CFP: Memory, Emotion, and Forgiveness: Exploring the connections

Call for Papers - Special Issue in the Review of Philosophy and Psychology

Title:

“Memory, Emotion, and Forgiveness: Exploring the connections”.

Editors:  

Pablo Abitbol (Universidad Tecnologica de Bolivar), Santiago Amaya (Universidad de los Andes) and Felipe De Brigard (Duke University)

Description: 

People wrong each other with remarkable frequency. Yet, they often manage to repair their relationships by forgiving each other. A prominent view in the moral psychology of forgiveness holds that, when we forgive, we undergo an emotional change that leads us to overcome feelings of vengeance and resentment toward the perpetrator of a past wrongdoing. But if this view of forgiveness is correct, how exactly does that happen?  Unfortunately, while recent years have seen an increase in philosophical research on the ethics of forgiveness, the psychological aspect of this process has not received enough attention.

The purpose of this special issue is to explore the psychological nature of forgiveness, with special emphasis on its relationship to memory and emotion. If forgiveness essentially involves a change the emotion elicited by a past wrongdoing, then presumably memory and affective processes play a role. Does that mean that forgiveness involves forgetting? Presumably, after you forgive a past offense, you still remember it. But, if so, remembering the event no longer elicits the kind of reactive attitudes it once did, before you forgave. How is this possible? Do memory mechanisms play any role, if at all, in enabling forgiveness to occur?  

To answer these and related questions (see below) we invite contributions exploring the interaction between memory, emotion and forgiveness. Potential contributions may explore forgiveness, emotion, and memory at the individual or at the collective level, and may cover a variety of different forgiving contexts, including—but not limited to—political, historical, interpersonal, and self-forgiveness. We especially welcome contributions that make use of work in psychology and cognitive neuroscience of memory, emotion and/or forgiveness.   

Here are some examples of potential topics/questions that fall under the scope of this call for papers:

-       Does forgiveness require forgetting and, if so, what kind of forgetting? 

-       Is memory required for the emotional change involved in forgiveness?

-       If forgiveness does not require emotional change, does memory still play a role?

-       What is the relation between collective memory and forgiveness in group reconciliation? 

-       Are there differences in the role memory plays in forgiveness for different kind of offenses?

-       Can the science of memory help in improve people’s tendency to forgive?   

Manuscripts should be no longer than 8,000 words and the deadline for submissions will be July 31, 2025. 

Confirmed invited contributors:

Simone Gubler (Brown University)

Christopher Bennett (University of Sheffield)

Glen Pettigrove (University of Glasgow)

Lucy Allais (Johns Hopkins University)

Portal for submissions: https://www.editorialmanager.com/ropp/default.aspx