I Was Wrong Book

Disclaimer: this is a book in two parts-- the first on individual apologies, the second on collective apologies-- and i've only read part I. but it's not my book, and i'd like to give it back to my friend drew so he can read part I and we can talk about it. and i should probably just buy my own copy. so while part I is complete in itself, it's more like i'm putting this book aside for a little than entirely done with it. but, here's what i think, anyway:

this book is an example of the best and most interesting applications of ethical theory to our lived lives. smith vividly and fascinatingly shows the import of the apology-- how what we mend when we make amends are the tears (small and large) in the very fabric of society. we are knit together by shared values, but as imperfect and idiosyncratic beings, we understand their application differently, and often enough we fail to live according to even our own idiosyncratic notion of what is valuable, and what it means to live according to a value. an apology, then, at its best, is a very potent kind of acknowledgment-- an acknowledgment that one has failed act in accordance with a particular value that the victim and offender share. when an apology demonstrate that one clearly understands what one has done, and why it was wrong-- when it includes an acknowledgment of the shared value the behavior violated, and a recommitment to that shared value, that makes for a really meaningful and effective apology. if the offender's apology doesn't demonstrate that kind of understanding, then it also fails to communicate the tacit information that the victim is generally looking for-- first, that the offender respects them and understands how they were wronged, and, second, that the offender will refrain from reoffending (how can you avoid something if you can't recognize it?).

in ethics it's common and useful to distinguish between strict sorts of distinctions like 'allowed', 'forbidden', and 'obligated' that are often linked to characteristics of the act itself, and the subtler sort of distinctions often related to the actor-- her intentions and mental states-- that contribute to moral meaning. smith emphasizes that it's more useful to think of apologies in this second way-- not "according to criteria x, this statement qualifies as an apology, and this one doesn't" but as "a loose constellation of interrelated meanings among various beliefs, judgments, emotions, and actions". we can say and do things that sound like apologies but fail to convey much if any apologetic meaning.

overall, a lovely book-- there were moments when it did feel to me like some sophistication was lacking in the distinctions made between consequentialism and deontology, and between analytic and continental approaches, but this, it seems to me, was the understandable consequence of smith's admirably ambitious attempt to incorporate each of these perspectives without sacrificing accessibility or focus).