:Resentment and other hard feelings may outlive their targets, and people often express a desire to overcome these feelings through forgiveness. While some see forgiving the dead as an important moral accomplishment, others deny that genuine forgiveness of the dead is coherent, let alone desirable or valuable. According to one line of thought, forgiveness is something we do for certain reasons, such as the offender’s expressed contrition. Given that the dead cannot express remorse, forgiveness of the dead is impossible. Others see the apparent coherence and moral importance of forgiving the dead as a reason to give up on the idea that forgiveness is conditional upon the offender’s remorse. According to these philosophers, forgiveness of the dead poses no special problems; forgiveness of the dead, like forgiveness of the living, is not contingent upon the offender’s contrition. I steer a path between these two positions in such a way as to bring out an important aspect of forgiveness that is not adequately addressed in the literature: I argue that forgiving the dead may be perfectly coherent and morally valuable even though the dead cannot ask for forgiveness or engage in reparative activities. A full appreciation of the relational character of forgiveness allows us to make sense of forgiving the dead.

中文翻译：

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宽恕死者

：怨恨和其他痛苦的情绪可能比他们的目标更持久，人们经常表达通过宽恕来克服这些情绪的愿望。虽然有些人认为宽恕死者是一项重要的道德成就，但其他人则否认真正宽恕死者是连贯的，更不用说可取或有价值了。根据一种思路，宽恕是我们出于某些原因而做的事情，例如犯罪者表达的忏悔。鉴于死者无法表达悔意，死者的宽恕是不可能的。其他人则将宽恕死者的明显连贯性和道德重要性视为放弃宽恕以犯罪者悔恨为条件的想法的理由。根据这些哲学家的说法，对死者的宽恕没有什么特别的问题。对死者的宽恕，就像对生者的宽恕，不取决于罪犯的忏悔。我在这两种立场之间开辟了一条道路，以便带出文献中没有充分说明的宽恕的一个重要方面：我认为宽恕死者可能是完全连贯的，并且在道德上有价值，即使死者不能要求宽恕或从事补救活动。对宽恕的关系特征的充分理解使我们能够理解宽恕死者。