Daniel Philpott's Six Practices Of Political Reconciliation?

The Limits of Political Reconciliation Recent history is replete with egregious, widespread and often systematic wrongdoings: genocide, torture, and mass killing. Cambodia, South Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Rwanda, and Guatemala are examples where these grave political injustices have occurred. Histories of violence and humanitarian atrocities leave marks of damage, despair, and pain that can only justice can begin to heal. Hence the central question of Daniel Philpott’s book Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation: “What does justice consist of in the wake of its massive despoliation?” The answer, Philpott argues, is political reconciliation. However, in investigating two of Philpott’s six practices of reconciliation—apology

According to Graham, reconciliation is both “… a goal in the sense that it aims to restore relationships or to promote agonism or mutual tolerance, respect, and dignity […] [And] it is a process because it requires multiple modes, steps, stages, and transformations across all levels of society and amongst all stakeholders in a conflict” (Graham 2015). Through reconciliation and the related processes of restorative justice, parties to the dispute explore and overcome the pain brought on by the conflict and find ways to build trust and live cooperatively with each other. Restorative justice seeks to have a positive impact on offenders by confronting them with the consequences of their actions and delineating their responsibilities, giving them both the opportunity to repair the damage caused to the victim and to work on finding a solution to their problems (Umbreit, Bradshaw and Coates, 1999). According to Philpott, there are six components of political reconciliation: building socially just institutions and relations between states, acknowledgement, reparations, punishment, apology, and forgiveness (Philpott

A gesture that formerly connoted weakness grows to represent moral strength and provides a crucial step towards potential reconciliation. Within his text, Philpott expresses wholehearted belief in the power of apology stating, “Few acts undo the legitimacy of a crime more effectively than a perpetrator’s renunciation of it” (Philpott 205). Philpott describes the practice of apology as, “When a perpetrator apologizes, he condemns his own role in the political injustice and thus helps to defeat its standing victory from one angle. Yet, the victim retains his own freedom to decide how he will respond to the perpetrator and thus retains a measure of control over whether the standing victory of the injustice is defeated” (Philpott 264). Philosophically, the idea of apology within restorative justice and reconciliation could mark a reaffirmation of the fundamental moral principles of the community, promote national reconciliation, strengthen a principle of transnational cooperation and contribute to the improvement of international law and diplomatic relations. Following an apology, a relationship becomes possible between the perpetrator and the victim, which in turn creates the potential for a less hostile environment for the community, and marks a society’s affirmation of a set of virtues in contradistinction to a past of