o whom would you be most inclined to forgive: the Nazi or a the parent who sexual abused her or his own children?  There are three possibilities: (1) forgive both; (2) forgive neither; or (3) forgive one and not the other.  Some people think that one should always give because, after all, every human being errors in some way or the other.  This, of course, is true enough.  But most human beings do not even come close to being a nazi or to sexually abusing their own children. 

So the argument for forgiving either one or both of these individuals simply cannot be anchored in the view that we all make mistakes.   

Now with regarding to nazis, there is a line of argument put forward by Thomas Nagel and Margaret Walker that goes simply like this: But for the grace of God, most of us (if we are not Jewish) would be nazis.  That is, had we been born in that despicable environment most of us would have embraced the very ideals that we deem morally horrific.  There is no gainsaying this point.  The killing of millions of Jews would not have happened had most people actively opposed such a thing.  And there is little evidence that most people have the fortitude to go up against a veritable tidal wave of public opinion.  In such instances, we are much more likely to convince ourselves that we are wrong, even if we are right. 

At any rate, I mention this because the line of argument does not at all apply to people who abuse their children sexually.  In Western societies, at least, no one claims to have been carried away by the winds of ideology according to which the very idea of being a decent or loyal or committed individual called for sexually abusing one’s child.  There have always been instances of child sexual abuse in society, but there has never been an ideology to that effect.

Then, too, there is this difference.  We can actually make sense of there being instances when vindictive anger and hostility towards another person is ever so justified.  We can make sense of this even, though we may suppose that a person should never act on such sentiments. 

But is there really a way to make sense of sexually abusing one’s child?  Surely not.  There can be no justification for even the thought, let alone the inclination to act on it. 

There is, to be sure, the idea of loving one’s neighbor.  But no one has ever supposed this to mean that love of neighbor should be on a par with love for one’s child.  For the person who has to choose between saving his child from drowning and saving a neighbor from drowning, where it is impossible to do both, this should simply not be a moral dilemma.  The child gets saved. 

Again, whatever love we may have for our neighbor, one supposes that there is a natural inclination to love one’s child that has absolutely no equal whatsoever in loving one’s neighbor.  That is, while morality requires us to refrain from harming others, love requires to do for our children what we can never be obligation to do for a neighbor. 

If these considerations are right, then we end up with a rather striking thought, namely that the person who sexually abuses his child is, in a most important respect, worse than a nazi or, for that matter, a vicious slaveowner.  The decent person is naturally repulsed by the sentiment of harming others.  But harming others does not require the further step of overcoming the natural sentiment to love and do good that surely applies with respect to children. 

So in terms of exhibiting morally obnoxious behavior the child sexual abuser does the nazi one better. 

For the obvious reason, it is easy to miss this since the aim of the Nazi regime was the extermination of Jews, and that is not the aim of child sexual abuse.  But it is easy to bring out the difference by comparing a nazi who raped a Jew with a nazi who sexually abused his very own child.  As horrific as the first is, the second is just that much more repulsive for the reasons that I have already given.  Whatever difficulty we have understanding rape, in the first place, committing such a horrific act against one’s very own child is just that much more incomprehensible.  The latter is unfathomable at an entirely different level. 

So let me return to the question: Whom would I be most inclined to forgive.  Well, to begin with, I think that forgiveness that restores trust has to be earned.  And from the fact that I no longer hold a grudge against you, it does not follow in the least that I now trust.  As Howard McGary noted, I may stop holding a grudge against you because this is the best way for me to get on with my life.  This does not all mean that you have earned my trust.

In a published essay entitled “Forgiving the Unforgivable”, I sketch a story of a nazi whom I call Adolph Paul-Damascus, who I think earns forgiveness. 

Alas, I still have trouble forgiving a parent who sexually abuses her child.  For to my mind such a person has a more warped and perverted nature than even a nazi—such a person’s behavior is even more unnatural.  Anger and hostility and the misrepresentation of others, even the demonization of others, I can all make sense of in various ways.  I think that every human being can be so hurt and devastated that he strikes out at even innocent people.  I do not justify this.  I do not excuse this.  But I can grasp how it can happen.  And those who say that they cannot are, I suspect, being more than a little disingenuous. 

I can further grasp the reality that people are sometimes swept up in the moment.  This happens with all sorts of things.  As I have already noted, the simple truth is that most of us do not have the fortitude to go up against the crowd—to endure being ostracized and rejected.  Most of are simply too weak.  I do not justify this.  I do not excuse this.  But this truth about human beings is confirmed time and time again.

But to abuse one’s child sexually requires either overcoming the natural love that one has for that child or never having that love in the first place.  This is beyond me in every conceivable way.  With every child that I have ever seen, I have been moved immeasurably the beauty of its moral innocence and the majesty of the fact that something so marvelous has developed out of two tiny cells.  I think that one has to be a monster not to see these things in a child.  A child: so dependent, so needy, and so responsive to love.  As I argued, in The Family and the Political Self, the very survival of the human species turns upon parents being moved in this way towards children. 

I might find within me the wherewithal not to hold a grudge against a parent who sexually abused his child.  But I could never ever trust such a parent again.  To my mind: the child sexual abuser is not just evil, but irredeemably so.  

As fate would have it, I don't think that any nazi ever measured to up to my fictional Adolph Paul-Damascus.  Thus, none ever merited forgiveness.  With the parent who sexually abuses his very own child, I rule out forgiveness, understood as restoring trust, on conceptual grounds.  

You have my answer to the question.  What is your answer?  Whom would you be inclined to forgive: The nazi or the parent who sexually abused his child?