Reconsidering Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. Christopher Peys

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СКАЧАТЬ two strands of forgiveness within the Christian tradition: the supernatural, unconditional and the human, conditional forms of this notion. In writing of the former, he highlights the “radical”³⁹ character of forgiveness that is articulated repeatedly throughout the New Testament: the infinite, unmitigated form of forgiving related to the unconditional imperative to love one’s neighbor (agape). Like the unqualified, unquantifiable conception of love found in—for instance—Jesus’s Parable of the Prodigal Son,⁴⁰ an unconditional form of forgiveness is associated with what Derrida calls a “hyperbolic ethics,” which is an ethics that “tends to push the exigency to the limit and beyond the limit of the possible.”⁴¹ A hyperbolic ethics is an “ethics beyond ethics,” for it “carries itself beyond laws, norms or any obligation.”⁴² This pure form of forgiveness, if there is such a thing at all, is found in the realm of the hyperbolic, and it demands “the unconditional, gracious, infinite, aneconomic forgiveness granted to the guilty as guilty, without counterpart, even to those who do not repent or ask forgiveness.”⁴³ From this perspective, forgiveness is not characterized by pragmatism, proportionality, or the execution of a set of well-defined procedures. Rather, it possesses a certain unfathomable, unbounded, and unconditional quality that can only be understood, if it is even possible to understand at all, as a hyperbolic notion without quantifiable limits or conditional requirements.

      By contrast, “conditional” forgiveness refers to that which is considered and commonly practiced within the human realm. For example, conditional forgiveness is associated with the semantics and the logic that informs the confession-forgiveness dynamic, as found in the Catholic confessional booth. In this space, a sinner confesses, repents, and apologizes for their sins as a means of asking for forgiveness from a priest, who—as a representative of God—has the power to absolve these indiscretions in return for a penance. For Derrida, this so-called forgiveness, which can be granted only after a wrongdoer satisfies certain conditions, cannot be understood as “forgiveness” at all. This is a point that he demonstrates in three primary ways.

      First, a Derridean conception of “pure” forgiveness can take place only between two singularities—the wronged and the wrongdoer—and, thus, “as soon as a third party intervenes, one can speak of amnesty, reconciliation, reparation, etc., but certainly not of pure forgiveness.”⁴⁴ Therefore, the presence and intervention of a party other than the victim and the perpetrator—such as a priest, judge, or state legislator—eliminates forgiveness from this interaction. Within such spaces, one can only speak of reconciliation, restorative justice, retributive justice, or amnesty, but not forgiveness.

      Second, Derrida contends that conditional forgiveness, as found in the confessional booth, can be construed as a form of reconciliation, justice, or even something else entirely, precisely because it is the product of a specific type of transaction. Because this process may demand truth-telling, call for an apology, require repentance, include a promise not to re-commit the wrong and/or, ultimately, may depend upon a penance in order for “forgiveness” to be granted, this act is characterized by a formulaic process and a certain negotiation between parties, which—Derrida argues—erodes the purity of forgiveness. Although he recognizes the utility of such a conditional process of reparation—especially as it pertains to the political realm and the pursuit of national reconciliation in the wake of sociopolitical conflict—he takes issue with the conditional logic of the exchange. He argues that a “pure” forgiveness cannot be qualified by certain terms and conditions.

      Without delving too deeply into Derrida’s understanding of gifts and the relational process of gift giving, it is necessary at this point to highlight how an unconditional forgiveness is a gift truly given. That is, as he writes, “forgiveness must be a gracious gift, without exchange and without condition.”⁴⁵ Originally reflecting upon the idea of forgiveness in his native language of French, and therefore, on the French word pardon,⁴⁶ Derrida underscores how the French root word, don (ultimately from the Latin, donum, meaning “gift”), refers to the giving or donating of a gift; this is a point he uses as a means of illustrating the link between the notions of forgiveness and gifts. The logics of both these two concepts are aporetic in nature, for they are each characterized by the paradoxicality of the unconditional and the conditional, whereby a “pure” forgiveness and a “pure” gift must be “good,”⁴⁷ or—alternatively stated—be given without conditions and be free of a sovereignty that could establish a hierarchical relation of power between the donor and donee of this gift. According to Derrida, gifts purely and truly given are a type of “goodness,” or a “giving goodness,” whose “source remains inaccessible [to both parties].”⁴⁸ Stemming from a so-called goodness that is only accessible in terms of the “hyperbolic,” gifts—and thus forgiveness—must be given entirely without condition, which is to say, their being given must defy the logic of reciprocity. Describing a gift, Derrida states:

      It must not circulate, it must not be exchanged, it must not in any case be exhausted, as a gift, by the process of exchange, by the movement of circulation of the circle in the form of return to the point of departure. If the figure of the circle is essential to economics, the gift must remain aneconomic.⁴⁹

      There can be no exchange or transactionality with regard to “pure” (for)giving, for the “goodness” of such a deed exceeds the conceptual bounds imposed by any logical and semantic conditions. Although Arendt does not theorize forgiveness in such transcendental, hyper-ethical terms, it is significant that she too emphasizes that acts of forgiveness are “aneconomic,” since it is an action that interrupts vicious cycles of violence and counterviolence. The “gift,” to foreshadow my subsequent discussion, is the new beginning that the act of forgiving instigates in both time and space.

      Closely related to his observations about the gift-like nature of unconditional forgiveness is Derrida’s third criticism of conditional “forgiveness”: its teleological character, whereby forgiving is a means of achieving some end goal. Arguing that a “pure” forgiveness must not seek any predetermined end, Derrida is critical of how—for instance—the active pursuit of a reconciled relationship between actors, and/or a national healing, directly challenges the “infinite” quality of a “pure,” unconditional forgiveness. Because forgiveness—in its “pure” form—is unending, unfathomable, and thought to exceed human capability, it cannot serve as a means to an end. Again, Arendt similarly suggests that forgiveness cannot be considered or understood in utilitarian, instrumental terms because it is directly related to her theory of freedom, which is explored in chapters 2 and 4. In an effort to illustrate how forgiveness must be non-teleological and non-utilitarian, Derrida writes:

      The language of forgiveness, at the service of determined finalities, [is] anything but pure [. . .] each time forgiveness is at the service of a finality, be it noble and spiritual (atonement or redemption, reconciliation, salvation), each time that it aims to re-establish a normality (social, national, political, psychological) by a work of mourning, by some therapy or ecology of memory, then the “forgiveness” is not pure—nor is its concept.⁵⁰

      Summarizing this point, Ernesto Verdeja suggests that as “forgiveness becomes instrumentalized, it is drained of its transformative power and simply becomes a tool in a larger political and social project.”⁵¹ Unconditional forgiveness must therefore remain a “moral action in its own right,” and it must “eschew any telos of reconciliation.”⁵² It must not aim at, according to Derrida, a “finalized” forgiveness, since such a predetermined “forgiveness” is not forgiveness at all, as it is a “political strategy or a psycho-therapeutic economy.”⁵³ Unconditional forgiveness, then, is non-instrumental and serves no end, while the predetermined purpose-driven nature of a conditional “forgiveness” is related to an “economy of reparation” that facilitates the production of some end state.⁵⁴

      Although Derrida calls into question the logistics, transactional character, and telos of a conditional “forgiveness,” he highlights that this conception is indissociable from the supernatural, unconditional СКАЧАТЬ