Suffering and Forgiveness - An Heroic Journey

Filosofia Unisinos, 2021

This paper presents social and political dimensions of forgiveness within Jacques Derrida's philosophy. Derrida's philosophy of forgiveness is an example of how philosophy can help us understand and resolve contemporary social and political issues. Derrida believes that traditional concept of forgiveness should be broadened beyond the bounds of the rational and the imaginable. According to Derrida, traditional concept of forgiveness needs rethinking because of the phenomenon of proliferation of scenes of forgiveness after the Second World War that produced globalization of forgiveness and trivialized and decharacterized this term. According to Derrida, the act of forgiveness can only be thought beyond the limits of common sense and in the space of the impossible, and that is the forgiveness of something that common sense cannot forgive. Derrida's philosophy of forgiveness has wide social and political implications as it transcends binary oppositions: present/past, self/other, friend/enemy and so forth. All concepts within Derrida's philosophy of politics (friendship, enemy, hospitality, forgiveness, justice, and so on) are significant for societies eroded with traumas of wars and ethno-national divisions and conflicts.

2019

Stephen Bloch-Schulman & David White

The aim of this paper is to analyse the relation between possibility and potentiality that exists in forgiving the Other's death, following Jankélévitch's philosophical assumptions, which claims that the Subject's quality is changing depending on different moral roles and values that the Person takes in exercising the forgiveness itself. Therefore, I will evaluate to what extent, approaching the death of a Subject through the forgiveness that its author received from the Other, will prove to be a deconstruction of the Subject constructed through three possible identities of the Person, discussed by Jankélévitch as moral perspectives of the first (I), the second (You) and the third Person (the Other).

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2014

Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s work, I argue that neither of the two standard accounts of forgiveness offer an adequate understanding of forgiveness. Conditional accounts insist on specifying the conditions an offender needs to satisfy in order to count as deserving of forgiveness. I argue that such accounts not only render forgiveness unintelligible (since forgiveness is intelligibly offered only to the offender qua offender), but also dissolve the ethical decision forgiveness demands of us. Unconditional accounts promise to do justice to both by insisting that forgiveness is a freely granted gift offered to the guilty as guilty. But I argue that when pressed to justify why one should forgive unconditionally and how one avoids the threat of condoning, they typically fall back onto the conditionalist’s ground and lose the electivity of forgiving. I conclude by arguing that genuine forgiveness would have to be purely unconditional but could never appear as such.

Philosophers often claim that forgiveness is a paradoxical phenomenon. I here examine two of the most widespread ways of dealing with the paradoxical nature of forgiveness. One of these ways, emblematized by Aurel Kolnai, seeks to resolve the paradox by appealing to the idea of repentance. Somehow, if a wrongdoer repents, then forgiving her is no longer paradoxical. I argue that this infl uential position faces more problems than it solves. Th e other way to approach the paradox, exemplifi ed here by the work of Jacques Derrida, is just too obscure to be by itself helpful. Yet, I argue that what I take to be its spirit is on the right track. I recommend distinguishing between (1) the defi nition and the justifi cation of forgiveness, and also between (2) forgiveness understood as (a) a mental phenomenon and (b) an overt, communicative act. Th ese distinctions are not given their due in the specialized literature, and I expose the nefarious consequences of this neglect. By focusing on forgiveness as a mental phenomenon I seek to analyze the root of the talk of paradoxes which surrounds the discussion of forgiveness. Finally, I present an analysis of forgiveness as a pure mental phenomenon, and argue that this analysis is the most important step in understanding forgiveness in any other sense. While my analysis reveals interesting aspects of forgiveness, it reveals, too, that forgiveness is not quite as paradoxical after all.

The most substantial source for thinking about forgiveness is Christian ethics. Some Christians offer forgiveness even for atrocities in the absence of repentance and reparations. The paper critically examines Christian idealism about forgiveness, while looking beyond Christianity toward a humanistic approach that acknowledges the tragic conflict between forgiveness and justice. Christian forgiveness is part of a radical revaluation of values regarding the goods of this world, personal identity, and temporality. Humanistic approaches, as found in Kant and the Greeks, do not embrace this radical revaluation of values. But it remains useful to consider the benefits of forgiveness, even for those who are not willing to commit to such a radical revaluation.

2012

List of papers Paper 1 Gamlund, E. The Duty to Forgive Repentant Wrongdoers. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 18 (5) 651-671 (2010) DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2010. 528602 Paper 2 Gamlund, E. Supererogatory Forgiveness. INQUIRY-AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 53 (6) 540-564 (2010) DOI: 10.1080/0020174X. 2010.526320 Denne avhandlingen tar for seg noen sentrale problemstillinger knyttet til tilgivelsens etikk.

Law and Contemporary Problems, 2009

My paper examines the different ways three seminal thinkers of the 20th century - Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt and Vladimir Jankélévitch address the problem of reconciliation and forgiveness. All three struggle with the relation between forgiveness and historical memory, particularly with the question of how may one forgive without undermining past atrocities or flattening identities in favor of expedient resolutions, while addressing the issue of symbolic justice? Derrida's notion of forgiveness hinges on the impasse created by the encounter of the metaphysical ideal of pure forgiveness and the practical-historical circumstances that beckon it, bringing the relationship of the ethical and the political into the forefront of his discussion. In contrast, Hannah Arendt and Vladimir Jankélévitch are two thinkers whose ethic of forgiveness is structurally grounded in the political and reliant on sovereignty for its fulfillment. My paper attempts to bridge Derrida’s ethics of forgiveness associated with non-sovereignty and the unassuming position of powerlessness with Jankélévtich and Arendt. In the following paper I would like to suggest that a comprehensive understanding of Derrida's conception of forgiveness would entail readdressing his critique of Arendt and Jankélévitch. By rereading Derrida's work in dialogue with Jankélévtich and Arendt, I will try to elucidate Derrida's perspective on the relationship between forgiveness, memory and politics in order to show that his vision of "hyperbolic forgiveness" is, for the most part, reconcilable with Vladimir Jankélévitch's adamant resentment and position of non-forgiveness as it appears in his 1964 essay "Pardonner?"