1st Global Conference
Session 5a: Arendt and Ricoeur
Chair: Bas van Stokkom
The Necessity of Forgiveness for the Public Realm: On Hannah Arendt's
Public Conception of Forgiveness
Stephen Schulman
Philosophy Department, Elon University, USA
Forgiveness plays a crucial role in Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the political sphere. For example, in The Human Condition she claims that promise-keeping and forgiveness allow for the public to remain both stable and able to move from the past into the future. Yet, for all of the concern commentators have given to promise-keeping in Arendt’s work, few discuss the role of forgiveness. To understand what role forgiveness plays in the public, and in particular, in public responsibility, it makes sense to begin with a claim Arendt makes in her 1951 edition of The Origins that she keeps in the subsequent editions, namely, that when “the impossible was made possible it became the unpunishable, unforgivable absolute evil which could no longer be understood and explained by the evil motives... and which therefore anger could not revenge, love could not endure, friendship could not forgive.”
In describing totalitarian evil here—what Arendt refers to variously as ‘absolute’ or ‘radical’ evil’—she draws a distinction between those crimes committed by human motives, even ugly human motives, and those that she claims “can no longer be understood or explained” by human motives at all. This distinction between what is and what is not humanly motivated determines, in Arendt’s mind, what can and cannot be forgiven. Furthermore, in this quotation from The Origins, she links forgiveness with friendship. My interest, in the paper, is twofold: first, I will examine Arendt’s understanding of the limits on forgiveness by examining the relationship between friendship and forgiveness and, second, I will use insights about Arendt’s notion of forgiveness to speak to the broader question of what makes a public realm genuinely public and what makes forgiveness necessary for the public realm.
No Freedom Without Forgiveness? Hannah Arendt and Paul Ricoeur on the
Philosophical Problem of Recommencement
Verena Rauen
German Department, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, Germany
An essential aspect of forgiveness is the opportunity of recommencement. Breaking the infinite regress of revenge and retaliation after a culpable action, thus relieving the future from the burden of guilt, is an act of freedom that would be impossible without the capability to forgive. Without the option of forgiving, all future actions following a certain misconduct would remain dependent on it. This does not only concern the future of the „culprit“ but also that of the „victim“, who would remain inescapably dependent on the act of misconduct, in the „re-action“ of revenge, without forgiveness.
However, recommencement, which concerns the future, is not thinkable without the time dimension of the past, which is linked to the present by remembering and forgetting, and thus by memory. The significance of forgiveness as recommencement is seen from a perspective of time – between past and future, but discerned from forgetting. To this end, the social philosopher Hannah Arendt and the French phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur will be discussed, who have interpreted forgiveness as a freedom for recommencement by elaborating on a fundamental question: How can human relationships be maintained without recourse to a logic of revenge and retaliation? Recommencement can only be conceived as an act of freedom by considering the dependence on the other, who gives this freedom by forgiving. The gift of recommencement through forgiveness thus becomes constitutive for freedom.
Forgive and not Forget: The Delicate Balance in Ricoeur's Memory, History,
Forgetting
Rachel Waterstradt
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California
Seemingly impossible forgiveness of the unforgivable is the matter for discussion in the epilogue, “Difficult Forgiveness” to Paul Ricoeur’s Memory, History, Forgetting which has been argued by many as problematic since it appears immediately after the final chapter on forgetting which last treats the issue of amnesty. The anxious reader may worry, “Does Ricoeur mean to imply that forgiving is forgetting?” Certainly not. The link between forgiveness and forgetting only exists in amnesty which is tantamount to amnesia; it is only useful as a form of urgent social therapy, a bandage for a time, but not a cure. The cure to such social ills, for Ricoeur, comes through the work of memory through mourning guided by forgiveness, but irrevocably this must be done apart from the amnesia imposed on the victim by the governing authorities; it must be done by the victim herself – “only another [person] can forgive, the victim.” The action that she undertakes is to divorce the perpetrator from her action; this the perpetrator cannot do herself. And yet this must be done very delicately so as to not destroy the whole framework of responsibility, accountability and imputability that rightfully belongs to each and every individual. Once this is accomplished, the uses of memory and testimony can move the event into the historical archive, allowing the parties and the larger social context which they belong to move forward with a preservation of the event that prevents repetitions of past wrongs and also avoids fostering revenge and hatred. This, in fact, is what Ricoeur notes would happen in the right form of ‘amnesty’ that is not collective amnesia but a curative for the past wrongs so that the society can move on together.
This argument will address 1) the problems Ricoeur notes with amnesty, 2) the impossibility of true forgiveness from social sources, 3) the role of the individuals, aggressor and victim, as responsible authors of their own actions which makes it possible for the victim to separate the aggressor from her action and ultimately, 4) makes the event into a past event rather than a perpetually relived wrong that cries for vengeance.