Forgiveness is traditionally understood as a personal change of heart, in which an individual victim of a wrongdoing overcomes her resentment towards the perpetrator of that wrongdoing. Peter Strawson (1974) famously argued that resentment is a personal participant retributive reactive attitude, and the overcoming of such an attitude through forgiveness is itself a personal reactive attitude – in other words, forgiveness is an affective response to a wrongdoing by an individual victim, that is devoid of a retributive element. Because reactive attitudes are personal, it is argued that collectives – groups of individuals – cannot forgive, since collectives cannot, as collectives, hold reactive attitudes. I argue against this. I show that it is possible for collectives to hold attitudes in a way that is not reducible to individuals holding attitudes as individuals, and yet these attitudes still remain personal. Individuals exist within communities, and are interdependent on one another. Much of an individual‟s beliefs and attitudes depend on the collectives that she is a part of. I argue that an attitude is collective when it is deemed to be the appropriate attitude for members of the collective to hold. Members of the collective will take this attitude on as their own insofar as they identify themselves as members of the collective. Individuals hold the attitude, making the attitude personal, but since the individuals hold the attitude in virtue of their membership to a collective, the attitude is also collective. Given that forgiveness is itself a reactive attitude, and that collectives can hold attitudes, I argue that it is possible for a collective to forgive. Members of a collective will come to forgive when forgiveness is held up as the appropriate attitude for them, and once enough members have taken on the attitude of forgiveness as their own attitude, a collective can be said to have forgiven.

M.A. / “A philosophy untouched by the shadows on the wall can only yield a sterile utopia” (Sandel, 2009: p.29). Plato’s prisoners in the cave allegory were to forfeit the shadows against the cave wall and therefore their physical world if they were eventually to reach pure knowledge. It is arguable that the same thought has been prevalent in Western philosophy in that as philosophers we have sought to get on our metaphoric high horses and try to tell the rest of the world how best to live their lives, believe, think about concepts, etc. Philosophy has therefore always strived for the ideal state, ethical system or perfect theory that will make our existence so much more orderly, logical or neat. Such utopia usually comes at a price, as we would most likely have to renounce or dampen what I believe can be held as innately human tendencies such as our sexual wants, progressing and stamping our dominance through war, violence and the need for revenge. Wanting to have, to dominate others and to get even with those who harmed you is usually seen as base or even barbaric, but they nonetheless continue to be part of our human make up. If giving up such traits would help us achieve a utopia, this utopia would not only be sterile due to it suppressing some of our most basic traits, but it would also be flawed. Suppressing such traits does not mean that they do not exist or have been done away with - they may surface at any time to cause disharmony in the “ideal” state, which would logically entail that instead of trying to do away with such traits, a way should rather be found to accommodate them.