Forgiveness?

Image by Anselm Kiefer

April 22, 2009

First question (approximately 4 pages): Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition asserts, “Men are unable to forgive what they cannot punish.” First, explain why she says so. Second, explain whether or not Jankélévitch (1), Derrida (2) and Ricœur (3) agree with her. Third, comment on this assertion of Hannah Arendt: do you agree with her? Why or why not?). Thus, this question comprises five parts. (I, II.1, II.2, II.3, III)

Second question (approximately 4 pages): Ricœur mentions that it can be difficult to ask, to give, and to receive the word of forgiveness. First, how does Ricœur consider that it may nonetheless be possible? What gives us the courage to ask, to give, and to receive the word of forgiveness? Second, what do you think of this? Answer by focusing first on Ricœur’s explanations, and then in a second part, develop your own argumentation. Do not forget to distinguish the two poles of forgiveness (the guilty asking for forgiveness and the victim who is forgiving).

Third question (approximately 3 pages): Does forgiving involve forgetting? Develop your point of view by demonstrating the different points at stake with such a question and by referring, when necessary, to the different authors we analyzed.

Comparing Arendt, Jankelevit, Derrida, and Ricoeur

Hannah Arendt asserts that every act begins a series of effects that are neither predictable nor reversible (Arendt, 236); and unless we wish to be bound responsible by the irreversible and unpredictable consequences of (as little as) one action, we need to find a remedy able to undo “the deeds of the past” (Arendt, 237). This remedy is Arendt’s forgiveness. Because it depends on plurality (Arendt, 237), the existence of the forgiver and the forgiven as two distinct individuals, forgiveness is limited[1] to human affairs and thus, by nature, is a humanly capable act – as opposed to an exclusively divine miracle from God (Arendt, 239). It is important to note that Arendt’s forgiveness applies only to acts where the consequences were unknowable to the actor (Arendt, 239). Quoting Jesus of Nazareth, Arendt says that (within the teachings of Jesus) “the reason for the insistence on a duty to forgive is clearly ‘for they know not what they do’ and it does not apply to the extremity of crime and willed evil” (Arendt, 239). Forgiveness essentially allows us to be released from that which we do unknowingly (Arendt, 240). Therefore, the opposite of forgiveness is that which not only continues to bind us to those unknowable consequences, but propels a whole new set of unintended and harmful consequences:  vengeance (Arendt, 240). Vengeance frees neither the victim nor the perpetrator from the consequences of the original act, but rather rebinds them in a new cycle (Arendt, 241). The alternative to forgiveness is punishment and they’re related by their ability to undo the original act and end the seemingly endless cycle of unintended harmful consequences. It is within this framework that Arendt makes the statement that “men are unable to forgive what they cannot punish and that they are unable to punish what has turned out to be unforgivable” (Arendt, 241). In other words, (a) both punishment and forgiveness undoes the act and frees the victim and the perpetrator from the past and (b) therefore that which is impossible to undo, in human affairs, is both unpunishable and unforgivable. On Arendt’s account – with reference to Jesus’ teachings[2] – willed evil and crime[3] are unforgivable, and unpunishable, in human affairs – we simply do not have the power to separate the burden of the consequences from the persons (perpetrator and victim alike) affected in these circumstances.

Vladimir Jankelevit agrees to Arendt’s criteria in identifying a willed evil (as separate from an unknowable byproduct) and, with conviction, asserts that there is neither punishment nor forgiveness for this nature of crime. In Should We Pardon Them?, Jankelevit passionately labels the acts committed by the Nazi Party, and more or less the entire German people (Jankelevit, 565), against the Jewish people as ‘crimes against humanity’ (Jankelevit, 555) – separate from pillaging, bombing (Jankelevit, 560), colonialism (Jankelevit, 556), and other “[atrocities] of war” (Jankelevit, 561). The distinction that sets the Holocaust and specifically the crimes committed at Auschwitz and Treblinka apart from war crimes in general, the reason they are ‘crimes against humanity’ and the reason that they are unpunishable and unforgivable, are one in the same: the consequences of the crimes were exactly as intended by its perpetrators – Jews were massacred not as a means to an end[4] but rather on the principle that they should not exist as human beings period (Jankelevit, 555). “It was the very being of humanity, esse, that racial genocide attempted to annihilate in the suffering flesh of these millions of martyrs” (Jankelevit, 555). It is because the Holocaust was “doctrinally founded, philosophically explained, methodically prepared, and systematically perpetrated” (Jankelevit, 564) that it is in direct antithesis with Arendt’s criteria for forgivable actions. Juxtaposing Arendt’s reference to Jesus of Nazareth, Jankelevit proclaims: “Father, do not forgive them, for they know precisely what they do” (Jankelevit, 564). To this respect, Jankelevit finds it impossible to measure the quantitative magnitude of this nature of crime and thus also is the proportional, or appropriate, punishment impossible to determine. Crimes against humanity are imprescriptible (Jankelevit, 556); they are so extreme, so ‘radically evil’, that they are unpunishable and unforgivable – the consequences of these willful actions are eternal (Jankelevit, 572) and so they are impossible to undo. In this respect, Jankelevit agrees with Arendt that that which is unpunishable is also unforgivable.

