Forgiving the Unforgivable : A Derridean Analysis of Forgiveness
In recent decades there has been an increasing interest in the notion of restorative justice, with the politics of apology and reconciliation regularly dominating the contemporary world stage.¹ The postmodern meditations of Algerian-born French philosopher Jacques Derrida on the related yet distinct concept of forgiveness, unite the ethical and political to suggest how we might respond to radical evil. The deconstructionist logic of unconditional forgiveness espoused by Derrida argues that not only can we forgive seemingly unforgivable acts but implicitly suggests that victims have an ethical obligation to do so. This morally prescriptive view will be problematised by arguing that forgiveness is a supererogatory act that we should neither expect nor require of victims. The conclusion will be supported by evaluating the arguments advanced by Derrida in his seminal text On Forgiveness whilst juxtaposing the contrary philosophy championed by political thinker Vladimir Jankélévitch before applying their views to a notorious case of radical evil.
Derrida begins his deconstruction of forgiveness by describing the proliferation of apologies made by politicians across the world, referencing the then Prime Minister of Japan who requested forgiveness from the Chinese and Koreans for horrific acts of violence historically perpetrated by his country.² Whilst these scenes of reconciliation may be dominated by the pretence of forgiveness, for Derrida they are merely hollow, attenuated and driven by strategic political calculation.³ Motivated by ulterior motives and manipulation, Derrida denies the status of these ceremonies as true or authentic acts of forgiveness. This theatre of pseudo-forgiveness, he claims, is particularly prevalent when addressing ‘crimes against humanity’ for “…here is a human race which would claim to accuse itself all at once, publicly and spectacularly, of all the crimes committed in effect by itself against itself…”.⁴
For many, even outside of the victim group, the very thought of forgiving those responsible for mass atrocities like the Shoah (‘The Holocaust’) or the more recent Rwandan genocide remains at best inconceivable and at worst offensive. Building on the radical evil originally conceived by Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt describes these unforgivable crimes as devoid of explainable motivations or justifications which effectively render human beings superfluous.⁵ It should be noted that what constitutes radical evil still remains a somewhat subjective and contentious topic.
Derrida proceeds to position forgiveness as ontologically connected to radical evil for he believes that “forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable”.⁶ On such an account only truly wicked acts demand our forgiveness and in the very opening line Derrida captures its limitlessness as there can be “no measure, no moderation, no ‘to what point?”⁷ It is this logic which motivates his distinction between the indissociable conditional and unconditional forms of forgiveness between which there exists an irreconcilable ethical tension.⁸
Derrida claims that beyond judgement, nations have no ability to extend or demand forgiveness.⁹ For him, forgiveness must only engage two singularities — the victim and the guilty — as the intervention of a third party signals the departure of unconditional forgiveness.¹⁰ It is on these grounds that this seemingly bilateral rather than multilateral conception of forgiveness precludes the intervention of governments or their offerings of apology. Yet in saying that we cannot forgive on behalf of others whilst implying through unconditional forgiveness that the victim should forgive regardless of the actions or feelings of the perpetrator, Derrida is actually arguing for a distinctly unilateral conception of forgiveness.
Jankélévitch is famed for his view that forgiveness died in the death camps of World War II as only the deceased victims could have extended forgiveness to their Nazi perpetrators.¹¹ It is surprising then that Derrida chooses to challenge him by asserting that only when forgiveness has become impossible can we locate its possibility.¹² Is it not problematic for Derrida to champion the view that the concept of unconditional forgiveness was born in the death camps but elsewhere that it should still involve both the victim and perpetrator?
