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Originally Posted by traceur
That is almost never true for the people you've actually hurt, who unlike you or the people who empathize with you, are not in a position to continue life pretending that their own experience doesn't exist. Under some circumstances they might prefer it stay buried under a rug, but that's not exactly forgiving you either.
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Does it really matter whether the person you've hurt forgives you? If you're attempting to be super objective about quantifying the damage you did, then yes, empathy towards you is irrelevant, but it's equally irrelevant if the victim holds a lifelong furious grudge against you.
We can do our best to make morality objective, but it will never be completely so--maybe you broke the guy's arm, but that kept him away from the vacation where he was going to accidentally fall off a cliff. You helped the old lady across the street, but the short delay in traffic meant that the sports car was speeding around the corner just as the little kid toddled out into the road. Sometimes it's not about getting empathy from others where none is deserved, it's about having empathy for yourself for being a meaningless ape in the vast universe.