not necessarily the best response, even for wilful crimes. Humanitas is about a certain kindness, the virtue of benevolence towards other people's failures.
Forgiveness is different. Then it is about culpable excess of a norm, even if it was intentional. There’s forgiveness in degrees. The most far-reaching is to carry on as before, forgetting and forgiving as if it didn't happen. Such a degree of forgiveness is rarely morally expected. In the jewish and Greco-Roman tradition, such a degree of forgiveness would never be required. At most, a certain leniency and understanding could be expected from you, without prejudice to the possibility of retaliation. Specifically Christian is a moral duty to forgive after repentance. You don't have to forget, but you have to be able to see eye-to-eye. Same as God, who knows darn well how sinful we are, but still lets us plod on.
Man as a compassionate group animal
Jethro bit Zeke. That happens often, it's part of the game, but this time it really hurt. Zeke cried out. That was not the intention. Jethro and Zeke are friends, they often play together. It was an accident. Jethro pauses. He bowed his head. Zeke was already over it, they continued to play.
Biologists such as Marc Bekoff and Frans de Waal study animals. Bekoff observed the dogs Jethro and Zeke here. De Waal observes primates and sees the same pattern: repentance and forgiveness are fixed patterns in group animals. Varying along the kind of society they form, animals have a rudimentary morality. With group animals, this is often aimed at cooperation. Cooperation thrives on the possibility of repentance, forgiveness and compassion.
Standards are being broken all over the world all the time. An accident, a misunderstanding, a slip. Or worse. Society would come to a standstill if every offence had to be punished. We have many words for mercifulness. Clemency, compassion, forgiveness, mercy. Karuna in Hinduism and Buddhism, rahmat in Islam, rachamim in Judaism. It is fairly universal that the perpetrator must show remorse, like the camp guard from Ravensbrück, and like the dog Jethro bowed his head. Only then can there be forgiveness, if any.
Filantropia and humanitas
I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.
— Publius Terentius Afer (Terence), Heauton timoroumenos (163 BCE)
In Greek civilisation, obligingness has existed since the 4th century BCE. known as filantropia, a virtue. It was the absence of haughtiness, doing more than what was strictly commanded, not demanding the utmost. And not just towards friends or people of the same class or community: precisely towards outsiders could you show your best side. This virtue was supposed only in civilised people, people who had had enjoyed an education in the spirit of paideia: civilisation, from a good family, an exemplary citizen. Paideia was about education to become the ideal citizen: physically, mentally, socially and in terms of knowledge of arts and sciences.
The Greek filantropia was called humanitas by the Romans. In the first century BCE, humanitas had become a buzzword. Those were years of increasing sophistication; Rome prospered economically and militarily and the aristocracy set the tone.
No classical author has placed so much emphasis on the concept of humanitas as the Roman politician Cicero (106-43 BCE). The Greeks saw man as a being that by definition fell short of the divine. Cicero placed humanity as a specific category between animals and gods. Man is distinguished from other animals by being sharp, complex, and versatile, and by the fact that he possesses the faculties of reason, memory, and policy. Therefore, if man fulfils his duty, he can reach a noble and glorious stage. On the other hand, because of his bestial nature, he can also fall into deep sorrow and calamity; he can be a god or a wolf to himself and to others.
In his work, among others in De officiis (The duties; 44 BCE), Cicero described what constitutes the virtue of a good man. He did so in three long letters to his son, in which he attempted to systematically describe human moral duties. He had largely copied the first two letters from the work The duties of the Greek Stoic Panaitios of Rhodes (2nd century BCE).
In the Roman tradition, a virtuous person was above all a brave, righteous person. But Cicero, like the Stoics, also emphasised the properties of humanitas: mildness, forgiveness and empathy, friendliness, courtesy, good taste and humour. We must take the well-being of our fellow man and society into account in our actions. Because otherwise we behave like animals. We must help each other in our development, especially through education. We must teach each other to communicate at a high level. In public life this manifests itself as eloquence, in social intercourse as courtesy, humour, grace, expressiveness, relaxedness and generosity. Also towards wrongdoers:
There are certain duties that we owe even to those who have wronged us. For there is a limit to retribution and to punishment; or rather, I am inclined to think, it is sufficient that the aggressor should be brought to repent of his wrong-doing, in order that he may not repeat the offence and that others may be deterred from doing wrong.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero, De officiis (44 BCE)
The Stoics were very influential in Roman times; Cicero's insights about humanity less so, but they did reflect the morals of refined, well-educated Romans. Cicero was especially famous as a politician and orator; his philosophical insights were indeed not so refined.
