From an early age we are encouraged to "forgive and forget." Forgiveness is traditionally presented as an unequivocally good act - the forgiver being morally superior, a promoter of love, peace, and global happiness. However, one who forgives unequivocally is diagnosed as suffering from a self-respect deficiency. For example, if Joey were to forgive and forget the murderer of his family simply because she said she was sorry he would certainly be acting inappropriately. We are thus left with a problem: since forgiveness is touted as the right thing to do but too much forgiveness is obviously the wrong thing to do, how do we know when it's appropriate to forgive? In order to answer this we must first determine what is appropriate(we shall call it "justice"), then we must determine what forgiveness is, and then we will decide if and when forgiveness and justice are compatible.

Justice is most commonly used in connection with legal issues, where the fate of an individual or group who is accused of wrongdoing is decided. Justice is a much more prevalent notion, though, and is better defined as the correct way act, and the correct way to act in a general sense is treating people as they deserve. Determining what one deserves is a matter of judging the person and circumstances such that the just action, if universally applied, will lead to the greatest good. Acting justly is not merely a matter of tradition or a method of avoiding punishment - we must be just because justice is useful. Mankind has evolved into a society and not a collection of individuals, presumably because two can accomplish more working together than the sum of their individual efforts. In order to preserve whatever efficiency we gain by teamwork we must be just in our relations, for injustice on a large scale is the disintegration of society. Thus, in the interest of preserving society and life as we know it, we declare that no amount of injustice is acceptable because no arbitrarily determined level of acceptable injustice could hold its ground on the slippery slope of morality. Already we are raising the proverbial eyebrow at forgiveness - where could the dismissal of justice be appropriate if no amount of injustice is acceptable?

Let us first examine the nature of the seldom-defined concept of forgiveness. Forgiveness is commonly described as the renunciation of resentment, the cancellation of bad will. In this model, the forgiver makes the decision to forgive the wrongdoer, and usually announces this decision so that the relationship between the victim and transgressor can return to its former state, or at least a better state. This description of forgiveness rests on the presumption that one is capable of regulating her emotions. If this is not the case - if the experience of emotions is beyond our control - then resentment is not a switch to be toggled. Although it is clear that we can suppress or ignore resentment by changing our focus or exposing ourselves to contrary evidence (analogous to skeptics who strove to expose themselves to each side of an argument equally so that they wouldn't uphold either view) we will assume here that an emotion is a response to the world not subject to conscious modification. Consequently, one can not forgive in the sense that forgiveness is the forswearing of resentment. It is obvious that one chooses whether or not to forgive, though, and that a declaration of forgiveness often has a valuable effect on the relationship in question, so forgiveness is something. Forgiveness is merely what its service causes - it is a decision by the victim to engage in a (more) civil relationship with the transgressor. It is not a decision to condone the transgression; it is not a decision to overlook or set aside bad feelings in the interest of civility because the bad feelings don't go anywhere; it is simply the decision to be civil. Following, forgiveness is useful only when the transgressor knows that the victim feels wronged, and forgiveness has no direct effect on how the victim feels about the wrongdoer.

Forgiveness in the traditionally-defined sense, as the forswearing of resentment, is difficult to align with justice because once someone has acted unjustly, she must separate herself from her act in order to deserve forgiveness. (Anything less would result in the effective sanction of the transgression, which undermines forgiveness by implicating the forgiver as an unjust judge of character - an interesting circle.) We use repentance and atonement as indicators of this separation: this usually entails recognition of the immorality of the act, regret of the act, a commitment to avoid the act in the future, and some sort of restitution. For example, if Theodore steals money from Venus but confesses his violation and reimburses Venus double the amount he stole, then Venus could rationally reason that Theodore has separated himself from his act of theft and this realization could motivate the mitigation of her resentment of him. This is independent of her decision to forgive him. The change in her feelings might or might not cause her to forgive him, and does not fall under the dominion of justice because it is involuntary.

Thus far we have carefully avoided illuminating the matter of the compatibility of forgiveness with justice. It is useful to note that the two reasons that most commonly compel us to forgive - the undesirability of and energy required to maintain a hateful relationship, and the hope that if we forgive others will forgive us - are utterly opposed to justice because they do not account for what the wrongdoer deserves. When, then does the wrongdoer deserve forgiveness? Only when she has separated herself from her transgression! Hence the same conditions traditionally accepted as the criteria for just forgiveness, repentance and atonement, satisfy our requirements for just forgiveness as well.

In conclusion, Venus may simultaneously justly forgive Theodore and resent him, and she may both harbor no resentment for Theodore and justly withhold forgiveness. Feeling resentment is independent of justice and forgiveness, and forgiveness is only compatible with justice when certain criteria separating the hurtful act from the actor are met.