Scholars have often repeated the same thing about violence.
Violence often begets violence or that violence is spiral – it continues eternally.
Take the example of a son whose father is killed by someone. The son, when he identifies the culprit, waits for an opportune time to take away his life. The same fate will await for him.
The enmity between two persons or groups or nations continue although the initiators of violence are no more. The chain can be only broken when one of the descendants one day forgives the other.
Violence often begets violence or that violence is spiral – it continues eternally.
Take the example of a son whose father is killed by someone. The son, when he identifies the culprit, waits for an opportune time to take away his life. The same fate will await for him.
The enmity between two persons or groups or nations continue although the initiators of violence are no more. The chain can be only broken when one of the descendants one day forgives the other.
The idea of forgiveness and the breaking of the continued violence can be explained with an example. Charles Taylor writes how this was possible in the political realm of South Africa. According to him the harmonious living is possible today only because of the victim who rises vertically to forgive the other. It is possible. What one has to do is to break the chain of hatred with love; break the chain of resentment with forgiveness. It is not that you do it because you are powerless but because you are powerful, inspired by the love of God.
Nietzsche had spoken in his genealogy of morals that resentment of the weak created the morality of evil. In his dictionary, forgiveness is the tool of the week to subdue the powerful. For the one who wanted to retrieve the sense of self-transcendence against instrumental rationality and establish the transformation of the values it may have seemed correct. He wanted to recover the human creativity and transcend nihilism through aesthetics.
When it comes to the political realm, Nietzsche's genealogy does not help. I am not undervaluing the moral motive behind the claim of Nietzsche, but the political outcome of it. Taylor himself suggests that Nietzsche's followers turn to be anti-humanists. Leaving aside the philosophical debate, when one turns to the political conflicts between nations or groups, the only way to break the chain of hatred and war is to forgive.
The Death of Christ on the Cross is the real witness to the end of bloody sacrifice. Unbelievers may not subscribe to the faith of the Christians, but the fact is that humanism one values in the world has come out of and shaped of the agapeic gospel of Christ.
