"Forgiving another means clearing the guilty account of the offender, but it does not eliminate the demands of justice because it does not mean capitulating to evil, but rather recognizing and rejecting it", said Mariano Crespo, a researcher on the 'Natural Law and Practical Rationality' project at the ICS, University of Navarra, during a meeting of the Ethics and Society Forum organized by the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS). Sergio Sánchez-Migallón, dean of the Ecclesiastical Faculty of Philosophy, also spoke at the seminar.

"Forgiveness is only possible when we distinguish between person and action. This is its ultimate condition. If we consider he who has inflicted an evil on us only as an offender, if we are not able to perceive that his person is not limited to his action, it is very hard to forgive."

"Repentance is essential for forgiveness"

"The main helpmate for forgiveness is the demonstration of repentance," he said. Crespo added that forgiveness belongs to everyday moral life and "affects all of one's life". He considers, though, that "analyzing it is difficult because it is not easy to forgive."

The Ethics and Society Forum is a series of sessions addressing questions related to the improvement of community life and society, as much from the perspective of ethics as in legal theory, economics, political and social philosophy, or the social sciences in general.
The activity is open to all university researchers, professors and postgraduate students. The purpose of the Ethics & Society Forum is threefold: it aims to act as a vehicle that disseminates the work carried out by the ICS among the entire university community, to promote interdisciplinary dialogue, and to enable researchers to receive valuable feedback on their work from other experts.