Volume II of Vernon Press's series on the Philosophy of Forgiveness offers several challenging and provocative chapters that seek to push the conversation in new directions and dimensions. Volume I, Explorations of Forgiveness: Personal, Relational, and Religious, began the task of creating a consistent multi-dimensional account of forgiveness, and Volume II's New Dimensions of Forgiveness continues this goal by presenting a set of chapters that delve into several deep conceptual and metaphysical features of forgiveness. New Dimensions of Forgiveness creates a theoretical framework for understanding the many nuanced features of forgiveness, namely, third-party forgiveness, forgiveness as an aesthetic process, the role of resentment in warranting forgiveness, the moral status of self-forgiveness, epistemic trust, forgiveness's influence on the moral status of persons, forgiveness in time, the status of Substance and Subject within a Hegelian framework, Jacques Derrida's "impossible" forgiveness, and the use of imaginative "magic" to become a maximal forgiver. Readers will be challenged to question and come to terms with many oft-overlooked, yet important philosophical dimensions of forgiveness.
Elisabetta Bertolino holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in Law/Legal Theory from Birkbeck College-University of London. She has also completed other studies in Human Rights, English Common Law, and Philosophy and Literature. Her research focuses on one's voice and its potentiality for resistance against constituted and sovereign forms of power. She has published in particular an interview with Adriana Cavarero (differences 2008) and is currently working on a book on one's voice in relation to law and politics. Elisabetta currently teaches Private International Law at the University of Palermo (Italy).
Mariano Crespo obtained his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the Complutense University in Madrid (Spain). He has been Professor at the San Damaso University and at the Francisco de Vitoria University, both in Madrid. From 1995 to 2004 he was Assistant and then Associated Professor at the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein. From 2005 till 2013 he was Associated Professor at the Philosophy Department of Catholic University from Chile. Since 2013 he is Research Fellow of the Group "Emotional Culture and Identity" of the Institute Culture and Societ (ICS) of the University of Navarra. He has also been Visiting Scholar at the Husserl Archives of the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) and at the Phenomenology Research Center of the Southern Illinois University (USA). He is the author of the books Das Verzeihen. Eine philosophische Untersuchung (2002), El valor ético de la afectividad. Estudios de ética fenomenológica (2012) and with U. Ferrer, Die Person im Kontext von Moral und Sozialität. Studien zur frühen phänomenologischen Ethik (2016). He has also edited the fourth edition of Alexander Pfänder's Logik and the volume Menschenwürde. Metaphysik und Ethik. He has published several papers on ontological, epistemological and ethical topics, most of them from a phenomenological standpoint.
Court Lewis received his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, where he specialized in Ethics, Justice, and Forgiveness. He became interested in forgiveness studies while studying mass atrocities and social oppression in 20th Century Europe, especially after reading Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower. His philosophical work on Justice and Rights introduced him to Nicholas Wolterstorff's ethical concept eirenéism-a peace-based theory of rights. Combining eirenéism with the concept of forgiveness, Court developed a rights-based ethic of forgiveness. His research was featured in his dissertation, was the basis for a Capstone Philosophy course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which featured visiting speakers working on forgiveness, such as Martha Nussbaum, and portions of it have appeared in scholarly peer-reviewed journals such as Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel. He is currently completing a monograph on his research. Court is Program Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Owensboro Community and Technical College.
