Sorry but I’m not responsible ... about that

John Howard’s thinking is a little skewed if he thinks he can not give a sympathetic apology for the stolen generation for which he is not responsible but he can for an interest rate rise for which he is.

What is an apology? Firstly, all apologies do not actually express anything in the way that a statement like ‘it is raining’ does. There is no substantive statement which can be true or false contained within an apology, though it does connote something. It represents the performance of an action, and only if there is a social entity (a language group) who accepts its convention. Apologies are a kind of utterance which the philosopher of language J.L. Austin termed ‘performative statements’, which also include promises, another slippery area for Howard. Austin uses as an example of a performative a bride and groom saying ‘I do’ to issue as complete the action of marriage. Outside of its convention, the words ‘I do’ fail to actually state anything at all. As such, performed out of context or outside its social field, such a statement fails.

The accepted convention of an apology is that it marks the action of regret for something for which you are responsible. It is a statement of fact whether someone is responsible for, say six successive interest rate rises, and this is not dependant on the performance of an apology, but the apology can only be performed if there is something for which the agent feels remorse for. The apology is not a statement of guilt, but can only be performed where there is guilt.

The second condition for a performative: it must be sincere. If it is not, then it has not been realized and it fails. In the case of an apology, you must be sorry for the outcomes or performance of the action you are apologizing for or else it is not an apology.

So what is a symbolic apology? It is an apology where the apologizer takes symbolic responsibility in cases of indirect guilt. For example, a government apologizing for the actions of their constituents or for the actions of a former government. We accept a convention that if Howard apologized for the stolen generation, he is not personally responsible, and neither are most of those he is apologizing on behalf of. I need not spell out how Howard or myself are the inheritors of that guilt as that should be pretty straight forward, given we are Australians living under the Australian government, and not the victims of this injustice.

A sympathetic apology is simply not an apology at all, being instead an expression of sympathy and as such allows for misleading non-apologies to be abused by politicians. The word ‘sorry’ need not always be an apology, as context and convention is what determines the outcome of statements and may be included as part of an expression of sympathy. A sincere apology entails some level of sympathy or else there would not be regret. As such any true apology is a sympathetic apology.

Howard may well be sincere in his sympathy for the harm caused by interest rate rises, but he has not apologized for them. This is bit of a turkey slap as he is culpable for those rises, demonstrated by his slogan ‘Go for Growth’, tax cuts despite inflation concerns and that interest rates have risen considerably since 2002, and consistently about every 15 weeks for the last 2 years. As such Howard’s ‘sympathetic apology’ for the hurt caused by his inability to keep interest rates low is in fact a failed apology as he was not sincere in expressing remorse for something for which he is responsible when he said the words ‘I am sorry’. He breached the conventions of apologizing. Yet he is apparently sympathetic. Something seems a bit wrong here Mr Howard, and given this abuse of linguistic convention, surely he could be ‘sympathetic’ for other more grievous problems.