Humanitas also had its limits. In his Gallic War (58 BCE), Cicero's rival Gaius Iulius Caesar described the Belgians as the bravest, because they were the least affected by humanitas, which only led to effeminate behaviour. Tacitus thought that humanity softens and prepares the souls of the people for slavery. That’s why humanitas didn't really go deep. Yes, you treated your slaves humanely, you were courteous to people of lower class. But while Jesus of Nazareth, according to the Gospel of Matthew, called to love your enemy, to be kind to people who hate you: for a Roman gentleman, that was folly. An enemy was an enemy. Don't count on your enemy to treat you humanely either. Enemies were treated horribly, that was the norm. And any deviation from that standard was widely publicised, to show that the Romans were not as barbaric as their adversary.
Caesar boasted that he was often merciful to perpetrators, but that mercy was not motivated by a belief that clemency was a virtue. It was either to indicate that he could dispose of life and death at will, like a god. Or he did it to benefit later. “Spare the losers and crush the proud,” wrote Vergilius in his Aeneis (19 BCE).
Great forgivingness was not required of a Roman. A wise man will spare a transgressor and try to correct him, but not forgive him:
The wise man will bestow upon you in a more honourable way that which you wish to obtain by pardon, for he will make allowances for you, will consult your interests, and will correct your bad habits: he will act just as though he were pardoning you, but nevertheless he will not pardon you, because he who pardons admits that in so doing he has neglected a part of his duty. He will only punish some people by reprimanding them, and will inflict no further penalty if he considers that they are of an age which admits of reformation: some people who are undeniably implicated in an odious charge he will acquit, because they were deceived into committing, or were not sober when they committed the offence with which they are charged: he will let his enemies depart unharmed, sometimes even with words of commendation, if they have taken up arms to defend their honour, their covenants with others, their freedom, or on any other honourable ground. All these doings come under the head of mercy, not of pardon.
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca, De clementia (55 CE)
In Pro Murena (62 BCE), Cicero quotes Zeno of Kition (c. 300 BCE), who believed that other people's mistakes should not be forgiven, either by generosity, favour, or compassion. Forgive nothing, Zeno had written. Cicero's comment: okay, forgive some things, but not everything. Understanding is fine, but forgiveness is neither a duty nor a virtue.
Christian forgiveness
And then came Jesus of Nazareth, and that caused a turnaround. I wrote earlier that Jesus grew up in a country that had been under the influence of Greco-Roman civilisation for several centuries. This civilisation mainly influenced the Jewish upper class in his country, to which he probably did not belong. But what we know about Jesus was recorded (decades after his death) by gentlemen who did belong to that upper class: Paul and the evangelists. They had never met Jesus, and had acquired their knowledge by tradition. What we read about Jesus is therefore coloured by Greco-Roman influences. Jesus himself stood in the Judeo-rabbinical tradition, giving his own twist to that tradition.
There is good reason to suppose that Jesus' views on forgiveness were among the greatest departures from that tradition. We have already read that the Graeco-Roman tradition regarded leniency as a virtue, as part of the humanitas that adorned a gentleman. But forgiveness wasn’t part of that virtue. There was no question of a moral obligation to forgive. What Paul and the evangelists wrote about forgiveness: they didn’t get it from the Romans.
In the Jewish tradition, there was also something like forgiveness. Exceeding norms, a sin, was primarily seen as a debt. But not a debt to the victim; a debt to God. Forgiveness by the victim was therefore a side issue: the perpetrator had to do a lot of penance in order to come to terms with God and the victim. Forgiveness by the victim hardly played a role. There was no moral obligation to forgive in the Jewish tradition.
Essentially, Jesus said that forgiveness by the victim did matter, in fact, was a moral obligation. And if there was repentance, the offender needed not worry about being forgiven by God. That was God's grace, which Paul especially emphasised. But only those who were forgiving could count on that divine mercy. This view was such a turnaround, which cannot be traced back to either the Graeco-Roman or the Judeo-rabbinical tradition, that there is a good chance that the moral duty of forgiveness can be traced back to the historical Jesus himself.
Humanitas and forgiveness in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment
Almost immediately with the emergence of a Christian church, the moral obligation to forgive receded into the background. Not that forgiveness itself was considered unimportant, but just as in the Jewish tradition, the Church Fathers were mainly concerned with God's forgiveness.
There are several cynical explanations for this. Firstly, people were perhaps less concerned about restoring mutual relations because there were greater interests at stake: whoever was not forgiven by God lost his ticket to heaven. And second, the emphasis on God's forgiveness gave the clergy a position of power as mediators. Was public penance still customary at first; from the 3rd century, confession came into vogue. For the church, this offered attractive advantages. Christians entrusted their deepest secrets to the priest. And penitents could be put under pressure: if they did not do what the priest ordered them to do, forgiveness wasn’t going to happen. Forgiveness by the victim was considered of secondary importance. In fact, a victim who did not consider forgiving the perpetrator could be put under pressure. God has already forgiven and you haven't? Who do you think you are?
The cause of the Reformation was even directly linked to the power of the church in divine forgiveness. Shrewd clergymen had devised the system of indulgences, through which forgiveness could be obtained from the church against payment. The money involved had corrupted the church to its core. Even in the Reformation, when almost all theologians stood against each other with clenched fists for a century, sin and divine forgiveness were one of the greatest sources of theological hair-splitting.
