tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-185819092024-03-07T04:45:29.068-05:00A Different Portrait"I meet someone whom I have not seen for years; I see him clearly, but fail to know him. Suddenly I know him, I see the old face in the altered one. I believe that I should do a different portrait of him now if I could paint."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, <i>Philosophical Investigations</i>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-63242484086279870762009-12-02T13:45:00.005-05:002009-12-02T15:10:14.837-05:00Some thoughts on Jesus and Forgiveness: With Special Guests: William Blake, Walter Benjamin, and Vladimir Jankelevitch<span style="font-size:100%;">John Moriarty, in </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Serious Sounds</span>, a story of his childhood growing up in Catholic Irelan</span><span style="font-size:100%;">d, writes:<i style=""><span lang="EN-IE"> </span></i></span><span lang="EN-IE" style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">"Was it Bl</span>ake I wondered who had said that the difference between Jesus and Socrates was that Jesus could say, Your sins are forgiven you." </span><span style="font-size:100%;">He's close. Blake does write something like this, in pencil, in one of his notebooks (that is now recognized to be an unfinished, or at least unedited, poem). Blake writes: </span><blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;">There is not one Moral Virtue that Jesus Inculcated but Plato & Cicero did Inculcate before him what then did Christ Inculcate. Forgiveness of Sins. This alone is the Gospel & this is the Life & Immortality brought to light by Jesus. Even the Covenant of Jehovah, which is This If you forgive one another your Trespasses so shall Jehovah forgive you That he himself may dwell among you but if you Avenge you Murder the Divine Image & he cannot dwell among you [</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >by his</span><span style="font-size:100%;">] because you Murder him he arises Again & you deny that he is Arisen & are blind to Spirit.</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br />Blake then gets out his pen and jots down some rhymed couplets. The first stanza reads:<br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;">What can this Gospel of Jesus be<br />What Life & Immortality<br />What was [</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >It</span><span style="font-size:100%;">] <it> that he brought to Light<br />That Plato & Cicero did not write</it></span></blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;">We find out that, according to Blake, what Jesus "brought to light" was the "forgiveness of sins":<br /></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;">Then Jesus rose & said to [</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >men</span><span style="font-size:100%;">] <me><br />Thy Sins are all forgiven thee</me></span></blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />While it may be true that, contrary to Charles Griswold's claim, Plato's (and Aristotle's) use of </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >sungnome </span><span style="font-size:100%;">doesn't amount to the forgiveness of the Abrahamic heritage, "forgiveness of sins" </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >simpliciter </span><span style="font-size:100%;">is not unique to Jesus. We should avoid, here, making the same mistake as Hegel in "The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate" when he claimed that Judaism only knew the Law, not love or forgiveness. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Such a mistake is similar to those who want to claim that Jesus "died for the truth of the gospels" and then go on to do some fancy intellectual footwork that includes reducing Christianity to some set of religious abstractions (which usually includes forgiveness) and then denying those abstractions (forgiveness) to Judaism. Jesus is doing something else when it comes to forgiveness. He did not discover it, he did not invent it, as if the Jews knew nothing of forgiveness. Rather, the Jews knew quite a bit about forgiveness and what Jesus says about forgiveness in the Gospel accounts would have been met with, at worst, a yawn, and, at best, support. What Jesus says about forgiveness in the Gospel accounts would have been, to borrow a felicitous phrase from E.P. Sanders, " about as controversial as motherhood" to the Jews (E.P. Sanders, <span style="font-style: italic;">Jesus and Judaism</span>, 333). </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" > </span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:12pt;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span> </span><br />Unless, of course, we look at Jesus' claims about forgiving "sinners" - the </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >hamartoloi </span><span style="font-size:100%;">(behind which we see the Hebrew </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >resha'im</span><span style="font-size:100%;">), the "wicked." This should hold our attention for awhile: the forgiveness of sinners, the forgiveness of the sins of sinners, the forgiveness of the sins of sinners who remain sinners (because if they were repentant and reformed sinners, they wouldn't be sinners anymore). This would be a forgiveness "without Money & without Price" that we saw in the previous post in which we find a quote from Blake's "Jerusalem." For Blake, this is the Jehovah's forgiveness, this is Jehovah's salvation. Perhaps, as we can see in the Benjamin quote from three posts ago, forgiveness maintains its foremost significance by not being </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >a priori</span> referred exclusively to humans. Perhaps this forgiveness is not a human possibility, perhaps there are things that are, as Arendt writes in a footnote in <span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >The Human Condition, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">"unforgivable, at least on earth" - which refers to a realm in which such things are fulfilled; namely, God's forgiveness. However, that doesn't mean that we can simply be satisfied with our human-all-to-human forgiveness, with the calculations we make and the conditions we set. Pure forgiveness,</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-size:100%;"> a forgiveness "without Money & without Price," does set our "duty" for us, does "determine and orient our efforts," as we see in the Jankelevitch quote two posts below. We can get "infinitely nearer to" pure forgiveness, to a forgiveness "without Money & without Price," a forgiveness of the sin and of the sinner who remains a sinner, the sinner </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >qua </span><span style="font-size:100%;">sinner, a forgiveness of the sinner not "despite" the sin and the fact that they are a sinner, not "even though" they have sinned, but "precisely because" they are a sinner and have sinned.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">(When I started writing this, I didn't plan on tying all these quotes together, but once I started they just came together. It needs work, but I think it is a good start.) </span><br /><br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-8676492626629433722009-12-02T13:22:00.004-05:002009-12-02T13:39:23.849-05:00Some Lines from Blake<span style="font-size:100%;">"Ah my Mary: said Joseph: weeping over & embracing her closely in/<br />His arms: Doth he [Jehovah] forgive Jerusalem & not exact Purity from her who/<br /> is/<br />Polluted. I heard his voice in my sleep & his Angel in my dream:/<br />Saying, Doth Jehovah Forgive a Debt only on condition that it shall/<br />Be Payed? Doth he Forgive Pollution only on conditions of Purity/<br />That Debt is not Forgiven! That Pollution is not Forgiven/<br />Such is the Forgiveness of the Gods, the Moral Virtues of the/<br />Heathen, whose tender Mercies are Cruelty. But Jehovahs Salvation/<br />Is without Money & without Price, in Continual Forgiveness of/<br /> Sins/<br />In the Perpetual Mutual Sacrifice in Great Eternity! for behold!/<br />There is none that liveth & Sinneth not! And this is the Covenant/<br />Of Jehovah: If you Forgive one-another, so shall Jehovah Forgive you:/<br />That He Himself may Dwell among You. Fear not then to take/<br />To thee Mary thy Wife, for she is with Child by the Holy Ghost"<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size:100%;">- William Blake</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">William Blake, "Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion</span><span style="font-size:78%;">," Ch 3, Plate 61, lines 14-27 in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake</span>, ed. David V. Erdman (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), 211-212.</span><br /><br /><br /></div></div>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-43786276043406589802009-12-01T20:42:00.002-05:002009-12-01T20:52:26.133-05:00Some lines from Jankélévitch"Even if no one since the world has been the world has ever forgiven without reservations, without afterthoughts, without mental restrictions, or without an infinitesimal amount of <span style="font-style: italic;">ressentiment</span><span>, it suffices that the possibility of pure forgiveness is conceivable; even if it has never been attained in fact, the limit of pure forgiveness would still designate our duty to us, would determine and orient our efforts, would furnish a criterion for permitting us to distinguish between the pure and the impure, and would give a standard of measure to evaluation and a direction to charity. The one who never attains the ideal (the ideal being made precisely for never being attained) can get infinitely nearer to it. It is what the <span style="font-style: italic;">Phaedo</span>, speaking of intelligible essences, calls <span style="font-style: italic;">eggutata ienai</span>, 'to go closest'."<br /></span><div style="text-align: right;"><div style="text-align: right;">- Vladimir Jankélévitch<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:78%;">Vladimir Jankélévitch, <span style="font-style: italic;">Forgiveness</span>, trans. Andrew Kelley (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005) 115-116.</span></div></div></div>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-35519671450666116242009-11-25T21:46:00.012-05:002009-11-25T23:22:41.912-05:00Some Lines from Benjamin"It should be pointed out that certain correlative concepts retain their meaning, and possibly their foremost significance, if they are [not <span style="font-style: italic;">a priori</span>] referred exclusively to man. One might, for example, speak of an unforgettable life or moment even if all men had forgotten it. If the nature of such a life or moment required that it be unforgotten, that predicate would not imply a falsehood but merely a claim not fulfilled by men, and probably also a reference to a realm in which it is fulfilled: God’s remembrance."