SPECIAL ISSUE ON TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE Dragan Simeunović Judith Renner Gabriel Twose Klaus Bachmann Patricia Lundy Rosalia de la Cruz Gitau Seidu Alidu Symposium on a book by Nir Eisikovits SYMPATHIZING WITH THE ENEMY: RECONCILIATION, TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE, NEGOTITATION Co-editors Klaus Bachman Mina Zirojević Fatić THE REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRSRIA THE INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMICS BELGRADE, VOL. LXI, No. 1138–1139, APRIL–SEPTEMBER 2010 UDK 327 ISSN 0486-6096 Founded in June 1950 178 The Review of International Affairs Alice MacLachlan1 Seeing Sympathy: Remarks on Sympathizing with the Enemy. "How can there be peace without people understanding each other, and how can this be if they don't know each other?" Lester B. Pearson, Nobel Laureate and Prime Minister of Canada ("The Four Faces of Peace," Nobel Lecture given on December 11, 1957). At one point in Sympathizing with the Enemy: Reconciliation, Transitional Justice, Negotiation (hereafter SWTE) the author, Nir Eisikovits, remarks: "to some extent, this book is about the benefits of 'seeing' for peacemaking" (85).2 The self-description is apt, but, given Eisikovits' insistence on the moral importance of conscious choice, a more befitting depiction might be: this book is about the tremendous moral and political benefits of "choosing to look". SWTE makes the case for such benefits remarkably well, but what emerges from its pages most strikingly is that the author practices what he preaches. In expounding his account, Eisikovits moves effortlessly through an encyclopedia of examples, ranging from historical accounts of conflict (from the Peloponnesian War between ancient Athens and Sparta to World War II, the Cold War, and its aftermath) to contemporary global politics (both Iraq Wars and the War on Terror, as well as Middle East politics, and race relations in postapartheid South Africa and the USA); he also draws on fictional narratives and on his first hand experiences as an Israeli citizen. Eisikovits himself has chosen to look - and to look long, hard, carefully, and well - at the intricate and 1 Alice Maclachlan, York University. 2 The excerpt goes on to explain the description as follows: "part of the argument I try to advance is that something like moral perception is necessary for sympathy, which, in turn, is constitutive of political reconciliation" (SWTE, 85). Symposium on a book Remarks on Sympathizing with the Enemy The Review of International Affairs 179 intimate details of many slow, painful, and often fragile processes of peacemaking following conflict. The result is powerful. While SWTE does not purport to provide a systematic, comparative analysis of cases, the reader is consistently reassured that the general theory of reconciliation Eisikovits puts forth never for a moment leaves political and historical reality, but remains firmly grounded in experience - whether these are his own experiences, or experiences recounted by journalists, politicians, survivors, and historians. SWTE is not only a pleasurable and an informative read; it is also - to my mind - a highly persuasive one. While examples are often presented as merely illustrative, their cumulative effect is overwhelming: when it comes to reconciliation, the author knows whereof he speaks. The theoretical literature on reconciliation stands to benefit significantly from his labors. The purpose of SWTE is to establish and defend a theoretical account of political reconciliation. More precisely, this is the purpose of the first three chapters. In the second part of the text, Eisikovits applies his account of reconciliation to the evaluation of transitional mechanisms such as trials and truth commissions, and considers the implications for conflict resolution. My remarks are focused on the former task; I begin by reconstructing the structural features of Eisikovits' approach to theorizing reconciliation in general, as well as the specific sympathy-based account he presents, highlighting the particular virtues of both. I then focus on one problematic consequence of this approach, evident in the opening pages of Chapter Two ("Objections"). These pages assume a framework in which other concepts - in this case, forgiveness, forgetting, and recognition - are cast necessarily as "competitors' against whom sympathy must be defended. Such a framework skews the characterization of these concepts, and as a result, it undermines the persuasiveness of sympathy's defense. It also obscures more complex and potentially illuminating relationships among all four. Ultimately, I argue, these concerns are symptomatic of what I take to be a challenging meta-theoretical question facing all theorists of reconciliation, and this question is where my comments conclude. Eisikovits has very clear views about what a theory of reconciliation should look like: it must be sufficiently general to apply