The reputedly inscrutable Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida in an interview following a lecture on forgiveness in Capetown:
This gesture that I make when I talk of pure forgiveness is a different gesture. I try to explain that any type of pure forgiveness is impossible and that one can only truly forgive that which is unforgiveable. If one forgives what is easily forgiven, one doesn’t really forgive. One must forgive what is unforgiveable, and so do the impossible.
I also try to distinguish between reconciliation and forgiveness. A forgiveness that is demanded or accorded in order to achieve some kind of reconciliation is not forgiveness. If I forgive solely to change a situation, or to heal a wound, or if I forgive with a therapeutic intention, or a psychoanalytic or ecological purpose, or so that someone’s health returns, or peace is restored, then to me that is not pure forgiveness. That’s a calculation.
Now I might think it’s a good calculation—one that must be made—but I wouldn’t consider it pure forgiveness. I would regard it as something that is part of a process—a process of mourning or reconciliation—which is sometimes therapeutic or politically necessary. And I approve of all these processes of reconciliation that are attempted in many part of the world today.
But since I am a philosopher who tries to be rigorous with what’s said and tries to understand the meaning of words and evaluate their sense and implication, I refrain from calling these situations examples of pure forgiveness.
It seems odd that Derrida of all people would want to talk about “pure” forgiveness. His work has done nothing else but demonstrate that contamination is at work in every conceptual edifice. Why would he desire or expect forgiveness to be exempt from this logic?
Sure, but I think that’s precisely Derrida’s point.
I am by no means deeply acquainted with Derrida, but I recently watched the movie “Derrida”. Here Derrida was recorded speaking the words above. I worked out an understanding and I think Derrida is really questioning the meaning of forgiveness to elucidate the origin of the one, the one being the one that every one is, the unity of self. In the movie (I have never read Derrida), Derrida speaks of the one as violence. I think instead of assuming the self is original, Derrida is trying to force us to see the self as a break with an original unity (though this its self seems impossible) Pure forgiveness then is really a giving of the unity of the one caused by the violence of the other. Pure, though I am tempted to put it as complete, forgiveness is impossible because it would dissolve the unity of the self. One can not completely forgive else one would forget one’s self. Here forgiveness is more original than any concepts of law or justice – it is a function of existence – it is the antithesis of selfishness.