Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2009

Publication Title

European Journal of Analytic Philosophy

Volume

5

Issue

1

First Page

21

Last Page

43

Abstract

My optimism towards reconciliation in places like Bosnia and Kosovo has become increasingly guarded because of certain epistemical and ethical issues. Reconciliation presumes the making of moral judgments about a wrongdoing, judgments that are empirically informed. If the perceptual judgments that are used to do the informing are made suspect because of a lapse in the commonplace self-restraints (or controls) on reasoning or glitches in the regulative ideals or epistemic goods like understanding and intelligibility, then the moral judgments on which they are grounded become suspect as well. This happens to both fanatic and non-fanatic. In this article I explore these issues by starting with spousal-like relationships that must sort out the demands for truth, moral decency, and harmony. Sometimes epistemical difficulties preclude a couple from forgiveness and, thus, reconciliation, in which case harmony may only be achieved through a moral forgetfulness of the wrongdoing. The broader contention is that epistemical difficulties surrounding stories of competing ethno-national communities are even more imposing, thus making reconciliation ever so difficult. Although moral forgetfulness is sometimes used in spousal-like relationships in order to maintain harmony, it is more difficult to adopt within post-conflict situations between ethno-national adversaries, thus leading some to accept a separate co-existence as the last resort on the road to peace building.

Comments

European Journal of Analytic Philosophy can be found at https://www.ffri.hr/phil/casopis/.

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