widely and thus to explain what apparently diverse instances of reconciliation have in common, he argues, yet it must also be explanatorily useful. That is, such a theory ought to give us descriptive insight into the constitutive elements of reconciliation and ought also to tell a story about how such elements might come about. At the same time a successful account, for Eisikovits, "should be both normative and descriptive. It will provide both the minimum conditions of what should count as reconciliation and illuminate the successes and failures of specific cases" (7). Ultimately, his aim is to describe reconciliation such that it is both a desirable 180 The Review of International Affairs and a feasible goal for the realities of post-conflict, and to define reconciliation - so described - in terms of several key identifiable features that are both necessary and sufficient for its achievement and which, in turn, tell us something about its desirability. What account emerges from this approach? In Eisikovits' view, reconciliation is composed of both formal and informal (motivational) factors. Both sets of factors are necessary, though their relative weight may shift across cases.3 He takes the formal elements of his definition to be less contentious, and thus they occupy very little of the discussion: roughly, they include the formal resolution of key questions or disputes (e.g. land-claims or citizenship) and the establishment of whatever rights, responsibilities and other elements of law are required for the reconciling groups to exist fairly alongside or amidst one another. Since the content of these rights will vary depending on the conflict and context, a theoretical account need not provide an exhaustive list (10). Nevertheless, we can glean from the discussion of reconciliation as "fair coexistence" (8) that Eisikovits understands formal rights broadly; they include economic and social rights, and some (but not all) recognition claims made by victims (39). The second, motivational, aspect of reconciliation is the focus of SWTE, and represents Eisikovits' significant contribution to the literature. Two groups reconcile, he argues, once they begin to sympathize with one another. Eisikovits finds inspiration for his notion of sympathy in the moral philosophy of Adam Smith; like Smith, he takes sympathy to be a conscious effort that combines judgment and imagination. Smith famously bases his much of his moral philosophy on a mechanism of sympathy. When I sympathize with someone, I first project myself into his circumstances – that is, I imagine what I would do in his situation, were I carrying his history and faced with his choices – and then judge his responses and behavior on that basis. If I find these correspond with my own, that is, not with my responses as they are here and now, but with what they would be were I in his position, then I almost necessarily find myself approving of his actions, 3 The varying importance of the formal and motivational aspects of reconciliation raises questions about their respective necessity that remain unaddressed because of the exclusive focus given to the latter. Eisikovits mentions the Falklands conflict as an example in which sympathy played little role, because of the geographic distance and relative independence of Britain and Argentina. Indeed, one might wonder if sympathy played any role of significance here - or, assuming it did, it is not hard to imagine a relevantly similar example in which it did not. Is there perhaps a limit case at either end of the spectrum, in which reconciliation becomes only a formal or only an attitudinal matter? The implications of such cases for the requirements Eisikovits demands of a general theory of reconciliation are discussed later in my remarks. The Review of International Affairs 181 at least on some level and to a certain degree - Eisikovits draws a much less conclusive connection between sympathy and moral approval than Smith does, and a strict Smith scholar might well take issue with the extent to which sympathy in SWTE should be understood to be "Smithean'. The Israeli official who admits the sympathetic claim that, had he been born into a Palestinian camp, he might too have joined Hamas does not thereby express moral approval for members of Hamas. Rather, what he expresses is more akin first to the recognition of intelligibility - there is at least one way in which the position of the other (the enemy) makes a kind of sense - and this is, admittedly, a notinsignificant achievement in the context of entrenched conflict. Second, and most important for Eisikovits' purposes, the admission presupposes the recognition of sameness or similarity. To make the same kinds of choices and have the same kinds of responses in a given situation, two beings must have certain key needs, capacities, and qualities in common; the imaginative effort of sympathy offers proof of such similarity to those who most probably felt themselves to be diametrically