Well, good afternoon, my friends, in reason, thought, virtue and consideration, we are here.

We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.

And we're going to talk about forgiveness.

Now, of course, forgiveness is a Christian concept.

It's treated singularly in Christianity as a whole.

And it's a different, obviously, than most other religions and so on.

But it is a philosophical question.

It's a philosophical question about forgiveness.

When is it appropriate?

When is it excessive?

Is it subject to the Aristotelian mean? Too little forgiveness and

you're hard-hearted, too much forgiveness and you're pathologically altruistic and your entire society

caves in from excessive sympathy? And I'm going to chat for a little while and then I'd love to take

your questions and corrections. Of course, you know, it's a perfectly reasonable question to say,

why on earth what I listened to, Steph? You know, that's a good question. And I mean,

hopefully because I make good arguments, just for those of you who are looking for more specific

background, I was raised in England as a Christian. I went to a Christian boarding school for a number of years,

and I've read the Bible cover-to-cover. When I worked up north, I had a lot of time in a tent,

and I read the Bible cover-to-cover. And I've also taken theology at the graduate school level,

so obviously I'm not any kind of groundbreaking

or earth-shaking expert,

but I have studied this stuff quite a bit.

...