Radical evil remains distinctly inexpiable to Jankélévitch as no punishment could prove proportional to either the horrors or magnitude of the original crime.¹³ He ultimately denies the meaningfulness of forgiveness in these cases because there is often no request from the perpetrators for it, leaving victims to an endless and ‘inexhaustible meditation’.¹⁴ The lack of distress and dereliction displayed by the guilty following the events of the Shoah justified this belief that the perpetrators did not deserve forgiveness from their victims.¹⁵ Yet Derrida seeks to dispel the inexpiability and this indifference towards atonement by asserting that:
…there is in the very meaning of forgiveness a force, a desire, an impetus, a movement, an appeal (call it what you will) that demands that forgiveness be granted, if it can be, even to someone who does not ask for it, who does not repent or confess or improve or redeem himself…beyond all expiation even.¹⁶
Here Jankélévitch engages in an ‘economy of exchange’ that challenges the very essence of forgiveness by way of issuing a finite set of demands required for it to be offered.¹⁷ This ‘transaction’ fails to embody the openness and generosity that such a gift should seemingly warrant. Must we not at least try to forgive the guilty as guilty, where their crimes “…remain as irreversible as the evil, as evil itself, and being capable of repeating itself, unforgivably, without transformation, without amelioration, without repentance or promise?”¹⁸
When forgiveness becomes driven by the service of a finality — whether on the grounds of altruism, spirituality or mourning — it can no longer be considered pure, says Derrida.¹⁹ According to him, only reconciliation can take place once the victim sympathises with the perpetrator through any form of exchange or the perpetrator atones for their crimes.²⁰ Pure forgiveness is replaced by an inferior practical forgiveness unless a non-negotiable, apolitical and non-strategic unconditionality of which we are both unaccustomed and incapable of is offered. Such is the great Derridean paradox: “…unconditional forgiveness, in order to have its own meaning, must have no ‘meaning’, no finality, even no intelligibility. It is a madness of the impossible”.²¹
Yet this does not justify Derrida’s assertion that apologies, even those born out of strategic political calculation, cannot foster the necessary conditions for forgiveness and provide legitimacy to the claims of trauma held by victims and their direct descendants. I understand that he does not believe forgiveness must be inherently meaningful but why must the entire telos of reconciliation be abandoned as a result? We must differentiate between the rituals of official apology as a public acknowledgment of past transgressions sanctioned by the government and forgiveness as a deeply personal reconciliation of past wrongdoing between two individuals: victim and perpetrator. By noting the asymmetry which exists between the modalities of apology and forgiveness we see that it is possible for the former to take place without the latter.²²
The account advanced by Derrida, whilst later conceding this reality, obviates the need for nations to apologise by reducing such actions to political ploys. By rendering apologies a merely unnecessary platitude, the burden of forgiveness is unjustly placed solely upon the victims.²³ Whilst most appreciate that “The injustices of the past call for something that a ceremony of apology, reparations, or the most successful process of reconciliation cannot deliver…” one only has to look to these manifestations of responsibility around the world to see that they are capable of respectfully encouraging forgiveness.²⁴
Jankélévitch famously opposed the implementation of a statute of limitations for ‘crimes against humanity’, defending their imprescriptibility on the grounds that they denigrate the ipseity of humans and “when an act denies the essence of a human being as a human being, the statutory limitations that urge absolution in the name of morality actually themselves contradict morality”.²⁵ After all, the Jewish people and other ‘undesirables’ were not persecuted due to differences of religion or political ideology but simply because they were a ‘them’.²⁶ Whilst Derrida does not deny the arbitrariness of time constraints for addressing radical evil, he instead claims that pure forgiveness exists outside the anthropocentric bounds of the juridico-political.²⁷
Possibly owing to its origins in the Abrahamic tradition there is a belief that forgiveness must be more than human, that it transcends the human condition. Derrida emphasises that forgiveness should not be conceived of as a common event, “it should remain exceptional and extraordinary, in the face of the impossible: as if it interrupted the ordinary course of historical temporality”.²⁸ This is the hyperbolic ethics which carries itself beyond human laws and norms, a divine ethics beyond ethics which supposedly houses the undiscoverable home of forgiveness.²⁹
Though it may challenge our understanding of what human beings are capable of, how can forgiveness transcend humanity when humans are the ones who must offer it? I wish to suggest an answer to this immense question by remedying another that Derrida strangely leaves unanswered, namely whether we forgive something or someone. Attempting to separate the heinous acts from the individual who committed them is arguably irrelevant when the perpetrator is the one who must engage with the forgiveness offered by the victim. Forgiveness must rest on a human possibility because radical evil, though absent of humanity, is ultimately committed by humans against humans.