different. Ultimately, the proof of similarity may be as, or more, important as the recognition of intelligibility. Both contribute to a newly focused and detailed picture of the abstract enemy as a living, breathing individual, complete with her own perspective. Taken together, Eisikovits argues, the effects of sympathy are uniquely important for reconciliation: they fight the moral blindness, apathy, and dehumanization endemic to group conflict (19-20), they create a "useful buffer against the [destructive] temptations of absolute justice" (24), and they contribute to the kind of social, economic and community ties that make it hard for conflict to re-emerge (21). Of course, sympathy itself is a psychological tie; Eisikovits never actually claims that imaginative identification necessarily or even probably results in the sympathizer having pro-attitudes of concern and compassion toward the sympathized-with, as is the case with many everyday, non-philosophical connotations to sympathy. But he does draw on numerous examples in which these do result, noting that considerations of sympathy can lead to settled identification with the other, itself a pro-attitude, and also lead to the motivating recognition of injustice, since similar human needs do not always result in similar entitlements (16). Members of combatant groups can only sympathize once they know - or as Eisikovits puts it, once they see - one another; that is, "sympathy requires specific, detailed knowledge about the lives of others" (11). Such knowledge is individual, concrete, and detailed; its content concerns the lives of individual, not the general features of groups. Most importantly, it is "actively obtained rather than passively encountered" (64). Former enemies do not just "become' sympathetic, except in rare cases: rather, appropriate sympathy begins with a "self-conscious, isolated, deliberate act" of looking and learning (86). The will 182 The Review of International Affairs to look in the right way finds its source in a moral motivation which Eisikovits titles political generosity, composed of several related dispositions: i) "the willingness to forgo... the vindictive dynamics of action", ii) "the ability to move one's focus of attention... partially, and at least temporarily, from one's self", and iii) "the readiness to offer an enemy more... than they can minimally expect" (75). Several things about political generosity are worth noting: first, it has fairly modest aims and can even conceivably develop even in the context of war (76). Second, it is asymmetrical: we expect and demand generosity more from victors than losers, from the fortunate and the powerful more than the underdog (76). Finally, despite its modest aims, political generosity remains a deliberate effort to go against what is expected and even invited by the dynamics of conflict. This is no easy task. Eisikovits does not dwell on it, but there is an element of contingency and chance at the heart of his otherwise comfortingly modest developmental story. Chapter Three, in which political generosity is discussed in detail, is titled "Becoming Sympathetic," but while political generosity may show us the route to cultivating sympathy, it remains unclear how would-be peacemakers and sympathizers might go about creating and cultivating the initial disposition of generosity. There remains some mystery at the heart of reconciliation. That the widespread inculcation of sympathy is, all things being equal, a boon to the process of peacemaking is of course an intuitively plausible claim. The argument in SWTE goes far beyond this intuitive plausibility, as the author argues that not only does sympathy provide the numerous individual benefits previously listed, but furthermore, each of the earlier stages leading to sympathy also contributes to the motivational aspects of reconciliation. First, "sympathy presupposes exposure to the ways and conditions under which others live, and such exposure is the basis for creating personal, commercial and cultural connections between the parties" (20). Second, the source of this actively chosen exposure - political generosity - has its own significant benefits (78): for example, weakening negative stereotypes about the generous, changing the dynamics of a conflict (81), creating a surplus of goodwill and symbolic capital, and enlisting the support of third parties (82). At every stage of this story, possible bases for reconciliation multiply. Such praise for sympathy does not yet meet the stringent desiderata Eisikovits outlines for a satisfactory general theory of reconciliation: specifically, the requirement of generality. He must not only prove that sympathy and its precursors are good or even excellent for [some] processes of reconciliation; he must show that sympathy is crucial to, even partly constitutive of, reconciliation itself, to meet the standards he has set himself. From the structure of his argument, it seems Eisikovits takes this demand