The required process involves six elements: recovering self-esteem, fully appreciating the nature and wrongness of the wrongdoing, acknowledging feelings of anger and grief as basic and legitimate, not withholding what she needs to say or express to the wrongdoer, reassessing the nature of her relationship with the wrongdoer, and determining whether to seek restitution.

What, then, is forgiveness according to Butler? Griswold claims that Butler’s forgiveness involves two aspects: (1) the forswearing of revenge; and (2) a moderation of resentment to an appropriate level (2007: 36). Yet according to Ernesto Garcia, “Butlerian forgiveness simply amounts to being virtuously resentful by avoiding both excessive and deficient resentment against our wrongdoers” (2011: 17). On Garcia’s interpretation, Butlerian forgiveness seems to require no emotional change at all—one can be virtuously resentful without ever having been viciously resentful. It is unclear whether Gr...