Analysis of the Concept of Forgiveness - Essay Example

Forgiveness (Analysis of Derrida’s notion) The notion of forgivness has been a mootable problem in the realm of religion, philosophy and of inpolitics. In Christianity forgiveness is the spritual duty of the believer. God is the source of forgivness and it is available to the repentant believer. Being a true believer one is expected to forgive for it is must if one wants to be forgiven by God. Jesus says at the end of Lord’s Prayer that to be forgiven we must learn to forgive. The last lines of parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke seems to be a predilection of Heidegger’s view of inauthanticity and authanticity. When the elder son complains to his father in the parable that his father never thought of slaughtering a goat to allow him to entertain his friends but he had asked to slaughter a well fed calf in the honour of youger son who came back in misery after spending all his share in wild activities. The father replies to the complaint, “ You are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15:11-32) Mahatma Gandhi, the advocate of non-violance, is of the opinion, “ The weak can never forgive, forgiveness is the attribute of strong.” In philosophical discourse Hegel in his dialectic of Master and Slave sees slave dominating the master since the master has no desire to be free whereas, the slave always aspires for freedom so in the dialectical process of history slave gains emancipition; though there is no reconciliation of self with other in Heglian view but the recognitions of the slave self of its being is the moment of freedom for the slave.1 But Derrida’s solution to the breach of self and other is forgivness. Before analyzing the notion of forgiveness in Derridas philosophical discourse it is pertinent to delve into the philosophical realm of Heidegger to probe his notion of authenticity and inauthencity in his Being and Time since Derrida owes great deal to him. The important notion of Heidegger is the notion of "The They". Heidegger says we do not see definite individuals, collection of individuals or even for that matter the community. It is our behaviour and our ways of thinking . The inauthentic lose themselves. Ourselves is aliniated from ourselves, we are lost in being-among-one-another.2 This notion of anthenticity and inauthencity is the base of Sartre’s notion of bad faith and good faith and of course we have the echo of Heideggar’s views in self in Livinas’ ethics and in Derrida’s notion of forgiveness.The question arises how do these relate to Derrida? The answer is simple that Derrida also thinks in terms of impossible,interruption or extraordinary replacing for-the-sake of and Dasein(the innate spirit of humanity). Heidegger says that experience drags us out of the inauthentic self ,we are lost in day to day world otherwise and our authentic self is buried under the debris of objects and events of daily life and consequently dominated by "the they." Derrida brings out two concepts of forgivness, the first is difficult for novice to understand, that is the forgiveness of repetation"There is nothing outside the text". It is the forgivness of the norms since it is all absorbed by the they. So, we must forgive for forgiveness sake.To Heidegger this sort of forgivness is enveloped by care. Derrida says, “I shall risk this proposition: each time forgiveness is at the service of a finality, be it noble and spiritual (atonement or redemption, reconciliation, salvation), each time that it aims to re-establish a normality (social, national, political, psychological) by a work of mourning, by some therapy or ecology of memory, then the forgiveness is not pure - nor is its concept. Forgiveness is not, it should not be, normal, normatitive, normalising. It should remain exceptional and extraordinary, in the face of the impossible: as if it interrupted the ordinary course of historical temporality.”3 Derrida does not fomulate his ethics out side the boundaries of christianity and belives with Heidegger in the innate nature of man. Derrida in his On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, maintains that, true forgiveness is for the impossible; to forgive the ‘unforgivable’ misdemeanor, for example the ‘mortal sin’. Does not it sound the Christian value? To forgive the unforgivable is the attribute of God. And Derrida calls it pure forgiveness or unconditional forgiveness which is to Derrida a forgiving of ‘ unconscious’, and it does not demand a political or judicial rationality. Derrida believes that forgiveness should always be opened like a wound which refuses to heal. The true forgiveness demands to engage the guilty and the victim whereas, the third party’s intervention becomes a reconciliation but not the forgiveness in its true spirit. Interestingly enough he himself agrees that without the intervention of the third party the forgiveness is not granted for to him in face to face encounter the language becomes the third party. So, the notion of Derrida’s forgiveness is caught in paradox because in Derrida’s discourse of true forgiveness needs face to face encounter with the self and other. On the contrary the conditional forgiveness needs split of categories of self and other, and the breach is done either by the arbitrators or by thee recognition of this that we are already tangled with the other. “For if, as I believe, the concept of a crime against humanity is the main charge of this self-accusation, of this repenting and this asking forgiveness; if, on the other hand, only a sacredness of the human can, in the last resort, justify this concept (nothing is worse, in this logic, than a crime against the humanity of man and against human rights)”4 The question of crime against humanity is the question of pure forgivness for it is, in Derrida’s discourse, to grant pardon to henious or “unforgivable” crime, unconditional forgivness as we have in the parable of the Prodigal Son . This act makes us one with the humanity and we express our Dasein which is the spirit of humanity to make us human. In other words it is a forgivness in authentic ways. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In recent history we have witnessed the process of forgivness of the henious crime aginst humanity. The Truth and Reconcilation Commission was formed to bring out the facts of the arocities of the apartheid era in South Africa and then to create such an enviorn where black people may forget the victimization they met and where the white may forget the atrocities they committed against humanity. It was a purge out method to allow people to vent their anger against the culprits and to allow the perpetrators to purge their guilt to lead normal life in future. It was an opportune of forgivness to the blacks of South Africa. It did not mean to free the cruel perpetrators of the crime against humanity but to make the enviorn of reconciliation to move forward. As Buddha says, “He abused me , he struck me, he overcame me, he robbed me ----- in those who harbour this thoughts hatred will never cease.” ( Dhammapaada 1.3-4 trans. Radhakrishnan). 5 It was, in philosophical discourse of Derrida, a face to face encounter of self with the other. And the process of forgivness was unconditional and at the same time it was the process of recognition of the culprit also that they were the part of the same humanity against whom they committed atrocities. Philosophically it was an authentic manner where the self had attain the freedom and the gulity had recognised his crime. A concious act betraying the humanity in us to become human.. Moreover, it was to assess and know to what degree the individual should be held responsible for his actions; carried out as an agent of state? TRC was not a stereotyped trial court but it was a stage where handful of black and white men and women listened to the stories of deep horror, of astonishing forbearance and heroism. The stories were broadcasted for the illiterate and the people living in remote areas. It never happened in the known human history and this commission was unique in itself. Because of its uniqueness it invited criticism in glore from all sections of the world. The people who believed that the perpetrators of crime against humanity must not be granted amnesty and they should be punished for their heinous crime were not satisfied with proceeding of the commission but to some this reconciliatory process was must to move the country forward and to extinguish the fire of vengeance which would have taken the country back in the past history of barbarity. In philosophical and psychological perspective the commission achieved its aim. The people had the opportunity to come out of the trauma by narrating their miseries of the past. Psychological it was an opportune for them to face and reconcile with the reality on conscious level instead of storing those in their unconscious to make them guilty or to succumb them in self pity. Moreover, the philosophical notion of forgiveness did not remain to be the ideal never to be achieved rather it had a proven side of it that humanity to become human assert itself and if the breach between the self and other is reconciled then humanity has every right to claim itself to be born again, the lost son is back the dead is found. The Works Cited 1- Stillman. Peter.G. edt. Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit. New York: State University of New York Press,1986 2- Heidegger.Martin. Being and Time. London: Blackwell Publishing, 1978. 3- Derrida. Jacques. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgivness. London: Routledge, 2001 4- ibid 5- Dhammapad: Wisdom of the Buddha.trans. Kaviratna.Harischandra. Theosophical University Press, 1980. Read More