to mean that SWTE must persuade readers not only that sympathy is well-suited to play a The Review of International Affairs 183 central (motivational) role in processes of reconciliation, but that furthermore, nothing else could play that particular motivational role; rather, sympathy can be found to play it in all cases. This strategy is most evident when Eisikovits is on the defensive; indeed, he is so vigorous in his arguments against other dispositions which could (arguably) be useful for theorizing reconciliation, I was left with the distinct image of a row of tenpins successfully knocked down by a particularly talented bowler. I wonder, however, if ultimately Eisikovits does his theory a disservice by aiming to clear the terrain so thoroughly. The second chapter of SWTE is dedicated to the admirable task of tackling possible objections to the theory from several different directions. Over the course of the chapter, Eisikovits considers and answers five possible objections to sympathy, and also offers a comparative defense of his sympathy-based theory of reconciliation against three accounts already available in the literature. Of particular interest for my purposes, however, are the opening pages of the chapter, in which he critiques what he calls three "competitors' to sympathy: forgiveness, forgetting, and recognition. The language of competition is somewhat startling in the context of a project whose practical application is ultimately to encourage peacemaking, conciliation and the acceptance of multiple perspectives. In speaking of "competitors', Eisikovits means to identify these three concepts as potential candidates for the disposition(s) capable of motivating the informal, attitudinal and relational aspects of reconciliation he identified in Chapter One. Ultimately, he argues forcefully that "none of these should be definitive of political reconciliation" (25), and in so arguing, he pretty much dismisses them. I am in complete agreement with Eisikovits regarding at least one version of his primary claim in this section: it is true that forgiveness, forgetting and recognition do not play the same sustained role in the aftermath of conflict that Eisikovits claims for sympathy in his theory, and furthermore, the case for sympathy's motivational role has been made very convincingly in both the preceding and later chapters. Nevertheless, I found the arguments unpersuasive and ultimately, troublesome for the theory as a whole and even the approach to theory it embodies. The root of my discontent can be found in the decision to cast other typical features of reconciliation as "competitors' or theoretical rivals for a single place in the theory, and the effects of that decision on their subsequent analysis and treatment, and it is this decision I explore in the remainder of my comments. Why is it so strange to see forgiveness, forgetfulness and recognition as rival dispositions to sympathy, from the perspective of theory? In the first place, it is not clear that all three concepts are dispositions in exactly the same sense that sympathy is a disposition; such a description is certainly contentious - and contended - among prominent contemporary theories of 184 The Review of International Affairs forgiveness.4 Characterizing forgiveness primarily as an emotional or attitudinal disposition tends to obscure salutary experiences of forgiveness that emerge once we understand it as an act, for example, or a set of practices. Certainly, the potential benefits of public acts of either seeking or granting forgiveness, performed by a public figure and undertaken in the service of either reconciliation or basic peacemaking, go well beyond the four arguments for forgiveness-qua-disposition which Eisikovits considers.5 A publicly enacted request for forgiveness, issued by a public figure, can have remarkable effects on public opinion, as can a symbolic gesture or ritual offering the same. Such events have much in common with the gestures of political generosity described in Chapter Three as initiating the development of sympathy: when done well, acts of public forgiveness undermine negative stereotypes, change the dynamics of conflict, create goodwill and symbolic capital, and lend moral legitimacy to (potentially) both factions. In fact, the text of SWTE itself provides an excellent example of just such an event, in describing how in 1997, following the killing of seven Israeli schoolgirls by a Jordanian soldier, King Hussein of Jordan went to all seven homes and "knelt before a woman sitting on the floor, took her hand, 4 It is true that for several decades, theorists of forgiveness were nearly unanimous in their willingness to follow Jeffrie Murphy (1988, 2003) as Eisikovits does, and define forgiveness wholly or primarily in terms of the gradual effort, undertaken on moral grounds, to overcome attitudes of resentment and anger. But there are now multiple accounts available which argue convincingly that this definition fails to acknowledge social and performative dimensions to forgiveness beyond a change in reactive attitudes (or the disposition to undergo the same), not to mention plausible cases of morally significant forgiveness in which forgivers did not experience resentment at all, or forgave without renouncing it. Murphy's approach also underestimates the significance of rituals of forgiveness, and the potential importance - to both victim and perpetrator - of changes in behavior and external relationship, rather than deep emotional change. This is especially true in cases of conflict between non-intimates. See, for example, Claudia Card (2002), Glen Pettigrove (2004), Margaret Urban Walker (2006), and Kathryn Norlock (2009). 