After Injury A Historical Anatomy of Forgiveness, Resentment, and Apology

After Injury explores the practices of forgiveness, resentment, and apology in three key moments when they were undergoing a dramatic change. The three moments are early Christian history (for forgiveness), the shift from British eighteenth-century to Continental nineteenth-century philosophers (for resentment), and the moment in the 1950s postwar world in which British ordinary language philosophers and American sociologists of everyday life theorized what it means to express or perform an apology. The debates that arose in those key moments have largely defined our contemporary study of these practices.

Ashraf H. A. Rushdy is the Benjamin Waite Professor at Wesleyan University.

Introduction

Section One: Forgiveness
Chapter One:
Chapter Two: The Banality of Forgiveness
Chapter Three: Forgiving Retribution

Section Two: Resentment
Chapter Four: Resentment: The Wound of Philoctetes
Chapter Five: The British Moralist Tradition: Conscience
Chapter Six: The Continental Cultural Tradition: Collective

Section Three: Apology
Chapter Seven: Apology: The Unforgiven Lives of Others
Chapter Eight: Private Apologies
Chapter Nine: Public Apologies

Conclusion
Afterword: The Arts of Empathy
Notes