In philosophical discourse Hegel in his dialectic of Master and Slave sees slave dominating the master since the master has no desire to be free whereas, the slave always aspires for freedom so in the dialectical process of history slave gains emancipation; though there is no reconciliation of self with other in Hegelian view the recognitions of the slave self of its being in the moment of freedom for the slave.1 But Derrida’s solution to the breach of self and others is forgiveness. Before analyzing the notion of forgiveness in Derrida's philosophical discourse it is pertinent to delve into the philosophical realm of Heidegger to probe his notion of authenticity and inauthenticity in his Being and Time since Derrida owes a great deal to him.

  The important notion of Heidegger is the notion of "The They". Heidegger says we do not see definite individuals, a collection of individuals, or even for that matter the community. It is our behavior and our ways of thinking. The inauthentic lose themselves. Ourselves is alienated from ourselves, we are lost in being-among-one-another.2 This notion of authenticity and inauthenticity is the base of Sartre’s notion of bad faith and good faith and of course we have the echo of Heidegger’s views in self in  Levinas’ ethics and in Derrida’s notion of forgiveness.

Does the question arise how do these relate to Derrida? The answer is simple that Derrida also thinks in terms of impossible, interruption, or extraordinary replacing for-the-sake of and Dasein(the innate spirit of humanity). Heidegger says that experience drags us out of the inauthentic self, we are lost in day to day world otherwise and our authentic self is buried under the debris of objects and events of daily life and consequently dominated by "they."Derrida brings out two concepts of forgiveness, the first is difficult for a novice to understand, which is the forgiveness of repetition"There is nothing outside the text".

It is the forgiveness of the norms since it is all absorbed by them. So, we must forgive for forgiveness's sake. To Heidegger, this sort of forgiveness is enveloped by care. Derrida says, “I shall risk this proposition: each time forgiveness is at the service of a finality, be it noble and spiritual (atonement or redemption, reconciliation, salvation), each time that it aims to re-establish a normality (social, national, political, psychological) by a work of mourning, by some therapy or ecology of memory, then the 'forgiveness' is not pure - nor is its concept.

Forgiveness is not, it should not be, normal, normative, normalizing. It should remain exceptional and extraordinary, in the face of the impossible: as if it interrupted the ordinary course of historical temporality.”3 Derrida does not formulate his ethics outside the boundaries of Christianity and believes with Heidegger in the innate nature of man. Derrida in his On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness maintains that true forgiveness is for the impossible; to forgive the ‘unforgivable’ misdemeanor, for example, the ‘mortal sin’.

Does not it sound like the Christian value? To forgive the unforgivable is the attribute of God. And Derrida calls it pure forgiveness or unconditional forgiveness which is to Derrida a forgiving of ‘ unconscious’, and it does not demand political or judicial rationality.It was a purge-out method to allow people to vent their anger against the culprits and to allow the perpetrators to purge their guilt to lead a normal life in the future. It was opportune of forgiveness to the blacks of South Africa.

It did not mean to free the cruel perpetrators of the crime against humanity but to make the environs of reconciliation move forward. As Buddha says, “He abused me, he struck me, he overcame me, he robbed me ----- in those who harbor this thoughts  hatred will never cease.” ( Dhammapada 1.3-4 trans. Radhakrishnan). 5            It was, in the philosophical discourse of Derrida, a face-to-face encounter of self with the other.

And the process of forgiveness was unconditional and at the same time, it was the process of recognition of the culprit also that they were part of the same humanity against whom they committed atrocities.

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