5 I agree with Eisikovits that this particular list of arguments for forgiveness (that it averts revenge, eliminates resentment, acknowledges moral complexity, and respects persons) ranges from inconclusive to undesirable and even incoherent and furthermore, that they are, taken together, uncompelling to say the least. I am less convinced than he is that it also represents a fair sample of arguments for the benefits of forgiveness available in the literature. For instance, when forgiveness is understood more widely to include acts and practices as well as attitudes – such acts and practices, on occasion, contribute to the repair of relationships as well as to the psychological and moral relief of victims and release of perpetrators a variety of concrete and symbolic ways. These contributions to repair and reconciliation are, in particular instances, essential - even if forgiveness does not have the definitive or constitutive role in all instances which would, according to the requirements outlined in SWTE, grant it a place in a general theory of peacemaking. The Review of International Affairs 185 and begged for forgiveness", thereby dissipating potentially violent tension (79). Eisikovits wishes to frame this as an act of political generosity and to explain its impressive reconciling effect in terms of sympathy. I have no problem with this theoretical move. But Eisikovits appears to endorse a framework that appeals to concepts of political generosity and sympathy to the exclusion of forgiveness and other alternatives. To achieve this, he must first define forgiveness narrowly, and thus consider it only as a rival disposition and not a potential complement or subordinate to sympathy. Second, and more worrying, he must also skip over the reported words of the King himself, and the framework in which (again reportedly) those words were heard and taken up. I do not know the exact words the King uttered or even the language in which he spoke them; I am quoting Eisikovits who in turn cites an American newspaper's characterization of the incident. But it does appear that Hussein offered a personal apology and not merely an official statement. A personal apology - uttered in supplication ("begging") and spoken on one's knees while grasping the hand of the addressee - can reasonably be interpreted as a request for forgiveness without significant interpretative intervention. At this point, the admirable faithfulness to the detail and nuance of individual examples that characterizes Eisikovits' approach in SWTE falters.6 I have similar concerns about the treatment of forgetting and, to a lesser extent, recognition: namely, that the decision to discuss them only as potential "competitors' to sympathy affects the discussion of each for the worse, and thus the account as a whole. The description of forgetting seems almost deliberately extreme, for example: surely an appropriate disposition to "forget' need not result in collective amnesia or the even the appearance of such, anymore than a disposition to sympathize requires that former combatants live their lives in constant and reciprocal role-playing, or that they find time to imaginatively engage comprehensively and exhaustively with every aspect of the others' lives. The disposition of sympathy is defined normatively in the pages of SWTE, as a virtue; it is at least possible to conceive of a normatively defined disposition of forgetfulness. 6 Furthermore, insofar as this gesture was offered by Arab royalty and received positively by the individual Israeli families and by a wider Israeli public, it at least suggests that the association between Christianity and forgiveness is not as limiting as Eisikovits implies (34-35). Jacques Derrida chooses to describe the religious heritage of forgiveness as "Abrahamic" rather than Christian (2001), and recent work by David Konstan suggests that the moral concept as it has developed in the west has Hellenistic as well as Judeo-Christian roots (Konstan 2010, forthcoming). 