<br />- Walter Benjamin<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><br /><br />Walter Benjamin, “Task of the Translator,” Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Shocken Books, 1969), 70. Hannah Arendt quoted this passage in her essay on Walter Benjamin and the differences are included in brackets. See Hannah Arendt, “Walter Benjamin,” Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, INC, 1968), 203.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-31323298534885913392009-05-29T22:11:00.003-04:002009-05-29T22:58:25.269-04:00Undoing What Has Been Done: Arendt and Levinas on Forgiveness<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CChris%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CChris%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CChris%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><!--[if gte 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mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--><o:p></o:p>[Here is a copy of the paper I presented at the conference "Forgiveness: Probing the Boundaries" in Salzburg, Austria on March 15, 2009. The paper will be published in the conference proceedings later this year. Allow me three disclaimers. 1) This paper is a shorter version of the paper that I wrote for the course "Ethics After Auschwitz: Adorno and Levinas" at the Institute for Christian Studies (Toronto) in Spring 2009. The version of the paper for that course was 25 pages long and I had to cut it down to 8 pages for the conference - no easy task! - and, therefore, I have cut out a majority of the literary flourishes with the hope that this doesn't make it dry and boring. 2) I am writing my PhD dissertation on the topic of forgiveness, focusing primarily on the work of Hannah Arendt. Presently as I envision my dissertation, a version of this paper is to make up the final chapter and, therefore, this paper assumes quite a bit - and perhaps too much. For example, Derrida's discussion of forgiveness isn't discussed in this paper, but it plays a large part in my understanding of forgiveness. Also, cutting this paper down to 8 pages forced me to assume a lot more than I had originally assumed in the 25 page version. 3) I have made a few changes to the argument since I delivered this paper (which I won't go into here). As time goes on, I am less and less satisfied with the argument (even to the point of questioning whether or not I actually make an argument). However, this is the version of the paper I delivered at the conference.
<br />Anyway, I know it is rather long, but any comments, questions, criticisms, or whatever would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!]
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<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">If it is true that to forgive a person <i style="">qua</i> offender involves forgiving the person’s deed <i style="">qua</i> offense, what does it mean to forgive an offense?<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> <span style=""> </span>Focusing my argument around Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas, I will argue that forgiveness involves undoing a misdeed by reversing time, acting upon the past misdeed, and making it <i style="">as if</i> it did not happen.<span style=""> </span>Such an act of forgiveness, thus, releases the sinner from the sinful past by giving the sinner a new past, a new beginning, and the possibility of beginning anew.<span style=""> </span>To begin, we will turn to Arendt’s understanding of forgiveness as reversing the irreversible.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">In <i style="">The Human Condition</i>, Arendt discusses action as involving the possibility of new beginnings.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Action as beginning “corresponds to the fact of birth” as the “actualization of the human condition of natality.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Natality, for Arendt, is concerned with “the new beginning inherent in birth,” and is “the capacity for beginning something anew” on one’s own initiative, which each “newcomer possesses.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>For Arendt, this capacity for action means that “the unexpected can be expected,” that humans are “able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this… is possible only because each [person] is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Action as a “new beginning” then is a “miracle,” for Arendt, in that any new beginning “always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Every act “breaks into the world as an infinite improbability.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn7" name="_ednref7" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> Natality, the capacity to begin ever anew inherent in each individual by virtue of being born, is the source of our faith and hope that we are not condemned to some fatalistic eternal recurrence of the same, that what has happened did not have to happen and does not have to happen again.<span style=""> </span>Thanks to natality, we can expect the unexpectable occurrence of the miraculous.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Such free action is boundless, unpredictable, and irreversible – three (potentially hazardous) characteristics of action.<span style=""> </span>First, action is boundless.<span style=""> </span>Action establishes relationships, opens limitations, and cuts across all boundaries.<span style=""> </span>Laws, which are meant to protect against the boundlessness of action, are never reliable safeguards against such boundlessness.<span style=""> </span>Second, action is unpredictable, in that it is impossible to foretell “the consequences of an act within a community of equals where everybody has the same capacity to act.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn8" name="_ednref8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>The only possible safeguard against the unpredictability of action, for Arendt, is the making and keeping of promises.<span style=""> </span>Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn9" name="_ednref9" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> Third, action is irreversible. Once one acts, the action cannot be taken back and has uncontrollable consequences.<span style=""> </span>It is irreversible in that one is “unable to undo what one has done though one did not, and could not, have known what he was doing.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn10" name="_ednref10" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Promises do not provide an absolute safeguard against the unpredictability of action and, therefore, we need some way in which to reverse the irreversible action in order to release or unbind the offender from the offence and its consequences. This is where Arendt brings in the faculty of forgiveness as the “possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn11" name="_ednref11" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Forgiveness, for Arendt, is itself an action – a miraculous new beginning – which creates a new situation.<span style=""> </span>Forgiveness – as opposed to vengeance or revenge, which are predictable reactions with no power to unbind – “can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn12" name="_ednref12" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Furthermore, forgiveness is a “reaction which does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn13" name="_ednref13" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Here we see that, for Arendt, forgiveness, as a new action, frees both the forgiver and the forgiven from the consequences of the original action<span style="">.<span style=""> </span></span>Forgiveness is an action which redeems the irreversibility of action in that “forgiving attempts the seemingly impossible, to undo what has been done, and… it succeeds in making a new beginning where beginnings seemed to have become no longer possible.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn14" name="_ednref14" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> In part, forgiveness is the undoing or reversing of “<i style="">what</i> was done” – the act – “for the sake of <i style="">who</i> did it.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn15" name="_ednref15" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Forgiveness, by attempting the impossible task of reversing the irreversible or undoing what has been done, is a new beginning where beginnings appear to be impossible, an action, which comes from the other and releases our capacity to act from the consequences of boundless, unpredictable, and irreversible action in order for it to be possible to begin anew.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn16" name="_ednref16" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">There are two characteristics of forgiveness as Arendt understands it in <i style="">The Human Condition</i>.<span style=""> </span>On the one hand, Arendt understands forgiveness as a release, an unbinding of an agent from the consequences of an action.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn17" name="_ednref17" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>On the other hand, Arendt holds that forgiveness is the undoing of what has been done for the sake of the one who did it.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn18" name="_ednref18" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>These two characteristics are combined in <i style="">The Human Condition</i>, thus forging an understanding of forgiveness that focuses on the impossible and miraculous task of undoing the act in order to release the agent from its consequences.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">In her work on forgiveness after <i style="">The Human Condition</i>, however, Arendt goes on to separate these two characteristics, no longer speaking of forgiveness as undoing while still maintaining the understanding of forgiveness as release that focuses exclusively on the person.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn19" name="_ednref19" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt 0in; text-indent: 0in;">But is Arendt too quick in jettisoning her understanding of forgiveness as reversing the irreversible, as undoing what has been done?<span style=""> </span>Can an agent be released from her act without in some way having the act be forgiven?<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn20" name="_ednref20" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>I will argue that Arendt has jettisoned this understanding of forgiveness too quickly; the unbinding of the agent from the past deed does involve, in some way, undoing the past deed.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">While one is not simply the sum of one’s actions – that is, one is not exhausted by one’s various inscriptions in the world, as Paul Ricoeur would say<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn21" name="_ednref21" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> – action, according to Arendt, does reveal, make manifest, or disclose “who somebody is.