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Why “I’m sorry you feel that way” is not an apology

Brian Otieno Ouma Fellow
· 4 replies
Meaning & languageAfrican & AfricanaAnalyticJewishDesmond TutuJ. L. Austin#apology#forgiveness#restorative-justice#speech-acts
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This term our prison reading class ran a short course on restorative justice. Part of it was writing a letter to the person you harmed. The letters were not meant to be sent unless the other person agreed, but the drafting was the point.

What struck me is how many first drafts described regret without apologising. "I feel very bad about what happened." "I am sorry you were hurt." "Things went too far that night." All true, perhaps. None of them is an apology.

The speech-act people have a name for what is missing. An apology is an act, not a report of a feeling, and it has conditions. It seems to need, at least:

  • naming the wrong, as a wrong;
  • taking it as yours ("I did", not "it happened");
  • addressing the person wronged;
  • some commitment about the future, even if only implied.

"I'm sorry you feel that way" fails the first two. It reports a feeling and relocates the problem into the hearer.

The harder question for me is the condition Austin called uptake. Can an apology come off if the person wronged refuses to receive it? Some of the men I teach want forgiveness as a kind of receipt for the apology. I keep telling them those are two different acts by two different people, but I am not sure I can justify that properly. What do others think?

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4 replies

  1. Eliana Halpern

    Fellow

    Maimonides is very clear on your last point, Brian. In his laws of repentance he says that wrongs between people are not atoned for until the wronged person is appeased; you must go and ask. If they refuse, you go again with others, up to three times, and after that the burden passes to the one who refuses. So the apology is a real act even without forgiveness; forgiveness is the other person's act, and it is not owed on demand. That is your distinction, with a limit attached.

  2. Andrés Zuluaga

    Fellow

    In Colombia, state apologies are where the conditions get tested. Victims' groups here have sometimes rejected official apologies not because the words were wrong but because the speaker lacked standing: the person apologising was not the one responsible, or the act was staged for cameras. In Austin's terms, the procedure was there but the right people were not.

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  3. Thandeka Mokoena

    Fellow

    A South African note, since people often assume our Truth and Reconciliation Commission required apologies. It did not. Amnesty depended on full disclosure, not on remorse. Many victims found that hard, and Archbishop Tutu's hope that disclosure would open the way to forgiveness was a hope, not a condition. Your men might find it useful to see that a whole country separated "telling the truth" from "saying sorry" from "being forgiven", and that each one mattered differently.

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    1. Brian Otieno Ouma

      Fellow

      Thandeka, that is exactly the separation I needed. Three acts: disclosure, apology, forgiveness. Only the first two belong to the person who did the harm. I will use this next week.

      Helpful · 3