Derrida, in explicit contrast to both Arendt and Jankelevit (Derrida, 36-37), brings a new[5] perspective on both the symmetry between punishment and forgiveness (Derrida, 37), and the process and reason behind forgiving forgivable acts (Derrida, 32-33). Derrida’s forgiveness, in its pure form, is “unconditional [and] without sovereignty” (Derrida, 59). Firstly, he disagrees with the traditional notion, a notion which Jankelevit follows wholeheartedly (Jankelevit, 558), that “forgiveness must have a meaning…[determined through grounds] of salvation, of reconciliation, redemption, atonement, [and] sacrifice” (Derrida, 36). Derrida moves that forgiveness is not, and cannot be because of its unconditional character, the “counterpart to a possible punishment…to the ‘expiable’”( Derrida, 36). That is, the concept of imprescriptible is separate from the concept of unforgivable, as you can sentence the perpetrator to a life-long indictment whilst forgiving him – just as you can “acquit judgment and nevertheless refuse to forgive” (Derrida, 33). Secondly, if an act is unforgivable, and Derrida believes that such acts do exist (Derrida, 32), it is the only type of act that, in truth, “calls for forgiveness” (Derrida, 32). Derrida maintains that there is no point to forgive the forgivable (Derrida, 32) but an unlimited amount of meaning in forgiving the unforgivable – rendering forgiveness possible only when doing the impossible (Derrida, 33). Recall that Arendt’s reason for forgiveness, the freeing of the consequences from both perpetrator and victim, was that it allows men to remain free agents to act again – to “make it possible for life to go on”(Arendt, 240). Derrida, on the other hand, states that if forgiveness is utilized to reestablish normality, then ‘forgiveness’ is not pure (Derrida, 32). The nature of forgiveness itself, and thus also its relationship to punishment, is vastly different for Derrida than it is for Arendt and Jankelevit.

Ricoeur’s analysis of forgiveness focuses on two planes. The first is a vertical plane, “below, the avowal of fault; above, the hymn to forgiveness” (Ricoeur, 457); the second is the horizontal plane in a state of balance, where there exists an exchange between the request and offering of forgiveness (Ricoeur, 459). For Ricoeur, the real purpose for forgiveness is the unbinding of the agent from the action (Ricoeur, 490), to “restore [the] capacity for acting” (Ricoeur, 493). He argues, alongside Derrida, that forgiveness is unconditional, without exception, and without restriction (Ricoeur, 468) – and with this extraordinary nature does forgiveness constitute its unlimited height on the vertical plane. Following this, “forgiveness is directed to the unforgivable or it does not exist” (Ricoeur, 468). Because of its unconditional nature, forgiveness cannot exist merely on a horizontal exchange (as it does in Arendt, which creates the similarity between punishment and forgiveness). Further, whereas punishment “moves the acts back to the actors” (Ricoeur, 473), forgiveness unbinds the act from the actors. Finally, Ricoeur disagrees with Arendt’s statement that “that which is unpunishable is unforgivable”, as forgiveness exists at more than just the intersection of the act and its consequences, it exists at the agent and the act.