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn22" name="_ednref22" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>In light of this “revelatory character” of action<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn23" name="_ednref23" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> – that is, since any particular act reveals “who” the agent is – the agent is indissolubly bound to and, in an important sense, “one” with the act.<span style=""> </span>If it is the case, as Arendt argues, that deeds reveal “who” a person is, then to forgive a person without forgiving the person’s deed would be to forgive that person only up to a point.<span style=""> </span>It would be to forgive the part of the offender who either has not offended in the past or will not offend in the future, but it is not to forgive the “who” revealed in this deed, the offender <i style="">qua</i> offender, the part of the offender that has been offending and thus needs forgiveness.<span style=""> </span>Forgiveness, rather, focuses on the “who” revealed in this deed, on the instant of offending when the offender is, in an important sense, “one” with the offense – so indissolubly bound to the offense that to forgive the offender also means to forgive the offense.<span style=""> </span>Therefore, I think that Arendt has jettisoned too quickly her understanding of forgiveness as undoing what was done, and that we should pick it back up and take it farther. <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">In her discussion of forgiveness as reversing in <i style="">The Human Condition</i>, Arendt is not clear about what such a reversal of the irreversible entails.<span style=""> </span>What does it mean to “undo” what has been done?<span style=""> </span>Does she take such an undoing in a metaphysical sense in which the forgiver takes the place of Peter Damian’s omnipotent God and, reaching back in time, “physically” or “literally” makes something that was done in the past not to have been done at all?<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn24" name="_ednref24" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> <span style=""> </span>Such an undoing, it seems to me, would not only annul the past but would also annul the forgiveness inasmuch as there would be nothing to forgive, the offender would become innocent having never offended to begin with.<span style=""> </span>Forgiveness does not make the offender innocent; it makes the offender forgiven.<span style=""> </span>Forgiveness requires that the past offense be left standing – or else there would be nothing to forgive – even as it requires that it somehow be undone or reversed.<span style=""> </span>We need a forgiveness that is an undoing of a deed – which it has to be if it is going to be forgiveness of the offending aspect of the offender – and, at the same time, one that does not just eradicate the deed. Therefore, rather than understanding the undoing or reversing in such a metaphysical sense, I will read this undoing or reversing in what John Caputo calls a “purely ethico-phenomenological sense.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn25" name="_ednref25" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>In such a reading, I will turn to Levinas who is more explicit about what such an undoing or reversing would entail; namely, forgiveness is a reversing of time and an acting upon the past that makes it <i style="">as if</i> the event never happened, <i style="">as if</i> the deed had not been done, <i style="">as if</i> the doer had not done the deed. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">For Levinas, one can “give the past a new meaning,” “repair the past” by re-narrating it, putting it in a new perspective, thus freeing and opening up the future.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn26" name="_ednref26" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>This is the hermeneutical work of memory, the “salutary character of succession,” in which the past is re-presented and repaired within limits, but time keeps marching on.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn27" name="_ednref27" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[27]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>By re-presenting and remembering – which is what Arendt means by <i style="">teshuvah</i> or repentance – one can retell one’s past, find new meanings for one’s past, and repair one’s past, but only so much.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn28" name="_ednref28" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[28]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>As Robert Gibbs tells us, “it is FORGIVENESS that changes the past, <i style="">not</i> repentance” or memory.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn29" name="_ednref29" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[29]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>In and of itself without recourse to others, memory has its limits; it can only do so much, “its age limits its powers,” as Levinas would say.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn30" name="_ednref30" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[30]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Without recourse to others – that is, without being forgiven – the past can be repaired, retold, and redescribed, but not to the point of changing it.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">In contrast to the limited power of re-presenting the past, which is predicated on a successive understanding of time as becoming in which one is always launched toward the future and “toward death,” Levinas discusses what he calls “the discontinuous time of fecundity” which “makes possible an absolute youth and recommencement.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn31" name="_ednref31" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[31]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>This discontinuous time, beyond mere re-presentation, is the time of forgiveness in which, similarly to Arendt’s understanding, it bequeaths a radical new beginning without which “the I would remain a subject in which every adventure would revert into the adventure of a fate,” and thus no adventure at all.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn32" name="_ednref32" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[32]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>When discussing “discontinuous time,” Levinas has in mind the parent/child relationship in which the parent has new chances in the life of the child; the child represents a new beginning for the parent. “My child is a stranger,” Levinas writes, invoking Isaiah 49, “but a stranger who is not only mine, for he <i style="">is</i> me.<span style=""> </span>He is me a stranger to myself.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn33" name="_ednref33" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[33]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>It seems that Levinas is not discussing the parent/child relationship in a strictly intergenerational sense, and I would like to say that this discontinuity of time can be <i style="">re</i>generational, pertain to the possibility of rebirth within the lifetime of a single person.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn34" name="_ednref34" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[34]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>In a word, forgiveness is not only concerned with one’s flesh and blood child, but with one’s own rebirth.<span style=""> </span>When someone forgives an offender, the offender is given a new birth in the eyes of the forgiver.<span style=""> </span>Forgiveness, then, is “the very work of time”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn35" name="_ednref35" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[35]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> since, as Levinas writes in <i style="">Time and the Other</i>, “time is essentially a new birth.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn36" name="_ednref36" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[36]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Forgiveness, for Levinas, is paradoxical in that it is retroactive and, as the “very work of time,” opens up the past itself and changes and acts upon it.<span style=""> </span>From the view of “common time,” in which the present acts for the future but not the past, forgiveness “represents an inversion of the natural order of things” in that it is a “retroaction,” a reversing of time.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn37" name="_ednref37" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[37]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>In remembering, we only bring the past forward, re-present the past, but do not go back and change the past.<span style=""> </span>For Levinas, forgiveness “refers to the instant elapsed” in that “it permits the subject who has committed himself in a past instant to be <i style="">as though</i> that instant had not passed on, to be <i style="">as though</i> he had not committed himself.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn38" name="_ednref38" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[38]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>In forgiveness, what was done in the past is “undone” not in some metaphysical sense in which one “physically” or “literally” changes the past but, for Levinas, the past is ‘undone’ in a “purely ethico-phenomenological sense.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn39" name="_ednref39" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[39]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Here the past is not manipulated, distorted, annulled, or abandoned and blotted out by forgetting.<span style=""> </span>Rather, forgiveness, which is more active than forgetting, “acts upon the past, somehow repeats the event, purifying it.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn40" name="_ednref40" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[40]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>The past is not re-presented in the present through memory, or nullified through forgetting, but repeated in the past.<span style=""> </span>Furthermore, the past event is repeated, but repeated differently, <i style="">as if</i> it has not passed, <i style="">as if</i> it never happened, <i style="">as if</i> the doer had not “committed” herself in action.<span style=""> </span>Forgiveness is a “rigorously <i style="">ethical</i> event” in which the other reverses time and repeats the past <i style="">as if</i> it had not happened and <i style="">as if</i> the agent had not committed herself, therefore, altering “the <i style="">event</i> of the past, while preserving the past offense.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn41" name="_ednref41" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[41]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span><i style="">Historically</i>, the deed was done, but <i style="">ethically</i>, it is <i style="">as if</i> it had not been done.