The Unforgivables Curses

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 95061

Coming in late and going back to Del's initial post:

> So  now I'm wondering : how do the Unforgivables work and 
>why  are they  they called so ?
> 
> Do they work like any other curse, or do they require some evil 
> intent ?
> 
> Why give them such a grand name as Unforgivable ? I'm really 
 bothered by that. Unforgivable implies that there's no 
redemption  possible. Why is that so ? In most Western 
societies, even murder  can be "redeemed" : whoever has 
purged their jail sentence for  murder is supposed to have been 
"purified" of it, for lack of a  better term. They can go back to 
society, and live a "normal" life.<<

First, this is not universal in Western thought. For instance, 
there is a Jewish teaching that no sin is fully atoned for until you 
have made peace with the person you wronged. Since a 
murderer cannot do this, he must never regard himself as fully 
redeemed, even if he serves a punishment. Perhaps something 
similar applies to the Unforgivables: not only to avada kedavra, 
but to crucio and imperio. Maybe the wizards don't think it's 
humanly possible  to forgive someone who used imperius or 
cruciatus on you.

  As some have said, this is a religious question, and the 
wizards don't seem to have religons, except for   what seem to 
be relics of Christianity. Which makes me wonder,  when the 
Muggle and the Wizarding worlds divided, did the wizards come 
to regard religion in exactly the same light as the Muggles  
regard magic? 

But I don't think we'll ever come up with a principled definition of 
either the Unforgivable curses or the Dark Arts that accords with 
what the wizards do in practice, because they are motivated by 
venal and practical considerations as well as moral ones.

In a society that tolerates institutions like Durmstrang and 
Knockturn Alley, it's probably difficult to reach a consensus on 
what should be banned. I imagine that the dark wizard families 
like the Blacks and the Malfoys support legislation against the 
Unforgiveables for the same reason that the Slytherin Quidditch 
team is not agitating to have the concept of fouls eliminated. 
They're all in favor of the rules, as long as *they* can get away 
with breaking them. 

Likewise, there are probably a whole bunch of curses that 
wizards like Dumbledore would never use, but he  wouldn't  want 
to give the Ministry more excuses to turn innocent people over to 
the Dementors either. 

Pippin