Reconsidering Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. Christopher Peys

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СКАЧАТЬ but nevertheless linked to the infinite, unfathomable understanding of unconditional forgiveness. Derrida argues that because unconditional forgiveness forms the essence of conditional forgiveness and because it is impossible to conceptualize pure forgiveness in human terms, the two forms of forgiveness cannot be dissociated from one another. As he states:

      The unconditional and the conditional are, certainly, absolutely heterogeneous, and this forever, on either side of a limit, but they are also indissociable. There is in the movement, in the motion of unconditional forgiveness, an inner exigency of becoming-effective, manifest, determined, and, in determining itself, bending to conditionality.⁵⁵

      Derrida argues that without its unconditional form, forgiveness is not a comprehensible concept. However, he also contends that because the actualization of a preternatural, “pure” forgiveness must assume a semantic—and therefore human—form (whether it be in the form of a spoken/written language, actions shared between parties, or some other exchange of meaning), the unconditional is inseparable from the conditional. It is impossible to think of, understand, grant or, ultimately, experience forgiveness without appealing simultaneously to both the “pure” and “impure” conceptions of this notion, even though it is only the “pure,” transcendental understanding of this idea—if such a thing exists at all—that can be truly understood as the unconditional “gift” of which he speaks.

      B. Forgiveness and the Unforgivable

      In addition to the aporetic relationship between the heterogeneous indissociability of the conditional and the unconditional, Derrida uncovers a second aporia that intersects with this initial paradox: that true forgiveness only forgives the unforgivable. In this regard, Derrida takes issue with the positions adopted by Arendt and thinkers like Vladimir Jankélévitch (1903–1985), both of whom focus on the atrocities committed during the Holocaust and both of whom affirm that the imprescriptibility of crimes committed inhibits the forgivability of such offenses. Jankélévitch famously claims that the act of “pardoning died in the death camps.”⁵⁶ He describes the atrocities of the Holocaust as “metaphysical crimes,” and he asserts that the “ontological wickedness” of the Nazis exceeded the scope of legal prescription precisely because their efforts aimed at the eradication of the “human essence or, if you will, the “hominity” of human beings in general.”⁵⁷ Like Jankélévitch, Arendt observes that when the concentration camps became “laboratories where changes in human nature [were] tested,” and when totalitarian regimes carried out the seemingly impossible task of rendering masses of people superfluous, the Nazis “discovered without knowing that there are crimes which men can neither punish nor forgive.”⁵⁸ She claims that “when the impossible was made possible it became the unpunishable, unforgivable absolute evil.”⁵⁹ Accordingly, Arendt writes:

      Men are unable to forgive what they cannot punish and that they are unable to punish what has turned out to be unforgivable [. . .] we can neither punish nor forgive such offenses and that they therefore transcend the realm of human affairs.⁶⁰

      While Arendt’s position evolved over time, as the people of the world began to develop a political and legal language, or means of talking about and responding to genocidal atrocities, the crimes of the Holocaust were, initially, impossible to forgive because they defied the possibility of human understanding and, ultimately, humankind’s power to levy punishments. For both Arendt and Jankélévitch, then, the crimes against humanity committed under the reign of totalitarian governments originally marked a boundary between what is forgivable and what is unforgivable: delineating between the realm of human affairs and the realm of the preternatural.

      Suggesting that the possibility of punishment cannot serve as the indicator of what is forgivable, Derrida takes issue with both Arendt and Jankélévitch’s positions. Derrida argues that the unforgivable character of a crime is that which, paradoxically, makes it possible to forgive. It is the unfathomable nature of unpunishable crimes that may be capable of being forgiven. In this sense, forgiveness only becomes possible at the point of the unforgivable, which—for both Arendt and Jankélévitch—are imprescriptible wrongs that exceed the bounds of human punishment. As Derrida summarizes:

      Is [the unforgivable] not, in truth, the only thing to forgive? [. . .] If one is only prepared to forgive what appears forgivable, what the Church calls “venial sins,” then the very idea of forgiveness would disappear. If there is something to forgive it would be what in religious language is called mortal sin, the worst, the unforgivable crime or harm. From which comes the aporia, which can be described in its dry and implacable formality without mercy: forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable [. . .] there is only forgiveness, if there is any, where there is the unforgivable [. . .] forgiveness must announce itself as impossibility itself. It can only be possible in doing the impossible.⁶¹

      Because punishments are practices levied by human institutions within human organizations, it must, by necessity, be possible for people to understand, issue, and administer them. In this sense, the prescriptibility of a crime is the antithesis of human impossibility because punishment—as a legal and/or sociopolitical practice—is inherently possible to enact within the human realm. Punishable crimes are those types of wrongs that cannot be forgiven because forgiveness—where the act of forgiving is true and pure—is infinite, unfathomable, and unconditional. For Derrida, “It is only against the unforgivable, and thus on the scale without scale, of a certain inhumanity of the inexpiable, against the monstrosity of radical evil that forgiveness, if there is such a thing, measures itself.”⁶² Forgiveness, from Derrida’s perspective, is therefore possible only in instances where punishment is impossible, for it is only those crimes which are impossible to fathom and punish that are worthy of the infinite, unconditionality of forgiveness. This foundational aspect of his understanding effectively means that forgiveness is fundamentally an other-worldly notion, an idea which I endeavor to re-world as a public, political practice of care.

      

      C. The Power of Forgiveness

      In asserting that forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable, Derrida not only demonstrates that forgiving emerges with the impossible, but also uncovers how forgiveness relates to power. In challenging Arendt and Jankélévitch’s positions on the nature of unforgivable crimes, Derrida questions the human power to punish—or the human capability to make decisions and administer judgments—which he contends “supposes a power, a force, a sovereignty.”⁶³ Each time forgiveness is effectively exercised, it supposes some sovereign power: the ability of a single party to demonstrate their power over others by way of a judgment that bestows a verdict upon a person or group of persons.⁶⁴ This display of power, understood in a Weberian sense of one party assuming power over another, is not characteristic of “pure” forgiveness because unconditional forgiving is related to a “hyperbolic ethic” that transcends the trappings of human “laws, norms, and obligations,” as well as the coercive dynamics of power that develop when individuals and groups have the ability to determine the fate of others. As a form of domination, “power over” is an aspect of human exchange that erodes the purity of forgiveness by introducing “sovereignty” into the transactional process of judgment.

      This issue of “sovereignty” is significant for Derrida’s analysis of forgiveness because the dynamic of one party holding power over another can transform forgiving into a “poison” or a “weapon.”⁶⁵ Referring to his understanding of gifts and the act of gift giving, Derrida asserts that forgiveness is associated with a cycle of giving—arguing that giving is also a form of taking. Because he contends that to give is to set in motion a process of exchange, whereby the act of gifting someone something also invites a reciprocal action, whether it be a simple verbal expression of gratitude or a more grandiose gesture, he argues that there is a violent economy associated with the giving of gifts. Regarding this as a vicious cycle, Derrida posits that true gifts do not foster relations of exchange, when he writes that if there is a gift, “the given of the gift, [. . .] must not СКАЧАТЬ