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn42" name="_ednref42" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[42]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Such repetition purifies or cleanses the past event – the past is washed clean, not washed away – and “conserves the past pardoned in the purified present.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn43" name="_ednref43" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[43]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Forgiveness cleanses the past event and repairs it “by repeating the past <i style="">as forgiven</i>.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn44" name="_ednref44" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[44]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>So while the event <i style="">did</i> happen, it is repeated in the past <i style="">as if</i> it did not happen and its reality is transformed in the present. By being forgiven, as Jeffrey Dudiak writes, “[i]t is not that my past is eliminated… but time will be relived, over and again, providing the possibility of a break with the past that is not heavy with this past, of a recommencement in time, liberated, time and again, with each passing generation, from fate.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn45" name="_ednref45" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[45]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>In forgiveness, I am given a new beginning, I become a child.<span style=""> </span>Both pasts – the sinful one in which the event did happen and the cleansed or purified one in which it is <i style="">as if</i> the event did not happen – are conserved in the present.<span style=""> </span>Therefore, forgiveness does not reinstate innocence, because the past did happen,<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn46" name="_ednref46" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[46]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> yet, forgiveness acts upon the past making it <i style="">as if</i> it did not happen.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Levinas then goes on to discuss forgiveness as constituting time itself.<span style=""> </span>Time, for Levinas, is not the achievement of my consciousness, it is not of my doing, the future is not a ‘future-present’, a set of “indistinguishable possibles which flow toward my present and which I would grasp.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn47" name="_ednref47" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[47]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Rather, time comes from across an “absolute interval” from the other as <i style="">tout autre </i>as a gift.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn48" name="_ednref48" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[48]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> As Caputo writes: “The gift of forgiveness from the other belongs to the way the other, in forgiving me, gives me time.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn49" name="_ednref49" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[49]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>In forgiveness, this gift of time from the other is a gift of a new past, a cleansed sinful past, a forgiven past.<span style=""> </span>In giving me my past, the other “unknots” me from my sinful past and “knots” me to the gift of a forgiven past.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn50" name="_ednref50" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[50]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>Forgiveness, for Levinas, is the gift of time, the gift of a new birth.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">To conclude, we should focus on this mention of “new birth” which reveals the most striking similarity between Levinas and Arendt.<span style=""> </span>For Arendt, natality is the capacity to begin anew that humans have by virtue of being born.<span style=""> </span>For both Arendt and Levinas, in forgiving, we see the new birth or “recommencement” coming from the other.<span style=""> </span>The other, for Levinas, gives me a new past, which releases me from my “sinful” past, and, therefore, gives the possibility of a new future, a “new chance for desiring and being good.”<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn51" name="_ednref51" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[51]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style=""> </span>By forgiving, the other gives me time, gives me a new past, and gives me a new beginning.<span style=""> </span>In the eyes of the forgiving other, it is <i style="">as if</i> one did not do what one did; the forgiven person is released from what she did and therefore is given a new beginning.<span style=""> </span>Such a gift of a new beginning allows for the possibility of beginning anew, the possibility to “capitalize” upon our capacity of natality.<span style=""> </span>Forgiveness both is a new beginning and gives a new beginning where one no longer seemed to be possible.<span style=""> </span>For both Arendt and Levinas, forgiveness is that way in which humans give birth to the child of the future. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">Arendt is on the right path when she discusses forgiveness as the reversing of the irreversible, or the undoing of what has been done for the sake of the one who did it.<span style=""> </span>In order to forgive a person, the deed must be altered in some way; it must be undone or reversed.<span style=""> </span>Arendt is correct, that is, to focus forgiveness in part on the deed itself and not simply on the doer, and I think we should not be quick to jettison such an understanding of forgiveness.<span style=""> </span>From here we can pick up Arendt’s understanding of forgiveness as undoing or reversing again, and take it in a Levinasian direction in order to explicate what such an undoing or reversing would entail.<span style=""> </span>Forgiveness, in part, focuses on a past misdeed, reversing time in order to (retro)act upon the misdeed, repeating it and purifying it, undoing or reversing the misdeed, making it <i style="">as if</i> the misdeed had not been done, <i style="">as if</i> the agent had not committed the misdeed, thus, giving the agent a new, forgiven past and the possibility of beginning anew.<span style=""> </span>The deed has been done; yet, by forgiving, the past is cleansed and the future is opened for the offender to begin again <i style="">as if</i> the deed were never done.<span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_edn52" name="_ednref52" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[52]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span> </p> <span style=";font-family:";font-size:12;" >
<br /></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;" align="center">ENDNOTES</p> <div style=""><!--[if !supportEndnotes]-->
<br /><hr width="33%" align="left" style="font-size:78%;"> <!--[endif]--> <div style="" id="edn1"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Already, Arendt would contest such a question because forgiveness , for her, is not concerned with “offenses” (cf footnote 16).</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">This paper assumes that to forgive the doer is at the same time to forgive a deed <i style="">qua</i> misdeed. I briefly (but by no means exhaustively) explain why I think this is the case later in the paper.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn2"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style="font-size:78%;"> Hannah Arendt, <i style="">The Human Condition</i> (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1958). <span style=""> </span>(Hereafter <i style="">HC.</i>) </span><span style="font-size:78%;">This beginning is only one part of action (<i style="">archein</i>).<span style=""> </span>There is also another side to action, namely acting in concert to see the action through (<i style="">prattein</i>).<span style=""> </span>“Here it seems as though each action were divided into two parts, the beginning made by a single person and the achievement in which many join by ‘bearing’ and ‘finishing’ the enterprise, by seeing it through.” (Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 189).<span style=""> </span>(This has been, from the beginning of political philosophy, divided between two different stations in society; the ruler (<i style="">archein</i>) and the ruled (<i style="">prattein</i>).<span style=""> </span>However, Arendt sees this as an attempt to control the unpredictability and irreversibility of action.)<span style=""> </span></span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn3"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 178.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn4"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 9, 176-177. See also <i style="">HC</i>, 246 where Arendt implicitly distances herself from Heidegger when she writes that “men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin.” </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn5"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 178.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn6"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 178.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn7"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref7" name="_edn7" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Hannah Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” <i style="">Between Past and Future</i> (New York: Penguin, 1968), 167.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn8"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref8" name="_edn8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 244.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn9"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref9" name="_edn9" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style="font-size:78%;"> Although I will not attempt it in this paper, it would be interesting to discuss action in relation to Jacques Derrida’s “archi-promise.”<span style=""> </span>For Derrida, language promises, namely, by speaking, I am promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (but language is just a pointer and never delivers the “thing itself”), even if you lie (and this is why a lie works, because by speaking you are promising to tell the truth).<span style=""> </span>Perhaps we could say, in a similar way, that action promises, namely, by acting, I am promising (perhaps the universal, or justice, or whatever), a promise that I cannot fulfill (so we always need forgiveness).<span style=""> </span>See Jacques Derrida, <i style="">Memoires: For Paul de Man</i>, trans. Cecile Lindsay, Jonathan Culler, and Eduardo Cadava (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 119 and Howard Coward and Toby Foshay, eds., <i style="">Derrida and Negative Theology </i>(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992), 84-85.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn10"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref10" name="_edn10" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 237.