Before Forgiving

Sharon Lamb is a clinical psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychology at St. Michael's College. She has been interested in moral issues as well as abuse and victimization and has tried to combine these interests in her work. Her first book, co-edited with Jerome Kagan, was The Emergence of Morality in Young Children. Her second book, The Trouble with Blame: Victims, Perpetrators, and Responsibility was her first attempt to combine these two interests. Her recent book, New Versions of Victims: Feminists Struggle with the Concept is a cultural critique of the idea of the victim in the historical present, and forthcoming is The Secret Lives of Girls: Sex, Aggression, and Guilt Jeffrie Murphy is Regents Professor of Law and Philosophy at Arizona State University.

• PART ONE: WHEN FORGIVING DOESN'T MAKE SENSE; PART TWO: FORGIVENESS IN THE THERAPY HOUR; PART THREE: CULTURE AND CONTEXT IN FORGIVENESS; PART FOUR: PERPETRATORS ASKING FOR FORGIVENESS

This book is a novel addition to the growing field of the study of forgiveness. It satisfies the editors' stated goals of setting forgiveness in a broader context than have past individual volumes, and calls attention to feminist and multicultural concerns through interdisciplinary and accessible readings....the anthology on the whole is useful to anyone with an interest in the metaethical and ethical questions surrounding forgiveness....I can only hope this inspires more philosophers to approach forgiveness from critical, feminist and multicultural perspectives.