1st Global Conference
Session 6a: Derrida and the Possibility of Forgiveness
Chair: Dag Helge Moldenhagen
Between Terrorism and Forgiveness: Exploring Derrida's Meta-Secular Thinking
Michael Strawser
Department of Philosophy, University of Central Florida, USA
How are we to defend ourselves against the absolute evil that sparks terrorism? To the American political promise that we can beat terrorism with military might, both philosophers Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas offer their disagreement. These philosophers have discussed the nature of “philosophy in a time of terror” in now well-known interviews, but has either philosopher an adequate response to terrorism? Is there any place for hope?
When considering the concept of terrorism as initially discussed by Habermas and Derrida, I shall argue that Derrida’s view is preferable, because he offers a response—perhaps the only proper one—of forgiveness. Although Derrida does not present an explicit and extended discussion linking the two ideas, both the experiences of terrorism and forgiveness appear to be events marked a certain futural modality that bring us to an unforeseeable moment and the brink of the impossible. Thus I shall investigate whether there is an isomorphism between the experiences of terrorism and pure forgiveness that would suggest how pure forgiveness may be an appropriate response to terrorism. But is there a place for pure forgiveness today? Perhaps, it is only by the singular transformative inner act of pure forgiveness that we may hope to transform the “future” from a “future present” (one in which we can predict the continuation of violence) to an “absolute future.” As we shall see, a consideration of the distinctions between conditional and pure forgiveness and their applications will show that Derrida’s thinking—a nontheistic “religion without religion,” which as such appears to be, at least superficially, secular—in fact takes us into a meta-secular realm. Thus Derrida may be taken as preparing an opening of “a certain messianic space” through his thinking of the (im)possible event of pure forgiveness.
To Exceed the Scene of Economy: Derrida's Forgiveness and Responsibility
Niva Arav
University of Haifa, Israel
… ; if I grant forgiveness on condition that the other confess, (…), then my forgiveness begins to let itself contaminated by an economy, a calculation that corrupts it. (Derrida, J.)
Derrida analyzes forgiveness as simultaneously possible and impossible. His arguments about forgiveness and the unforgivable place these acts outside the realm of economics. Repeatedly, Derrida insists on excluding forgiveness from the economic scene. What does he means by the economic scene and why it is so important to exclude forgiveness from it?
Derrida regards Western society as conceptualized and guided by an economic consciousness that establishes an economic culture in which individuals have given ends they are struggling to realize. In an economic system, the means by which these ends were established or the manner in which they were created does not matter--the only thing that matters is to fulfill them. The endeavor of individuals to reach their own ends establishes a competitive society in which winning is the only goal. In such a culture there is no moral authority that can enforce rules of behavior that ensure the existence of common society. The only one who can preserve common society is an individual who restrains himself willingly. Willing restraint is an uneconomical responsibility, but being uneconomically responsible is an abstract demand and the way to realize it is unclear. By taking the forgiveness and the unforgivable out of economic culture Derrida poses them as one of the forces that enables and clarifies responsible behavior, and by that forgiveness become one of the forces which enable a common society and guards it from falling apart.
In this paper, I examine the possible\impossible act of forgiveness according to Derrida's position, and clarify its importance in maintaining the fabric of common society.
Download Draft Conference Paper - 
'Impossible' Forgiveness
Paul van Tongeren
Centre for Ethics, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Insofar as the notion of forgiveness stems from the Jewish and Christian traditions, it seems to point at something very extraordinary. Although forgiveness in Christianity is being recommended or even commissioned to everybody, it nevertheless seems to consist of something which is not humanly possible: how could one remember the evil committed (and remember it as evil), and at the same time not blame the one who committed it? By ultimately reserving the entitlement and ability to forgive to God, by describing human forgiveness as a theological virtue, and by emphasizing the gratuitous or gracious character of forgiveness, this tradition seems most of all to show that forgiveness is generally speaking impossible. This conception of forgiveness will be presented with the help of such divergent authors as Thomas Aquinas and Jacques Derrida, among others.
Against the background of this conception of forgiveness the paper claims that also a ‘secular’ interpretation of forgiveness should try to do justice to its being humanly impossible. I will suggest that this can be done by describing forgiveness as an intersubjective act. Its intersubjectivity can show after all that forgiveness is not being ‘done’ or performed by the one who forgives, nor by the one to whom forgiveness is being granted. Rather it sometimes (but very seldom) ‘happens to’ persons, by happening ‘between’ them.
The paper concludes by asking the question for the implications of this conception of forgiveness for actual practices of restorative justice and transitional justice. Does this conception demand that these practices be distinguished from ‘real forgiveness’? Or do these practices give evidence that forgiveness should be defined in a broader way?