The question for me is reduced to whether or not forgiveness can only find meaning in the possibility for punishment and thus reestablishing normality. Indeed, I believe that unconditional forgiveness has its place and time, perhaps not as exclusive a place as Derrida may proclaim, but a small space nonetheless. I feel that, like love, it exists as a possibility for the individual to perform a true expression of will, to forgive without condition and to expect nothing as a result – to forgive just because one chooses to. Therefore, I don’t think that there exists an uncompromising correlation between the unpunishable and the unforgivable. However, unlike Derrida and partially Ricoeur, I argue that most, if not all, of our interactions with forgiveness, among human affairs, are of the type that Arendt argues for – the political type that “makes it possible for life to go on” (Arendt, 240). This latter type of forgiveness goes hand in hand with the possibility of punishment more often than not. My point is that there can, in fact, be exceptions. Perhaps these two types of forgiveness merit separate names for they describe, and amount to, vastly separate notions of responsibility and human capability.

Biblography

Hannah Arendt, “Irreversibility and the power to forgive.” The Human Condition, Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 236-247.

Jacques Derrida, “On Forgiveness.” In On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, transl. by M. Dooley and M. Hughes, with a preface by S. Critchley and R. Kearney, London and New York: Routledge, 2001, 27-60.

Vladimir Jankelevitch, “Should We Pardon Them?” Critical Inquiry, vol. 22, No.3 (Spring 1996), 552-572.

Paul Ricoeur, “Epilogue. Difficult Forgiveness.” Memory, History, Forgetting, transl. by K. Blamey and D. Pellauer, Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004, 457-493, 595-606.

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[1] Arendt uses the term “very dangerous” (Arendt, 238).

[2] “Crime and willed evil are rare, even rarer perhaps than good deeds; according to Jesus, they will be taken care of by God in the Last Judgment, which plays no role whatsoever in life on earth, and the Last Judgment is not characterized by forgiveness but by just retribution” (Arendt, 240).

[3] Or, as Arendt recounts Kant: “radical evil” (Arendt, 241).

[4] Jews were not murdered to end their faith and beliefs, to steal their economy or property, or for political/ideological platforms (Jankelevit , 555).

[5] In terms of this paper – not in terms of the field of study.

Impossible Judgment

Ricoeur, after providing with us the difficulties against forgiveness placed by individual memory, forgetting, guilt, Mitsen, and collective memories (DF, 6-10), maintains that forgiveness exists nevertheless. This knowledge is granted to us by a silent but non-mute hymn[1] and it tells us not exactly of the source of a pure forgiveness, but just that there is forgiveness (DF, 10). Just as there is love, joy, blessing, wisdom, madness, or folly (DF, 10). And through love, being the greatest of eternal things and the height that forgiveness rests on (Epilogue, 468), we excuse the unforgivable: we forgive.

Loosely, the process of forgiveness begins by the guilty first being imputable for his/her actions. Ricoeur insists that, although there is forgiveness – as there is love – the process of forgiving can only happen when there is someone to forgive; and this requires someone accused of something, someone to hold that they are imputable, or the genuine author, of the actions in question (Epilogue, 460). “Imputability constitutes in this respect an integral dimension of what [Ricoeur] is calling the capable human being” (Epilogue, 460); and it is this that allows us to articulate the binding of the action with the agent, which is necessary as forgiveness is the breaking of this bond.

Even at the level of criminal guilt can the spirit of forgiveness can show a sign. In acknowledging that the authors of the acts are separate from the acts themselves, we grant these authors the right to consideration (Epilogue, 473). This manifests in legal intuitions as the right to be innocent until proven guilty, permission to share the stage with the victims in trial, and proper treatment during incarceration (Epilogue, 474). Even as criminals, they retain their basic human rights.

However, forgiving involves disassociating the actor not only from the burden of the consequences (as Arendt proposes) but from guilt itself; forgiveness, ultimately, requires the radical uncoupling between “the effectuation and the capacity that it actualizes…[which means that the] capacity of commitment belonging to the moral subject is not exhausted by its various inscriptions in the affairs of the world” (Epilogue, 490). This separation requires an act of faith, courage to trust, stated in the pairing between forgiveness and repentance (Epilogue, 490). Although they exist in a circular relation, a paradox between that which ‘remains’ – forgiveness – and that which can come to be progressively – repentance (Epilogue, 491), they are key to our ability to ask, give, and receive forgiveness. Ricoeur quotes Kant and mentions that human beings have an “original predisposition to the good” (Epilogue, 492) and perhaps faith in such a concept gives us the power to believe that the restoration of this disposition can be reached; that, in the victim assuming the existence of repentance from the perpetrator and the perpetrator assuming the hymn of pure and unconditional forgiveness from the victim, we can, together in plurality (Epilogue, 487), believe that we are more than our actions (Epilogue, 493).

