Between a hyperbolic ethic and a political principle: the unconditionality of forgiveness in Jacques Derrida

Abstract

Jacques Derrida affirms that forgiveness is wrapped in an aporia according to which only what is unforgivable can be forgiven. Forgiving what is forgivable would only be a way to excuse or settle a debt. If there is only forgiveness of the unforgivable, forgiveness must do the impossible and go through its own impossibility. This way of approaching forgiveness questions the logic of the conditions that determine when something is forgivable and when it is unforgivable, but also all certainty regarding its taking place, the possibility of its theorization, objectification or presentation. In this article I will expose some of the aspects in which Derrida separates from both Hannah Arendt and Vladimir Jankélévitch around the line between forgiveness and the unforgivable. From this I will address the «if there is» that accompanies the Derridian forgiveness not so much as a doubt as to its existence but as the mark of an «undecidable», a secret, irreducible and inappropriate instance to any form of determination. In this way, it is suggested that Derrida does not aspire to elaborate a theory about forgiveness and its possibilities, but rather inscribes it in a reflection on justice, heterogeneous to law, but nevertheless inseparable from its forms. This mismatch opens a wide field of questioning about what it may imply to make the impossibility of forgiveness possible.