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn11"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref11" name="_edn11" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 237.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Arendt sees the consumptive cycle of labor redeemed by work and the category of means and ends of work redeemed by action and speech.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">However, the redemption of the irreversibility and unpredictability of action “does not arise out of another and possibly higher faculty” (as with labor and work); rather, the redemption is “one of the potentialities of action itself” – namely, forgiveness and the making and keeping of promises.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">While it is beyond the scope of this paper to make the argument, I don’t agree with Arendt that forgiveness is a “potentiality” of action itself.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">If the possibility for reversal is built in, then the irreversible is not really irreversible and the reversal is not really a miracle. </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn12"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref12" name="_edn12" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style="font-size:78%;"> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 241.<span style=""> </span>Forgiveness, for Arendt, is the opposite of vengeance or revenge.<span style=""> </span>Vengeance is a re-action against the original action.<span style=""> </span>However, it does not put an end to the consequences of the action.<span style=""> </span>Rather, “everybody remains bound to the process, permitting the chain reaction contained in every action to take its unhindered course.” Vengeance is programmable, expected, predictable, and calculable; forgiveness is not.<span style=""> </span>See Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 240-241.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn13"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref13" name="_edn13" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 241.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Arendt holds that forgiveness is the “only” reaction that “acts anew and unexpectedly.”</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">But is it the only one? What about turning the other cheek?</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">What about being grateful to the offender for providing an opportunity for my own personal growth?</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn14"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref14" name="_edn14" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>Hannah Arendt, “The Tradition of Political Thought,” <i style="">The Promise of Politics</i>, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 58.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn15"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref15" name="_edn15" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style="font-size:78%;"> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 241. </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn16"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref16" name="_edn16" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a></span><span style="font-size:78%;"> I would like to point to perhaps the main problem I have with Arendt’s notion of forgiveness as undoing and releasing. Forgiveness, for Arendt, is concerned with undoing what was done in order to release the person from the <i style="">consequences</i> of action and not from the action itself because action, in the very specific, normative, phenomenological way in which Arendt describes it, is an “end in itself” (Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 206.) and is therefore “good” in and of itself and does not need to be forgiven.<span style=""> </span>However, actions, as boundless and unpredictable, can become “trespasses” (<i style="">harmartanein. </i>Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 240 and n. 78.).<span style=""> </span>“Trespassing,” according to Arendt:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;">is an everyday occurrence which is in the very nature of action’s constant establishment of new relationships within a web of relations, and it needs forgiving, dismissing, in order to make it possible for life to go on by constantly releasing men from what they have done unknowingly.<span style=""> </span>Only through this constant mutual release from what they do can men remain free agents (Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 240).<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;">Since action is unpredictable, when we act “we know not what we do” and every day we “miss the mark.”</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Forgiveness, then, is not concerned with those unpunishable and unforgiveable “offenses” (<i style="">skandala</i>. See Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 240, n. 80 and Hannah Arendt, “Some Questions on Moral Philosophy,” <i style="">Responsibility and Judgment</i>, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 125).</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Forgiveness and punishment are alternatives, for Arendt, in that they both “attempt to put an end to something that without interference could go on endlessly” (Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 241).</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">A deed that turns out to be unpunishable, according to Arendt, is also unforgiveable, and vice versa.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Such a deed is an <i style="">offense</i> which “since Kant, we call ‘radical evil’”( Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 241).</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Therefore, on the one hand, radically evil offenses, for Arendt, are outside of the realm of forgiveness and punishment. </span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">In the destructive case of “radical evil,” Arendt repeats with Jesus: “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea” (Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 241.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Here, Arendt is quoting Luke 17:2).</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">However, on the other hand, “crime and willed evil” are outside the realm of forgiveness as well (However, in her later writings, Arendt holds that “it is the person and not the <i style="">crime</i> that is forgiven” (Arendt, “Some Questions on Moral Philosophy,” 95. My emphasis.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">It is interesting that she uses the word “crime” here and not “trespass.”</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Is this because she has broadened the boundaries of forgiveness to include the possibility of forgiving someone who has committed a crime?).</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Crime or willed evil are, according to Arendt’s reading of Jesus, dealt with at the Last Judgment which “is not characterized by forgiveness but by just retribution” (Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 240).</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">In a word, forgiveness, for Arendt, is not concerned with evil (See Amos Friedland’s “Evil and Forgiveness: Transitions,” <i style="">Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness</i>, Vol. 1, No. 4, 2004, 24-47).</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;">Why can’t evil deeds be forgiven?</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Arendt seems to make forgiveness a rather trivial matter that is too predictable, expected, and calculated (three things she said forgiveness is not. Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 241).</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">What is more unpredictable, unexpected, and uncalculated than forgiving something that appears to be unforgiveable?</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">It may be better if they were never born, but why not afford them the possibility of being reborn?</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Why not forgive? (For a discussion of forgiveness as forgiving the unforgiveable, see Jacques Derrida “To Forgive: The Unforgiveable and the Imprescriptible,” in <i style="">Questioning God,</i> ed. John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley, and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), 21-51, Jacques Derrida, <i style="">On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness</i>, trans. by Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 27-60). While Arendt focuses forgiveness on undoing what was done in order to release a person from the <i style="">consequences</i> of an unpredictable and boundless action, I would like to follow Levinas, to whom we now turn, and focus it on undoing what was done in order to release a person from the action itself, from the deed <i style="">qua</i> misdeed, from the offense and not simply from the consequences of an action that has “missed the mark.” Forgiveness, as I understand it, involves the undoing of an offense, the reversing of a misdeed in order to release the agent from the misdeed, from the offense as well as its consequences.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn17"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref17" name="_edn17" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> In this regard here are two quotes: “Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done…” (Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 237) and “Only through this constant mutual release from what they do…” (Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 240).</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn18"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref18" name="_edn18" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt writes that “forgiving, serves to undo the deeds of the past” (Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 237). Later, she writes about forgiveness as “the undoing of what was done” and goes on to write that “<i style="">what</i> was done is forgiven for the sake of <i style="">who</i> did it” (Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 241). Here I assume that by “forgiven” she means the “undoing” of what was done. </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn19"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref19" name="_edn19" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">After reading <i style="">The Human Condition</i>, W.H. Auden, in a letter to Arendt, questioned her claim that we forgive “<i style="">what</i> was done… for the sake of <i style="">who</i> did it” (Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 241).<span style=""> </span>“I was wrong,” Arendt concedes, “when I said we forgive what was done for the sake of who did it…. I can forgive somebody without forgiving anything” (Arendt to Auden, 14 February 1960, Library of Congress. (Arendt’s files do not contain the letter from Auden to which she was replying). See Elisabeth Young-Breuhl, <i style="">For Love of the World</i> (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), 371).