Remarkably many liberal jurists, including Hugo Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf, were under the spell of Cicero’s Officiis in the 16th and 17th centuries. Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert had learned Latin at a later age, and was diligently pursuing translations from Latin into Dutch. As soon as he had discovered the Officiis, he immediately interrupted his translation work to throw himself at Cicero. As a liberal Catholic, Coornhert was especially devoted to religious toleration, but when he ended up in prison twenty five years later, he wrote the book Boeventucht (Discipline of felons, 1567). In it he was one of the first to speak out in favour of humane treatment of criminals.
As a good Christian it was better not to flaunt your love for the pagan Cicero. The pigeon-hearted humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) had been very furtive about it. But in the 18th century the ban on reading pagan authors was broken. The French philosophes looked down upon the church of Rome and rejoiced in a revival of the classical authors. They identified with the Romans’ rationality and opposed the free-thinking classics to the narrow minded Christianity. Studying nature and the classics, that's where the wisdom had to come from.
Mildly amused, the historian Peter Gay in his book The rise of modern paganism (1966) described the clique of French philosophers, circling Voltaire as the charismatic but not always well-read roi soleil of intellectual Europe. Cicero was hoisted up as the world's greatest thinker of all time. The causes were prosaic. The French had more with Rome anyway than with distant Athens. The orderly, hierarchical Roman Empire aroused more admiration among Enlightenment thinkers than the much messier Greek civilisation. And, don't forget: Latin could be read by anyone with a good education. They used to have had Greek at school, but most philosophes didn't get much further than some basic knowledge.
Cicero's Officiis was held in high esteem. For Hume, Montesquieu and Voltaire it articulated an ideal of the perfect gentleman: mild, obliging and well-read. Jesus as a role model had been tainted by the despised Church of Rome; the reasonable and intelligent, non-Christian Cicero, who had also made a name for himself as a politician, was a worthy substitute.
As with the Romans, the concept of forgiveness did not play a major role among the philosophes. Their contemporary Immanuel Kant was well educated, but he was never ecstatic about the concept of humanitas. Compassion and forgiveness hardly played a role in his work. However, in his Metaphysik der Sitten he wrote something about it:
Forgiveness, therefore, is a human duty (…) for a man is guilty enough to be in dire need of forgiveness.
— Immanuel Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten (1797)
Punishment should never be administered out of hatred, Kant thought. But this brings us to the essence of Kant's idea of justice: deeds had to be repaid. One does not escape punishment with repentance. Forgiveness and retribution, one couldn't do without the other.
Did Corrie ten Boom feel the same way? We can't ask her anymore; she died in 1983. But it is quite conceivable. She shook hands with her guard in the concentration camp and she forgave him, hard as that was.
But would she also have relieved him from punishment?
Further reading
Marcus Tullius Cicero, De officiis (44 BCE)
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, De clementia (55 CE)
Peter Gay, The rise of modern paganism (1966)
Paul Veyne, Humanitas: Romani e no. In: Andrea Giardina (ed.), L’uomo romano (1989)
Sam Wellman, Beautiful courage: The story of Corrie ten Boom (1995)
Mirjam van Veen, Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert (1522-1590) en de klassieken, Historisch tijdschrift Groniek (2004)
Frans de Waal, Jennifer J. Pokorny, Primate conflict and its relation to human forgiveness. In: Everett Worthington, Handbook of forgiveness (2005)
Marc Bekoff, Jessica Pierce, Honor and fairness among beasts at play, American Journal of Play (2009)
David Konstan, Before forgiveness: the origin of a modern idea (2010)
Anthony Bash, Did Jesus discover forgiveness? Journal of Religious Ethics (2013)
This was the fifth episode in the series about the ancient sources of toleration. Here are the other episodes in this series:
Why we really can't know anything for sure
Classical sources of toleration, part one: epistemology and skepticism. About the doubts of Xenofanes, Plato, Sokrates, Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, Cicero. And their rediscovery in the Renaissance.
Why we need opposing views
Dialectics and free speech in classical Athens and Rome
Are our moral beliefs just illusions
Moral skepticism between classical Greece and the Enlightenment
Don't let it get to you
How our thinking about toleration is influenced by classical stoicism
Humanitas and forgiveness
Clemency and humanity as a source of toleration. About the biological tendency to forgiveness, the humanity of Cicero, the source of Jesus' forgiveness, and about repentance and retribution.
We don't owe our ideals of liberty and equality to Antiquity
Freedom and equality are quintessential in toleration. And the Greeks and Romans knew them too. But we hardly owe them this source of toleration.
On pragmatic rulers and subjugated nations
Pre-modern despots could be quite tolerant towards conquered peoples. About idols taken hostage, Roman exceptionalism, and the tolerance of Genghis Khan.
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