Moral Injury and the Possibility of Self-Forgiveness

If you yourself have committed serious moral wrongs, failed to prevent them, or if you have witnessed such wrongs – especially when they were carried out by superiors or were structural in nature – your confidence in your own moral integrity, or in human morality more broadly, may be shaken. Such moral injury is marked by harm to the moral self-image and moral agency of those affected. They come to see themselves as morally deficient to a pathological degree and to be tormented by guilt, or their moral values may erode, leaving them morally disoriented. They no longer see themselves as fully fledged moral agents. Self-forgiveness is one way out of this condition. However, those affected may wonder whether self-forgiveness conflicts with the ethically appropriate acceptance of responsibility and guilt for one’s own actions. Is merciless self-blame not the ethically appropriate response to the gravest wrong one has committed? We must therefore examine the conditions under which self-forgiveness is ethically justified. I argue that ethical justification requires, on the one hand, regaining a fundamental respect for one’s own humanity as a being capable of morality – albeit including moral misconduct. Every human being is owed this respect, regardless of their actions. Its restoration is therefore always ethically justified and required. Building on this, offenders must also sincerely engage in taking responsibility, show remorse, seek, where appropriate, to make amends and, above all, work to improve their character. They are then also ethically justifiedin forgiving themselves for their past moral failures.