Although Derrida briefly acknowledges that being incapable of forgiving a perpetrator is conceivable, his entire deconstruction thus situates this as inferior to pure forgiveness.³⁰ There is a common pattern of inconsistency within his logic that sees him appear to accept non-forgiveness whilst still demanding its impossible antithesis. An alternative account of forgiveness which is willing to concede more to the likes of Jankélévitch and other thinkers could possibly remedy this conflict.
Forgiving ‘The Angel Of Death’
As a victim of the Shoah and Josef Mengele’s sadistic Nazi twin experiments, Eva Mozes Kor became an international symbol of forgiving the unforgivable. Mengele never once offered her an admission of guilt or a sign of repentance and yet she eventually forgave the crimes the ‘Angel of Death’ personally committed against her. The power of forgiveness allowed her to find closure, to not forget her traumatic experiences but to move beyond being defined by her burdensome status as a victim. Based solely upon her decision to forgive a personal wrong that was committed in the context of a far broader set of atrocities, Kor also urged other victims of the Shoah to end their vengeance disguised as justice and forgive their tormentors.³¹ Whilst I maintain that Kor was not positioned to morally obligate her fellow survivors to do the same, her original offering of forgiveness should be a model for all victims of radical evil.
Despite this, Derrida would suggest that this exceptional act of forgiveness was conditional because it was reached after deliberate reflection. Even Jankélévitch would likely conclude that the forgiveness she offered to Mengele was invalid because he never sought atonement for the radical evil he caused. These seemingly antithetical accounts of forgiveness are both impaired by their inability to entertain the possibility of forgiving the unforgivable outside of a strict and arguably arbitrary set of conditions.
I do not believe, as Eve Garrard and David McNaughton reiterate, that unconditional forgiveness calls for an indifference towards wrongdoing or that it is incompatible with attributing blame but even these proponents of Derrida concede that forgiving is a supererogatory rather than obligatory act.³² Derrida’s philosophy emphasises the value of an unconditional forgiveness that can address the unforgivable yet I have argued that this is overshadowed by his failure to recognise the value of forgiveness in any form. This is not to say that I advocate for the communal forgiveness that Pol Vandevelde views as equivalent to bilateral conceptions but that the supererogatory act of forgiving radical evil should be celebrated without placing an onus on every victim.³³ After all, to forgive is to actively disavow the dominant narrative wherein “…anger, resentment and revenge seem inevitable and irreversible…”.³⁴
Moreover, whilst I accept that forgiveness demands magnanimity, can it not be motivated by a search for closure? Closure is not discussed by Derrida but I believe that even he would agree that every human being has the right to live without the pain of the past. Whether they achieve closure through forgiveness or through not forgiving, the moral value that closure provides should not be negated. Derrida and Jankélévitch refuse to entertain self-forgiveness but there is an argument that this is an important ethical consideration given the psychological burden of moral shame that is placed upon both victims and perpetrators of radical evil.³⁵
The bitter irony of Derridean forgiveness is that it should be easier to achieve. It is a purely effortless occurrence that requires no reflective thought and does not depend on the actions or feelings of any other individual, even the perpetrator. Yet it is precisely in its simplicity that lies the impossibility of human beings ever achieving it. Ernesto Verdeja stresses that the victim must always be able to not forgive, for forgiveness can only retain its moral faculty if it remains “…an unconstrained possibility, not the outcome of a series of (quite possibly coercive) rules”.³⁶
Forgiveness can quickly become a vice instead of a virtue when moral pressure is applied to those who have been wronged, producing guilt about their resentment and confusing accountability for the original crime.³⁷ Derrida wants us to believe that “…forgiveness is a leap that we must risk but that we can never finally justify” and yet I have advocated for a distinctly more grounded ethics.³⁸ The validity of forgiveness should not be contingent upon the opinion of a distant philosopher but rather one’s own unique and personal relationship to radical evil. If we cannot forgive on behalf of others, how can we judge the forgiveness they do or do not offer?