I agree with Ricoeur that forgiveness is the unbinding between the agent and the action – essentially recognizing that we, human beings, have a capacity to act that is separate from our past acts. And in so far as there is the unforgivable, the imprescriptible, I think that his explanation of the link between forgiveness and repentance and their role, with the power of love, that gives us the courage and ability to forgive unconditionally is quite sound. However, I question the possibility of full imputability, from the perspective of both the victim and the perpetrator, which leads me to a different (or an additional) reason that forgiveness is possible.

Imputability, according to Ricoeur, is the binding between the agent and the act – making it possible to hold the agent responsible. It is upon this responsibility, this imputability, that we not only judge the agent but declare him/her as able to be judged[2]. From judgment we are able to arrive at “the unforgivable”, and thus we are presented with what we have to forgive. But what if it is impossible to arrive at absolute imputability? What if the agent, the free agent, only constituted a portion of the force behind the act, and thus constitutes only a portion of the responsibility and imputability? What I am trying to say is two-fold. Firstly, I argue that our actions are not entirely our own; and secondly, that it is impossible[3] to know what portions of our actions are our own.

I defend my former premise by appealing first to the observation that most (if not all) of our actions are performed not at random, but after a decision making process. In fact, the unforgivable acts as described by Jankelevit in Should We Pardon Them? are unforgivable precisely because they were not committed in randomness, but in a cold, collected, and even principled manner. Secondly, I posit that this decision making process is influenced by two separate realms: the agent deciding and the knowledge made available to him. This knowledge can be both in the form of scientific facts or cultural, religious, or strictly subjective opinions that the agent receives as fact throughout his/her life. We do not all make decisions, even moral ones, on even ground. A boy who is raised by thieves is much more likely to steal than a boy raised by a lawful family – is it just that the street-child is punished partially because of his rearing? Is the boy’s environment not, at least in part, responsible for the act? But since an environment, or a series of circumstances, is not imputable, only a portion of the act – the boy’s portion – is; and it is only this portion that we can judge and later forgive.

This brings us to my latter premise, that it is impossible to know what portions of our actions are our own. Although the example with the thieving boy I provided above is sufficient enough to make a point of differentiating our environment from our accountability, it is by no means a representation of the unfathomably complicated interactions in reality which make up a person. As the science of psychoanalysis has shown us over and over again, the combinations of events and circumstances that influence a person to become what they are cannot be calculated to any individual precision. We can make general rules about the cause and effect of human decisions[4], but we don’t possess the tools to assess the individual as an individual – certainly not to the point where we can clearly separate the portions of one’s actions to be a result of their environment or a result of their will. Thus, it is impossible, for either the victim or the perpetrator, to announce precise imputability.

Perhaps it is this uncertainty of an agent’s responsibility for his actions that calls us to forgiveness.[5] Perhaps we must be capable of forgiving because we are incapable of judging absolutely.

I call upon a reference that both Arendt and Ricoeur use quite often. In the Gospel according to Luke[6], Jesus, immediately after condemning judging and encouraging forgiveness, asks “can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?”

Biblography

Paul Ricoeur, “Epilogue. Difficult Forgiveness.” Memory, History, Forgetting, transl. by K. Blamey and D. Pellauer, Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004, 457-493, 595-606.

Paul Ricoeur, “The Difficulty to Forgive.” In Memory, Narrativity, Self and the Challenge to Think God. The Reception within Theology of the Recent Work of Paul Ricoeur, Munster: Lit, 2004, 6-16.

The Holy Bible, New International Version. Michigan: The Zondervan Corporation, 1988.

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[1] “Silent, because there is no clamor of what rages; not mute because not deprived of speech” (467).

[2] They are able to be judged because they are ‘capable human beings’ (Epilogue, 460).

[3] It is impossible only if free will exists – otherwise, we are just playing our parts in the consequential machine.

[4] For example, promiscuity, or total fear of sex, due to sexual abuse.

[5] Certainly, if my arguments hold, the idea of the ‘unforgivable’ must be readdressed – as it constitutes an objective value of judgment.

[6] Luke 6:39

Forgive and Forget

I argue that forgiving involves forgetting but a forgetting of a certain type. First, it must be an active oblivion[1]. Secondly, it must be the oblivion of impunity rather than the act. Finally, it applies to both the victim and the agent.

