Reconsidering Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. Christopher Peys
is both a singular being, and yet, not representative of a singular person at all, but rather the multitude of all humanity. Not unlike the notion of “dying to the self” found in the Christian tradition of faith, which demands a relinquishment of a self-centric existence and the putting into practice of a radical sense of beingness toward the infinite (God); a Levinasian understanding of acting responsibly toward the (unknown) Other is a call of and for a justice which is ultimately unfathomable, without limits, and free from any worldly conditions.
But what are the political implications of such a radically Other-oriented ethics? How can this transcendental notion of justice, as it relates to deconstruction, cultivate new spaces and forms of democratic action? That is, in what ways—if at all possible—does this extreme form of ethics conserve and enhance “the political”? With these questions in mind, I turn my attention to Derrida’s deconstructions of forgiveness and cosmopolitanism, proceeding on the conceptual grounds that his approach offers a “concrete intervention in contexts” that is “governed” by a radical “concern for justice.” I go forward with the belief that Derrida’s approach—because of the ways in which it operates, as Critchley observes, in a “quasi-transcendental register”33 —arguably neglects to account adequately for the political necessity of thinking and acting caringly for that which is shared with the “Other”: the “world.”
Corresponding with Derrida’s turn to more thoroughly ethical and political topics in the 1990s, his examination of forgiveness offers a “concrete” philosophic intervention during a period when humanity saw “the proliferation of scenes of repentances or of asking ‘forgiveness.’”34 Against this backdrop, he saw it necessary to critique how forgiveness—a decidedly Judeo-Christian notion—was being practiced and instrumentalized by individuals and groups from all across the (international) political spectrum, as well as individuals and nongovernmental actors from across (global) civil society. Acting into this “context,” which must be understood here in a double sense, as both the so-called real world where human affairs are taking place, and the all-encompassing “text” within which all meanings are ascribed, Derrida’s reflections on forgiveness offer a deconstructive critique—a “conceptual genealogy”—of a notion with conceptual roots extending deep into the Western tradition of thought: investigating how this idea has been understood and practiced throughout human history.
Contending that there is not “anything secular in our time,”35 Derrida argues that the contemporary world exists within a state of “globalatinisation [which] takes into account the effect of Roman Catholicism [that] today overdetermines all language of law, of politics, and even the interpretation of what is called the ‘return of the religious.’”36 Underscoring the hegemonic influence that religion has had on human existence in the West, Derrida suggests that forgiveness is an idea that is inseparable from its foundations in Christian teachings. In this way, his thinking is in line with that of Arendt when she writes:
The discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth. The fact that he made this discovery in a religious context and articulated it in religious language is no reason to take it any less seriously in a strictly secular sense.37
Derrida, who maintains that even the notion of “the secular” is a religious one,38 consequently affirms Arendt’s understanding that the religious foundations of the concept of forgiveness are significant, but do not prevent its being theorized/practiced in secular contexts. Although the tendency in the contemporary (international) political arena—both scholastically and practically—is to separate the secular from the non-secular, attempting to ground the doing of politics in nonreligious terms, this is not entirely possible when considering forgiveness, as the influence of Judeo-Christian precepts to the practice of this particular notion are undeniable. Secular scholars who study, and practitioners who do politics, therefore ought not be thwarted by the rootedness of forgiveness in Christian theology, though they must take into account how this “pearl” has been “crystallized” in terms of the ethics outlined within this tradition of faith.
A. Unconditional Forgiveness and Conditional “Forgiveness”
Derrida identifies two strands of forgiveness within the Christian tradition: the supernatural, unconditional and the human, conditional forms of this notion. In writing of the former, he highlights the “radical”39 character of forgiveness that is articulated repeatedly throughout the New Testament: the infinite, unmitigated form of forgiving related to the unconditional imperative to love one’s neighbor (agape). Like the unqualified, unquantifiable conception of love found in—for instance—Jesus’s Parable of the Prodigal Son,40 an unconditional form of forgiveness is associated with what Derrida calls a “hyperbolic ethics,” which is an ethics that “tends to push the exigency to the limit and beyond the limit of the possible.”41 A hyperbolic ethics is an “ethics beyond ethics,” for it “carries itself beyond laws, norms or any obligation.”42 This pure form of forgiveness, if there is such a thing at all, is found in the realm of the hyperbolic, and it demands “the unconditional, gracious, infinite, aneconomic forgiveness granted to the guilty as guilty, without counterpart, even to those who do not repent or ask forgiveness.”43 From this perspective, forgiveness is not characterized by pragmatism, proportionality, or the execution of a set of well-defined procedures. Rather, it possesses a certain unfathomable, unbounded, and unconditional quality that can only be understood, if it is even possible to understand at all, as a hyperbolic notion without quantifiable limits or conditional requirements.
By contrast, “conditional” forgiveness refers to that which is considered and commonly practiced within the human realm. For example, conditional forgiveness is associated with the semantics and the logic that informs the confession-forgiveness dynamic, as found in the Catholic confessional booth. In this space, a sinner confesses, repents, and apologizes for their sins as a means of asking for forgiveness from a priest, who—as a representative of God—has the power to absolve these indiscretions in return for a penance. For Derrida, this so-called forgiveness, which can be granted only after a wrongdoer satisfies certain conditions, cannot be understood as “forgiveness” at all. This is a point that he demonstrates in three primary ways.
First, a Derridean conception of “pure” forgiveness can take place only between two singularities—the wronged and the wrongdoer—and, thus, “as soon as a third party intervenes, one can speak of amnesty, reconciliation, reparation, etc., but certainly not of pure forgiveness.”44 Therefore, the presence and intervention of a party other than the victim and the perpetrator—such as a priest, judge, or state legislator—eliminates forgiveness from this interaction. Within such spaces, one can only speak of reconciliation, restorative justice, retributive justice, or amnesty, but not forgiveness.
Second, Derrida contends that conditional forgiveness, as found in the confessional booth, can be construed as a form of reconciliation, justice, or even something else entirely, precisely because it is the product of a specific type of transaction. Because this process may demand truth-telling, call for an apology, require repentance, include a promise not to re-commit the wrong and/or, ultimately, may depend upon a penance in order for “forgiveness” to be granted, this act is characterized by a formulaic process and a certain negotiation between parties, which—Derrida argues—erodes the purity of forgiveness. Although he recognizes the utility of such a conditional process of reparation—especially as it pertains to the political realm and the pursuit of national reconciliation in the wake of sociopolitical conflict—he takes issue with the conditional logic of the exchange. He argues that a “pure” forgiveness cannot be qualified by certain terms and conditions.
Without delving too deeply into Derrida’s understanding of gifts and the relational process of gift giving, it is necessary at this point to highlight how an unconditional forgiveness is a gift truly given. That is, as he writes, “forgiveness must be a gracious gift, without exchange and without condition.”45 Originally reflecting upon the idea of forgiveness in his native language of French, and therefore, on the French word