By claiming that forgiveness should be unconditional whilst simultaneously asserting that forgiveness is unconditional Derrida conflates pragmatic philosophy with normativity. The strength of his entire argument rests on the question-begging notion of how individuals interpret the idea of forgiveness when this is the issue under interrogation.³⁹ One cannot semantically equate forgiveness with unconditional forgiveness before even beginning their deconstruction of the concept. Edith Wyschogrod suggests that the impossibility of forgiveness could be reformulated to express the impossibility of knowing whether one has been forgiven; this would allow for “…hope, amelioration and self-amendment in place of a negative certainty of its impossibility”.⁴⁰
Our world increasingly demands, grants and withholds forgiveness. Whilst drawing on other thinkers, this essay has deliberately constructed the logic of forgiveness advanced by Derrida in opposition to Jankélévitch so as to draw on their respective views in the formulation of an account more capable of compromise. Whilst the unconditional forgiveness Derrida champions sees the unforgivable become forgivable, it wrongly suggests that individuals are morally obligated to forgive their perpetrators. The account certainly does not provide a comforting solution to the logical aporia of forgiving those guilty of radical evil but Derrida’s discourse arguably offers more hope to victims than Jankélévitch who is seemingly imprisoned by the impossibility of forgiveness. Though imperfect, when synthesised both accounts ultimately remind us that victims of radical evil remain capable of realising the ‘impossible’.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Ann Murphy, “On Forgiveness and the Possibility of Reconciliation,” in A Companion to Derrida, eds. Zeynep Direk and Leonard Lawlor (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 537.
[2] Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes (London: Routledge, 2001), 49.
[3] John Caputo, Mark Dooley, and Michael Scanlon, Questioning God (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 54.
[4] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 29.
[5] Richard Bernstein, “Reflections on Radical Evil: Arendt and Kant,” Soundings 85, no. 2 (2002): 19.
[6] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 32.
[7] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 27.
[8] Marguerite La Caze, “Should Radical Evil Be Forgiven?,” in Forensic Psychiatry: Influences of Evil, ed. Tom Mason (New Jersey: Humana Press, 2006), 280.
[9] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 43.
[10] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 42.
[11] Vladimir Jankélévitch, “Should We Pardon Them?,” trans. Ann Hobart, Critical Inquiry 22, no. 3 (1996): 567.
[12] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 37.
[13] Jankélévitch, “Should We Pardon,” 558.
[14] Jankélévitch, “Should We Pardon,” 558.
[15] Jankélévitch, “Should We Pardon,” 567.
[16] Caputo, Dooley, and Scanlon, Questioning God, 28.
[17] Caputo, Dooley, and Scanlon, Questioning God, 53.
[18] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 39.
[19] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 31–32.
[20] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 49.
[21] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 45.
[22] Marguerite La Caze, “The Asymmetry Between Apology and Forgiveness,” Contemporary Political Theory 5, no. 4 (2006): 463.
[23] La Caze, “The Asymmetry,” 455.
[24] Janna Thompson, “Is Apology A Sorry Affair? Derrida and the Moral Force of the Impossible,” Philosophical Forum 41, no. 3 (2010): 274.
[25] Jankélévitch, “Should We Pardon,” 556.
[26] Aaron Looney, Vladimir Jankélévitch: The Time of Forgiveness (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 137.
[27] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 55.
[28] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 32.
[29] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 35–36.
[30] Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, 55.
[31] Renée Jeffery, “To Forgive the Unforgivable?,” in Confronting Evil in International Relations, ed. Renée Jeffery (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 179–180.
[32] Eve Garrad and David McNaughton, “In Defence of Unconditional Forgiveness,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103, no. 1 (2003): 39–40.
