Over at philosphieren they have two rather interesting posts on Derrida's thoughts on forgiveness. (Part 1 and Part 2) A lot of the thoughts arise out of Derrida's book On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness which I confess to never having had read. (Although in the Derrida movie there was film of him delivering an interesting lecture on the topic in South Africa). Anyways, check it out. It is quite interesting.
Let me say that I truly wish I had the actual essay to comment on. I've found that whenever one reads Derrida second hand he is distorted. That's not necessarily a condemnation of readers. Just that you lose something important via the indirection. But, to be honest, I don't always agree with how people read him. Having said that though, a few comments.
First off Terry quotes Derrida as saying, "Forgiveness is not, it should not be, normal, normative, normalizing. It should remain exceptional and extraordinary." I certainly don't deny that. However his analogy with heroism is problematic. I suspect Derrida is getting at extraordinary in the sense of a kind of enchantment or "out of the crowd" experience and not simply the sense of unusual. I'll fully admit that is me reading Derrida in terms of the authentic/inauthentic view of Being and Time. But I think we can think of unusual in two senses. One is our everday being lost in terms of things and "the they." The other is simply that which we don't usually encounter. Thus seeing a tiger may be unusual, but we can see it both in the exceptional way and the unexceptional way, even if it is our first vision of it.
Of course when we do first encounter something we do usually experience that "newness" and excitement. One might call it the life.. Then as we encounter it over and over again we take it for granted and it loses its enchantment. But ideally it never should. And forgiveness most of all to be forgiveness must have that newness or freshness. We can't simply view forgiveness as a kind of technology. It can't simply be a endlessly repeated process where we become blind to it.
I should add, that whether you liked the film or hated the film, for most Christians Mel Gibson's The Passion truly brought new life to the sense of forgiveness and repentance. What is sad is how something shocking like that is sometimes necessary to see something as what it is and not simply has something lost in the world.
Now there is a discussion of whether a person can ever be expected to purely forgive. I don't know about that. Certainly typically when we forgive, it is a kind of technological forgiveness where it lacks that life for us. And I can see pure forgiveness as conceived of as something we never achieve. (A "for-the-sake-of", which I think characterizes a lot of Derrida's late period of phenomenology) But can this be expected? I suppose that depends upon what we mean by expectation.
Derrida apparent goes into a discussion of how pure forgiveness only can be such if it is forgiving the unforgivable. That's intriguing and I wish I understood what was going on here. Terry talks about venal sins versus mortal sins. That's basically a Catholic notion of serious sins versus less important ones. I'm not sure of the point, but I suspect it is simply that non-serious sins we don't care enough about to really forgive in the pure sense. For instance it's hard to call my forgiving the person who cuts me off in traffic forgiveness. Mainly because frankly I just don't care enough about it to give it much thought. The person who breaks into my home and steals from me though impacts me enough that a kind of commitment of my soul is necessary - forgiveness is far more near to me than in the other case. However calling it unforgivable seems a tad strong. I'd be interested in Derrida's argument for this. Of course that brings up the obvious question of what makes an unforgivable sin unforgivable. And Terry raises that question as well.
I suspect Derrida wants to see forgiveness as something done but which is simultaneously impossible. Whether he can reach that point of aporia without straining too far is an other matter.
The other point Derrida makes (as recounted in the second post) is that there are three 'elements' to forgiveness. The forgiver, the forgivee and then the language or communication between them. (This of course can't help but make a Peircean think of thirdness) The idea is that to assign blame, one must understand and that requires communication. This leads to the obvious next step, given Derrida's previous writings, of whether communication is possible and thus whether forgiveness is possible. Put an other way, reconciliation requires agreement and communication. But in communication can we ever be sure we are understood or understand? (You'll recall this was the point of the Gadamer - Derrida divide)
Terry doesn't mention it, but I wonder if something is unforgivable precisely because we can't communicate in a traditional sense. (Terry instead focuses in on understanding what is unforgivable and communicating it - but I wonder if the problem is more fundamental) But this point seems the place I'm not quite sure what Derrida is saying. It also seems the core place of Derrida's analysis.
I touched on more practical aspects of the above over at M*. Also Philosphieren discusses Derrida and forgiveness in a more global setting as a followup to the above.
I finally read the essay and have some initial thoughts here.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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