186 The Review of International Affairs The discussion of recognition is the most balanced of the three, but the variants of recognition Eisikovits identifies are still relatively thin.7 I suspect that Eisikovits, while aware of the rich and varied texture of victims' demands, sees them as far too ambitious to be constitutive of any feasible general theory of reconciliation. He is not wrong here - but again, that need not be the end of the story. Once again, appropriate gestures of acknowledgment and recognition may contribute significantly to an atmosphere of political generosity and sympathy, albeit from a less central position in the theory. And crucially, recognizing this supplemental role requires we see them not merely as dispositions, but as acts that can contribute to the same. Finally, this competitive framework obscures several potentially illuminating and fruitful ways in which sympathy may interact and even overlap with all three of its supposed rivals, or each rival with the others. I have already suggested that the example of King Hussein illustrates how an act of forgiveness can be a watershed moment in a longer process of learning to sympathize. The relationship between recognition and forgetting is perhaps equally relevant, though ultimately more a matter of dynamic or dialectical tension than straightforward assistance. It is telling that Eisikovits first notes how "forgetting... is destructive on both the individual and collective level" and that "a government advocating forgetfulness commits the political correlate of suicide" (37) in arguing against a central role for forgetting in reconciliation processes. Then, only a few pages later, he cites with approval the African proverb, "truth is good, but not all truth is good to say" and admits that sometimes, an ongoing search for joint narratives and mutually acceptable histories can be destructive of peace, in arguing against a similar place for recognition (40). The irony here is that while each argument appears to contradict the other, in fact both points are well taken - but this is hard to see if these concepts are subjected to a zero-sum game. My issue with this competitive framework is partly a question of rhetorical strategy. Throughout the early stages of Chapter Two, Eisikovits varies between a stronger and a weaker version of his claim in defense of sympathy. The weaker 7 Eisikovits rightly notes that for many victims, a central demand is for "the harm done to them to be acknowledged" (38) but the depth and content of this acknowledgment goes well beyond both the "weak' variant ("that she has been wronged") and the "strong' variant ("that you have wronged her") Eisikovits identifies. Those who theorize acknowledgment and the communicative gestures that typically express it - apology, reparation, and memorial, for example - emphasize that, like forgiveness, acknowledgement has multiple dimensions: these include making sense of what exactly was done, the particular nature of its wrongfulness, the texture and phenomenology of its impact on the victims' bodies, lives and communities, the appropriate determination of responsibilities for that wrongfulness, and evidence that those responsible have heard and appreciated the victim's narrative. The Review of International Affairs 187 version is that, unlike sympathy, forgiveness, forgetting and recognition are neither necessary nor sufficient for reconciliation. The stronger claim, of course, is that all three are actually detrimental or destructive to reconciliation, in all or most cases. Eisikovits needs only to make the weaker claim to support his theory, and the theory, once defended, can still easily make room for the other concepts in less central and decidedly contingent roles, relegated to subordinate or supplemental positions. Put simply, for sympathy to be best, forgiveness etc. need not be bad, only less good. Yet he appears to argue for the stronger claim for most of the discussion, as when, for example, arguments against forgiveness are presented as generally conclusive, or a single reason for forgiveness that holds water fails to be found. Similarly, forgetfulness is described rather starkly as "political suicide'. Only the discussion of recognition allows for nuanced conclusions regarding its desirability. The strategic and rhetorical appeal of the stronger claim is understandable, and it is petty (at best) to chide a particular theorist for failing to give every related concept the same attention as that paid to the cornerstone of the theory - I know that I and others who write on forgiveness, for example, have certainly fallen embarrassingly short of anything like the clarity and nuance with which Eisikovits defines and describes reconciliation, although clarifying reconciliation is certainly relevant to our purposes. In part, the very virtues of SWTE that make it vulnerable on this front; the terrain-clearing activity found in Chapter Two stands out because it is the exception to a general rule, in this case, sensitivity to nuance and also a degree of subtlety and even ambiguity - consider, for example, the modesty of political generosity described on pp. 75-76, the initial adjustment to Smith's conclusion that sympathy always results in moral