<span style=""> </span>Therefore, as she writes in her essay “Some Questions on Moral Philosophy,” Arendt came to understand that “it is the person and not the crime that is forgiven” (Hannah Arendt, “Some Questions on Moral Philosophy,” 95).<span style=""> </span>Here we see that Arendt no longer understands forgiveness to be directed at the act in order to release the agent from the consequences of an action; rather, forgiveness is focused solely on the person.<span style=""> </span>Therefore, forgiveness, for Arendt, is no longer concerned with undoing what was done; rather, it is concerned with releasing the agent from the act.<span style=""> </span>Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, a student of Arendt’s, writes that forgiveness as “<i style="">releasing</i> is much better for [Arendt’s] purposes than <i style="">undoing </i>or <i style="">reversing </i>for it carries no implication that the deed is forgotten or dissolved in some way, while releasing implies being unbound from the past in order to go on: it is a letting go” (Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, <i style="">Why Arendt Matters</i> (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 100).<span style=""> </span>But is Arendt too quick in jettisoning her understanding of forgiveness as reversing the irreversible, as undoing what has been done?<span style=""> </span></span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn20"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref20" name="_edn20" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[20]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Does forgiveness as undoing necessarily imply that the “deed is forgotten or dissolved in some way,” as Young-Bruehl says?</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Can you “forgive somebody without forgiving anything,” as Arendt says?</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Can an agent be released from her act without in some way forgiving the act?</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Can one simply forgive an agent and not forgive the act?</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn21"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref21" name="_edn21" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[21]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Paul Ricoeur, <i style="">Memory, History, Forgetting</i>, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 490. </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn22"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref22" name="_edn22" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[22]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 178. For Arendt’s discussion of action as disclosing “who” the actor is, see Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 175ff .</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn23"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref23" name="_edn23" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[23]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt, <i style="">HC</i>, 178.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn24"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref24" name="_edn24" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[24]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> See Peter Damian’s “On Divine Omnipotence,” in Peter Damian, <i style="">Letters</i>, vol. 4, trans. Owen J. Blum (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998).</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn25"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref25" name="_edn25" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[25]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> John D. Caputo, <i style="">The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event</i> (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 229.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn26"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref26" name="_edn26" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[26]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 282.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn27"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref27" name="_edn27" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[27]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 282.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn28"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref28" name="_edn28" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[28]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Arendt, “Some Questions on Moral Philosophy,” 111-112.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">See also Robert Gibbs, <i style="">Why Ethics? Signs of Responsibilities</i> (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 349.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn29"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref29" name="_edn29" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[29]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Gibbs, <i style="">Why</i> <i style="">Ethics?</i>, 351.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn30"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref30" name="_edn30" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[30]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 282. </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn31"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref31" name="_edn31" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[31]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 282.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn32"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref32" name="_edn32" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[32]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 282.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn33"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref33" name="_edn33" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[33]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 267.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Levinas’ emphasis.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn34"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref34" name="_edn34" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[34]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Caputo, <i style="">The Weakness of God</i>, 229.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn35"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref35" name="_edn35" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[35]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 282. </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn36"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref36" name="_edn36" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[36]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Emmanuel Levinas, <i style="">Time and the Other</i>, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 1987), 81.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn37"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref37" name="_edn37" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[37]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 283.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn38"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref38" name="_edn38" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[38]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 283.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn39"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref39" name="_edn39" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[39]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Caputo, <i style="">The Weakness of God</i>, 229.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn40"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref40" name="_edn40" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[40]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 283.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn41"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref41" name="_edn41" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[41]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Caputo, <i style="">The Weakness of God</i>, 229-230. Caputo also says that forgiveness alters the “meaning of the past,” but how is this not just re-presenting?</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn42"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref42" name="_edn42" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[42]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> As Kierkegaard would say, alluding to Isaiah 38:17, in forgiving, the past misdeed is placed “behind one’s back” and when one “turns to the one he forgives,” “he cannot see what lies behind his back” even though he is still aware of it. (Søren Kierkegaard, <i style="">Works of Love</i>, (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1962), 274-275).</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">While the deed has still historically been done, when the forgiver faces the forgiven person the deed is not seen by the forgiver, but the forgiver still is not unaware of the deed.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">In this sense, the deed was done and the forgiver knows it was done, but when facing the person with the deed behind the forgiver’s back, it is as if it was not done.</span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn43"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref43" name="_edn43" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[43]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 283.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn44"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref44" name="_edn44" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[44]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Caputo, <i style="">The Weakness of God</i>, 230.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn45"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref45" name="_edn45" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[45]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Jeffrey Dudiak, <i style="">The Intrigue of Ethics: A Reading of the Idea of Discourse in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas</i></span> (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), 276.<span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Here, Dudiak makes reference to two passages in <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>: “Reality</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">is what it is, but will be once again, another time freely resumed and pardoned” (Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 284) and “The fact and the justification of time consist in the recommencement it makes possible in the resurrection, across fecundity, of all the compossibles sacrificed in the present” (Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 284). </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn46"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref46" name="_edn46" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[46]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas writes that “[t]he pardoned being is not the innocent being.” Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 283.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn47"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref47" name="_edn47" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[47]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 283.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn48"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref48" name="_edn48" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[48]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Levinas, <i style="">Totality and Infinity</i>, 283.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn49"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref49" name="_edn49" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[49]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Caputo, <i style="">The Weakness of God</i>, 231.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn50"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref50" name="_edn50" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[50]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Gibbs, <i style="">Why Ethics?,</i> 352.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">Also see Caputo, <i style="">The Weakness of God</i>, 231.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn51"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref51" name="_edn51" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[51]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Adriaan Peperzak, <i style="">To The Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas</i> (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1993), 200.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></p> </div> <div style="" id="edn52"> <p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=18581909&postID=3132329853488591339#_ednref52" name="_edn52" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style=";font-family:";" >[52]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> I would like to thank Ronald A. Kuipers, Jeffrey Dudiak, and Shannon Hoff for their extensive and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">I would also like to thank Lambert Zuidervaart who, along with Shannon, Ron, and Jeff, lead a seminar entitled “Ethics After Auschwitz: Adorno and Levinas” at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto in Spring 2008.</span><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span><span style="font-size:78%;">This paper is a shorter version of the paper that I wrote for that seminar. </span></p> </div> </div> Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-44032033905758914622008-11-30T20:59:00.003-05:002009-05-29T22:59:16.862-04:00Derrida: The Aporia of Forgiveness? by Richard J. 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</xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">Richard J. Bernstein, “Derrida: The Aporia of Forgiveness?” <i style="">Constellations</i>, Volume 13, Number 3, 2006, 394-406.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In the article “Derrida: The Aporia of Forgiveness?,” Richard Bernstein argues that Derrida does not do full justice to decision and responsibility because he neglects the role of judgment and deliberation.<span style=""> </span>Bernstein looks to reflective judgment (Kant and Arendt) and <i style="">phronesis </i>(Aristotle) as two inherited concepts relevant to thinking about decision and responsibility which Derrida neglects, and that these two concepts would be helpful to “illuminate what Derrida tends to mystify with his appeal to aporias and impossible possibles” (404).<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">After identifying two <span style=""> </span>issues that have spurred Derrida’s work on forgiveness – 1) the various “Truth and Reconciliation” commissions and 2) public requests for forgiveness by public officials – Bernstein picks up on a third issue – namely, the relationship between the forgivable and the unforgivable. <span style=""> </span>Derrida agrees with that some things are unforgivable.<span style=""> </span>However, unlike Jankélévitch and Arendt who say that we cannot and should not forgive such deeds, Derrida “affirms that the only thing that calls for forgiveness, <i style="">the only thing to forgive is the unforgivable!</i>” (395).<span style=""> </span>Bernstein goes on to discuss our inheritance of “two <i style="">incompatible</i> heterogeneous ‘concepts’ of forgiveness” that are nevertheless “indissociable” – namely, conditional forgiveness and unconditional forgiveness (396).<span style=""> </span>Conditional forgiveness is steeped in an economy of exchange that involves repentance, forgiveness asked for, forgiveness received, and leads toward reconciliation or healing. However, “Derrida insists that conditional forgiveness – <i style="">taken by itself </i>– is <i style="">not</i> forgiveness” (396).<span style=""> </span>This is the case because simple conditional forgiveness fails to recognize that conditional forgiveness is indissociable from unconditional forgiveness. Unconditional forgiveness is pure, aneconomic forgiveness that seeks no finality.<span style=""> </span>However, for unconditional forgiveness to “arrive” it must “engage itself in a series of conditions of all kinds” (Derrida, <i style="">On Forgiveness</i>, 44-45) and, therefore, while heterogeneous to conditional forgiveness, it is indissociable from it.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is in the tension between these two irreconcilable and indissociable poles of forgiveness – unconditional forgiveness and conditional forgiveness – that “decisions and responsibilities are to be taken” (Derrida, <i style="">On Forgiveness</i>, 45).<span style=""> </span>For Derrida, according to Bernstein, “there are no rules, no decision procedures, nothing that we can rely on in making decisions – including decisions about when, whom, and what to forgive” (398). This is what Bernstein calls “Derrida’s hidden (or perhaps it is not so hidden) <i style="">existentialism</i>” (398).<span style=""> </span>We are faced with these two heterogeneous (yet indissociable) inherited understandings of forgiveness that both make a claim on us, and there are no ready-made answers for how to live in this aporetic tension.<span style=""> </span>However, in this aporetic tension we have to make a decision and because there are no rules or ready-made answers the decisions we make while trembling in the abyss are our responsibility.<span style=""> </span>We cannot pass the buck and blame some rule.<span style=""> </span>This decision is our responsibility and can never be rationally justified. This aporia is where decisions and responsibilities are taken. As Derrida says: “For the responsible decision to be envisaged and taken, we have to go through pain and aporia, a situation in which I do not know what to do” (“On Forgiveness: A Roundtable Discussion with Jacques Derrida,” 62). Bernstein goes on to conclude his “sympathetic account” of Derrida’s understanding of forgiveness by following Agnes Heller’s remark that “[o]ne does not ask Derrida what he wants to say, but what he wants to avoid.”<span style=""> </span>According to Bernstein, Derrida wants to avoid “the corruption and trivialization of forgiveness” by the hollow and often hypocritical public requests for forgiveness such as the first two issues that spurred Derrida’s recent work on forgiveness discussed at the beginning of the article.<span style=""> </span>He wants to avoid the understanding of forgiveness in terms of economy and finality and its confusion with reconciliation.<span style=""> </span>Furthermore, he wants to avoid “the illusion that we can ‘justify’ forgiveness” by appealing to some rule or standard.<span style=""> </span>Finally, and most importantly, Derrida wants to avoid “any possibility of our thinking that the responsible decision to forgive is normal or easy” (399).<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">From here, Bernstein concludes his “sympathetic account” and moves to a more critical engagement with Derrida’s understanding of forgiveness. Since Bernstein finds “the same ‘logic’ at work, the same tracking down of aporias, and the same insistence on the way in which the unconditional and the conditional are heterogeneous and indissociable in his other conceptual genealogies,” he thinks that the “difficulties that [he] locate[s] in his reflections on forgiveness reverberate throughout [Derrida’s] thinking.” (399). <span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">While Derrida says that forgiveness has nothing to do with judgment or knowledge (399. cf Derrida’s <i style="">On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness</i>, 43 and “On Forgiveness” Roundtable, 70), Bernstein claims that “forgiveness has <i style="">everything</i> to do with <i style="">judgment</i>, and that frequently, knowledge is crucial for making a responsible decision to forgive or not to forgive” (399). <span style=""> </span>However, after a clear exposition of Derrida’s understanding, here, Bernstein’s discussion becomes somewhat muddled.<span style=""> </span>He begins by claiming that “Derrida’s analysis of forgiveness depends on making a ‘rigorous’ distinction between the forgivable and the unforgivable” (400).<span style=""> </span>For Derrida, forgiveness forgives the unforgivable and he is in agreement with Jankélévitch and Arendt that certain things are unforgivable. However, Bernstein goes on to list certain events – such as Heidegger’s actions as rector of Freiburg University and Paul De Man’s failure to inform his friends that he wrote anti-Semitic articles as a young man – that, when it comes to whether they are forgivable or unforgivable, are more open to debate.<span style=""> </span>Bernstein claims that deciding whether or not something is unforgivable is “always a <i style="">contestable</i> issue that is fraught with difficulties” and that these decisions are characterized by “arguments” and “judgments” which frequently involve “knowledge” (400).<span style=""> </span>As Bernstein writes, “even if [we] were to accept Derrida’s aporia, ‘forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable’, we first have to make a judgment about what is truly unforgivable” (400).<span style=""> </span>He then goes to make the same case about the “forgivable.”<span style=""> </span>He concludes that the boundary between the forgivable and the unforgivable is open to dispute, that the decision between what is forgivable and unforgivable always involves judgments, and, in the spirit of Wittgenstein, “that there is no rigorous distinction between what is unforgivable and forgivable except the line that we draw” (401).<span style=""> </span>However, I don’t think that Derrida would deny this and it seems that this is precisely what Derrida is talking about.