If I take forgiving to be of the unconditional kind, it is done actively; thus, the forgetting that I am speaking of must be done actively as well. For this reason, we must move away from the type of forgetting that is the natural degradation of human memory[2]. Forgiveness would deviate greatly from our descriptions of it thus far[3] if it could only happen after natural degradation made us forget the incidents; further, it would not happen at all if we decided to write our memories down or internalize them in tradition.

So if we must actively forget in order to forgive, what are we actively forgetting? Certainly, we cannot forget, and in the following case deny, the existence of the act. For, as Vladimir Jankelevit put it, “to forget [a] gigantic crime against humanity would be a new crime against the human species” (Jankelevit, 556). It is impossible to forget the victims as victims and deny the pains they suffered, for the effects of the act do not exist only in the past, but ripple forever into the future. Denying them this acknowledgement would be “a lapse of seriousness and dignity, a shameful frivolity” (Jankelevit, 572). But since forgiveness does imply forgetting, something must be forgotten. This something is the bond between the agent and the act – that which makes the agent imputable. That is, we must remember that the act happened and – perhaps in great detail – the effects experienced by the victim, whilst forgetting the causal relationship between that act and the agent. This is not to say that we must forget who did the act, as that would be a blind denial, but rather the ‘reckoning’ of the agent’s accountability (DF, 15).

Forgetting impunity is required in forgiveness because it is precisely this bond that we dissociate when we forgive. In the speech-act of asking, giving, and receiving forgiveness, the involved parties are recognizing, purely, that we[4] are all better than our actions (Epilogue, 493). In forgetting our previous reckoning (DF, 15), we “[break] free from the trading logic of adding and subtracting .. and [are] delivered from their mischievousness, their haunting power, .. recovering … the divine freedom from worry” (DF, 15). If we don’t forget this connection, we do not truly forgive. Rather, we merely offer the horizontal exchange that Arendt talks about; we agree to not let the effects of the action impede our lives – we agree to stop caring (Arendt, 240). This is not the forgiveness that Ricoeur speaks of.

Although the above applies mostly to the victim[5] forgetting, it applies to the agent forgetting as well. Without forgetting, the agent cannot receive forgiveness, as the act is still internalized in his/her self and is likely impeding on his/her capacity to act[6]. It is crucial to the process of forgiveness that although the seeming ‘exchange’[7] between the victim and agent is asymmetrical, gift-like (Epilogue, 481), forgiveness happens when both parties recognize the unbinding of the action and act. I speculate that it is through the process of repentance, described by Ricoeur as one part of a pairing of epic intimacy (Epilogue, 490), that the agent learns to forget the relation between him/her – as a human being – and the act.

Yet, as with the victim and the people around them, the agent is best not to forget that the action happened and the people affected – as he/she can extract from it a valuable learning experience, not to mention the possible rage of the victims if he/she claims to arbitrarily forget.[8]

Biblography

Hannah Arendt, “Irreversibility and the power to forgive.” The Human Condition, Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 236-247.

Vladimir Jankelevitch, “Should We Pardon Them?” Critical Inquiry, vol. 22, No.3 (Spring 1996), 552-572.

Paul Ricoeur, “Epilogue. Difficult Forgiveness.” Memory, History, Forgetting, transl. by K. Blamey and D. Pellauer, Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004, 457-493, 595-606.

Paul Ricoeur, “The Difficulty to Forgive.” In Memory, Narrativity, Self and the Challenge to Think God. The Reception within Theology of the Recent Work of Paul Ricoeur, Munster: Lit, 2004, 6-16.

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[1] ‘Oblivion’ in this sense is the same term used by Ricoeur (DF, 15)

[2] I am speaking of the type of forgetting that Ricoeur describes as the “inexorable fading of the mnemonic traces in the brain, in our mind, among our archives, our documents and monuments” (DF, 7).

[3] ..in relation to this course and to Ricoeur…

[4] When I say “we”, I mean “capable human beings” (Epilogue, 460).

[5] It also applies, in some form, to the observers of the act as well – such as in the case of the Holocaust.

[6] This is different from the capacity to ‘move on’ in Arendt. It is affecting the agent’s personhood rather than the life of that agent.

[7] It is seeming because it is not actually an exchange but something ‘much more’ (Epilogue, 489)

[8] Read: Jankelevit