approval, or the distinction between sympathy and affinity to be found on pp. 12-13. The problematic framework in which forgiveness et al are discussed is important because it raises an interesting meta-theoretical question, one that is perhaps particularly relevant to theorists of conflict and its resolution, given the notoriously messy and ungoverned nature of the subject matter.8 As I began my remarks by noting, Eisikovits' purpose in SWTE is to provide a theory of reconciliation that meets certain criteria, which he lays out. And these criteria reveal a great deal about what he thinks theory, in general, ought to be able to 8 Much of the terrain covered by moral and political philosophy - concerning, as it does, the social relationships and behaviors of human beings - is messy. The areas of transitional and historical justice are perhaps particularly so, however, as they concern those moments when familiar structures (legitimate government, rule of law, recognizable institutions of justice) are tragically absent, and also span individual and group wrongdoing, cultural, historical and religious identities. Furthermore, theorists in these areas have been more willing to consider the personal, emotional and relational aspects of the moral and political problems that emerge. Suffice to say, they operate squarely in the realm of the non-ideal. 188 The Review of International Affairs do. A theory must be clear enough and sufficiently definitive to offer an appropriate explanatory story of the phenomenon in question. And the same time, a successful theory must perform a delicate balancing act between generality and particularity – a good theory applies widely, but the abstractions of generality inevitably risk doing damage to the subtlety and nuance of the particulars. In his initial desiderata, Eisikovits appears to favor reach over detail, emphasizing the need for generality. Indeed, this orientation towards generality explains the desire to find one central disposition, itself both necessary and sufficient, whose operations can account for the complex, messy and slippery informal elements of reconciliation and whose activation results in a picture of reconciliation that is simultaneously desirable, feasible and recognizable as reconciliation. At the same time, in the execution of his theory and its defense, Eisikovits demonstrates himself to be remarkably appreciative of particularity, in his reliance upon and choice of concrete individual examples, for instance, and in his analysis and use of the same – not to mention his affinity for the moral perception theories of Lawrence Blum and Iris Murdoch (83-86). For the most part, the ensuing balancing act between generality and particularity is navigated deftly; the opening section of Chapter Two was the only point at which it resulted in tension. Indeed, I wonder if ultimately, Eisikovits sees room in an expanded version of this theory for some more of the particularities of reconciliation, or reconciliation(s). Of interest to me, for example, are the processes and practices that, while perhaps not definitive of reconciliation in the way that the two sets of factors described in SWTE are (i.e. formal elements + the inculcation of sympathy), can nevertheless be found with sufficient regularity to be considered at the least characteristic or typical, and whose recurring place in multiple instances of successful reconciliation goes beyond the coincidental. I suspect that several of the so-called competitors dismissed in Chapter Two might find their way back into an expanded version of this theory. If they did, I could look forward to learning a great deal from the insightful, precise and careful analysis I am almost certain they would be given, just as I have learned from the analyses of sympathy and political generosity offered in the present text, and the vast and knowledgeable array of examples provided along the way. Sympathizing with the Enemy does an utterly commendable job of providing a theoretical framework that deserves to be taken seriously in ongoing conversations about reconciliation. Bibliography 1. Card, Claudia, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002. The Review of International Affairs 189 2. Derrida, Jacques, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, Routledge, New York, 2001. 3. Konstan, David, Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010. 4. Murphy, Jeffrie G., and Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988. 5. Murphy, Jeffrie G., Getting Even: Forgiveness and its Limits, Oxford University Press, New York, 2003. 6. Norlock, Kathryn, Forgiveness from a Feminist Perspective, Lexington Books, Lanham, 2008. 7. Pettigrove, Glen A., The Forgiveness We Speak: The Illocutionary Force of Forgiving. Southern Journal of Philosophy 42 (3,) 2004, pp. 371-392. 8. Walker, Margaret Urban, Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations after Wrongdoing, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006.