[33] Pol Vandevelde, “Forgiveness in a Political Context: The Challenge and the Potential,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 39, no. 3 (2013): 265.
[34] Michele Moody-Adams, “The Enigma of Forgiveness,” Journal of Value Inquiry 49, no. 2 (2015): 162.
[35] Byron Williston, “The Importance of Self-Forgiveness,” American Philosophical Quarterly 49, no. 1 (2012): 77.
[36] Ernesto Verdeja, “Derrida and the Impossibility of Forgiveness,” Contemporary Political Theory 3, no. 1 (2004): 24.
[37] Nancy Potter, “Is Refusing to Forgive a Vice?,” in Feminists Doing Ethics, eds. Peggy DesAutels and Joanne Waugh (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 148.
[38] Mihail Evans, “Derrida and Forgiveness,” in Compassion and Forgiveness ed. Edward Alam (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 32.
[39] Chris Kaposy, “’Analytic’ Reading, ‘Continental’ Text: The Case of Derrida’s ‘On Forgiveness’,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 13, no. 2 (2005): 208.
[40] Edith Wyschogrod, “Repentance and Forgiveness: The Undoing of Time,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60, no. 1 (2006): 161.
REFERENCE LIST
Bernstein, Richard. “Reflections on Radical Evil: Arendt and Kant.” Soundings 85, no. 2 (2002): 17–30.
Caputo, John, Mark Dooley, and Michael Scanlon. Questioning God. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Derrida, Jacques. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, translated by Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes. London: Routledge, 2001.
Evans, Mihail. “Derrida and Forgiveness.” In Compassion and Forgiveness, edited by Edward Alam, 17–32. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2013.
Garrard, Eve and David McNaughton. “In Defence of Unconditional Forgiveness.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103, no. 1 (2003): 39–60.
Jankélévitch, Vladimir. “Should We Pardon Them?,” translated by Ann Hobart. Critical Inquiry 22, no. 3 (1996): 552–572.
Jeffery, Renée. “To Forgive the Unforgivable?” In Confronting Evil in International Relations, edited by Renée Jeffery, 179–212. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Kaposy, Chris. “’Analytic’ Reading, ‘Continental’ Text: The Case of Derrida’s ‘On Forgiveness’.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 13, no. 2 (2005): 203–226.
La Caze, Marguerite. “The Asymmetry Between Apology and Forgiveness.” Contemporary Political Theory 5, no. 4 (2006): 447–468.
La Caze, Marguerite. “Should Radical Evil Be Forgiven?” In Forensic Psychiatry: Influences of Evil, edited by Tom Mason, 273–293. New Jersey: Humana Press, 2006.
Looney, Aaron. Vladimir Jankélévitch: The Time of Forgiveness. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.
Moody-Adams, Michele. “The Enigma of Forgiveness.” Journal of Value Inquiry 49, no. 2 (2015): 161–180.
Murphy, Ann. “On Forgiveness and the Possibility of Reconciliation.” In A Companion to Derrida, edited by Zeynep Direk and Leonard Lawlor, 537–549. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.
Potter, Nancy. “Is Refusing to Forgive a Vice?” In Feminists Doing Ethics, edited by Peggy DesAutels and Joanne Wright, 147–160. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.
Thompson, Janna. “Is Apology a Sorry Affair? Derrida and the Moral Force of the Impossible.” Philosophical Forum 41, no. 3 (2010): 259–274.
Vandervelde, Pol. “Forgiveness in a Political Context: The Challenge and the Potential.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 39, no. 3 (2013): 263–276.
Verdeja, Ernesto. “Derrida and the Impossibility of Forgiveness.” Contemporary Political Theory 3, no. 1 (2004): 23–47.
Williston, Byron. “The Importance of Self-Forgiveness.” American Philosophical Quarterly 49, no. 1 (2012): 67–80.
Wyschogrod, Edith. “Repentance and Forgiveness: The Undoing of Time.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60, no. 1 (2006): 157–168.