<span style=""> </span>We attempt to set up hard boundaries and say that anything on this side is forgivable and anything on that side is unforgivable.<span style=""> </span>Derrida is trying to unsettle this arbitrary boundary and call us beyond it. It seems impossible to forgive something beyond this boundary, beyond this boundary is the unforgiveable, to this Derrida says “why not forgive it?,” forgiveness forgives the unforgivable.<span style=""> </span>Unconditional forgiveness is unsettling the line we draw between the forgivable and the unforgivable and calling it into question.<span style=""> </span>It appears that Bernstein is confusing the distinction between the forgivable and the unforgivable with the distinction between conditional forgiveness and unconditional forgiveness.<span style=""> </span>This appears to be the case because directly after his discussion of the “rigorous distinction” between the forgivable and the unforgivable, Bernstein writes: “Suppose – for the sake of argument – we assume that there is a sharp, rigorous distinction between unconditional and conditional forgiveness” (401).<span style=""> </span>But he never critiqued the sharp, rigorous distinction between unconditional and conditional forgiveness, so why is he granting Derrida the point and assuming this for the sake of argument?<span style=""> </span>If Bernstein thinks the forgivable/unforgivable distinction is the same as the conditional/unconditional distinction, he has yet to make that point.<span style=""> </span>The difference, as I see it, is that the forgivable/unforgivable distinction is the one that we draw, as Bernstein argues, but the conditional/unconditional distinction is the heterogeneous inheritance that calls the line we draw between, and the judgments we make about, the forgivable and the unforgivable into question. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bernstein then moves to the question: How is one to decide when to forgive the unforgivable? <span style=""> </span>For Derrida, according to Bernstein, this question is unanswerable as “there is no rule or algorithm for making such decisions” (401).<span style=""> </span>Bernstein agrees “with <i style="">this</i> claim” but then asks us to “consider what we actually do when we ask ourselves should we forgive what is… unforgiveable” (401-402).<span style=""> </span>We ask ourselves questions, deliberate, debate, argue, weigh the pros and cons, struggle with ourselves, negotiate, and make judgments (402-403).<span style=""> </span>Derrida often uses this word “negotiate,” and Bernstein describes it (while he doesn’t see Derrida using it in this way) as meaning “that we are required to make careful discriminating judgments – to evaluate pros and cons – to consider what is relevant to this particular situation.<span style=""> </span>This is a <i style="">deliberative process</i>” (403). Bernstein then asks what it means to face incompatible injunctions and suggests that “this is the experience of deliberation and judgment, the struggle to probe and assess the situation so that I can make a responsible decision” (403).<span style=""> </span>Bernstein is still trying to critique Derrida’s statement that “forgiveness has precisely nothing to do with judgment” (<i style="">On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness</i>, 43), so I think we should take a closer look at that.<span style=""> </span>In this section (section III) of Derrida’s “On Forgiveness,” he is discussing the possibility of a politics of forgiveness.<span style=""> </span>He writes that “[o]ne could never, in the ordinary sense of the words, found a politics or law on forgiveness” because “forgiveness remains heterogeneous to the order of politics or of the juridical as they are ordinarily understood” (39). He then goes on to discuss the “Truth and Reconciliation” commission in South Africa and Desmond Tutu’s recounting of <span style=""> </span>a woman’s testimony before the commission (43).<span style=""> </span>Tutu translates and interprets what she says as: “A commission or a government cannot forgive.<span style=""> </span>Only I, eventually, could do it. (And I am not ready to forgive)” (43).<span style=""> </span>The passage Bernstein quotes appears in the very next paragraph.<span style=""> </span>Derrida writes:<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 10pt;">These are very difficult words to hear.<span style=""> </span>This woman victim, this wife of the victim… surely wanted to recall that the anonymous body of the State or of a public institution cannot forgive.<span style=""> </span>It has neither the right nor the power to do so; and besides, that would have no meaning.<span style=""> </span>The representative of the State can judge, but <i style="">forgiveness has precisely nothing to do with judgment.<span style=""> </span></i>Or even with the public or political sphere. (43, my emphasis).</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bernstein inserts a footnote when he first quotes Derrida as saying “forgiveness has precisely nothing to do with judgment.”<span style=""> </span>The footnote reads: “Derrida does not qualify these remarks about forgiveness, judgments, and knowledge. <span style=""> </span>But his remark about judgment refers primarily to judgment in the political or public sphere” (405, n. 10). It is rather odd that Bernstein has pushed this statement into a footnote.<span style=""> </span>Bernstein recognizes the context of the quote, but pulls it out of its context in order to use it as a proof-text in the body of the paper while relegating this statement about the context of the quote to a footnote.<span style=""> </span>This seems to be a rather back-handed way to make his argument run more smoothly. Nevertheless, Bernstein would have to show, and he doesn’t, why this remark about judgment refers “primarily,” and not “solely,” to political or public judgment.<span style=""> </span>In context, Derrida is discussing how the State cannot forgive.<span style=""> </span>The representative of the State can judge, there are courts of justice, but they have neither the power nor the right to forgive.<span style=""> </span>They can judge, but forgiveness has precisely nothing to do with judgment, with the judgment of judges, with judicial justice.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Bernstein says Derrida does not qualify his statement, but it seems that the context in which Derrida says it is qualification enough. <span style=""> </span>At any rate, Bernstein bases his argument on a quote that he pulls from one context in which Derrida is discussing the State’s lack of both the right and the power to forgive and attempts to apply it to Derrida’s discussion of decision and responsibility.<span style=""> </span>It seems to be a rather weak basis.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bernstein’s basic critique of Derrida is that Derrida “does not do full justice to what is involved in difficult decisions – the role of deliberation and judgment” and that he moves to quickly to an “unwarranted Either/Or” (404).<span style=""> </span>As Bernstein see it, Derrida is saying: “<i style="">Either</i> we think of our decisions as completely justified by the appeal to some knowledge, some rule, some calculation <i style="">or</i> we think of decision as involving possible aporias” (404).<span style=""> </span>He agrees with Derrida that the first is unsatisfactory, but thinks that Derrida, by rejecting the “either,” accepts the “or” by matter of course.<span style=""> </span>Bernstein argues that we should reject the Either/Or because it “mystifies” deliberation and judgment which are required to make responsible decisions.<span style=""> </span>He then suggests that the inherited concepts of reflective judgment and <i style="">phronesis</i> would help “illuminate” what Derrida “mystifies” with his appeal to aporias and that they would help “illuminate” what “Derrida himself calls ‘negotiation’ when he speaks of negotiating between unconditional and conditional forgiveness” (404).<span style=""> </span>He even sometimes thinks that Derrida might “fully agree” with him.<span style=""> </span>Whether or not Derrida would “fully agree,” I cannot say.<span style=""> </span>I think he would agree, <i style="">mutatis</i> <i style="">mutandis</i>. At any rate, if Bernstein thinks, as I mentioned above, that the “difficulties” he locates in Derrida’s understanding of forgiveness “reverberate throughout his thinking,” then perhaps he should look to some of Derrida’s other reflections in which he engages such difficulties.<span style=""> </span>To begin, Bernstein should look at “The Force of Law,” where Derrida explicitly engages the role of judgment, knowledge, and deliberation in the aporetic experience (cf Derrida’s <i style="">Acts of Religion</i>, 251-258).<span style=""> </span>Also, he should look to Derrida’s “Préjugés: Devant la loi” in <i style="">La Faculté de juger </i>(an earlier version of which is translated as “Before the Law” in <i style="">Acts of Literature</i>) in which he discusses judgment and <i style="">phronesis </i>in relation to Lyotard.<span style=""> </span>He could also read chapter 5 of John Caputo’s <i style="">Against Ethics</i>, entitled “The Epoch of Judgment,” in which Caputo discusses Derrida’s understanding of judgment and offers a deconstruction of <i style="">phronesis</i>. <i style=""><span style=""> </span></i><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It seems that Bernstein’s argument that Derrida does not do full justice to decision and responsibility because he neglects the role of judgment and deliberation is based on a reading that doesn’t do full justice to Derrida.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p> Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-49889687786895142112008-11-23T20:48:00.002-05:002008-11-23T20:53:10.036-05:00To blog or not to blogMaybe I'll start blogging again. <br />I am working on a dissertation proposal (mostly in my head and on a few sheets of paper right now) on the concept of forgiveness. Maybe I'll post some thoughts from that on here and hopefully you will help me with some feedback. <br />Sorry I haven't posted in so long. I haven't had the internet at my compartment (it's a small apartment) for the past 2 1/2 years. However, I am moving from Toronto to Grand Rapids, MI in 3 weeks and will have internet again. But I guess the real question is: will I have the motivation again? <br />I guess we'll see.<br />I doubt anyone still checks this, but if you do, let me know.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-25202611908676349472007-11-28T12:52:00.000-05:002007-11-28T13:19:21.522-05:00Jesus for President<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:100%;">"A different kind of campaign. </span>A different kind of party. <span style="font-size:100%;">A different kind of Commander in Chief."<br /><br />Jesus for President? No, it's not the Billy Bragg & Wilco song, that's "<a href="http://www.billybragg.co.uk/releases/albums/mermaid_avenue/mer9.html">Christ for President</a>."<br />Rather, "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-President-Politics-Ordinary-Radicals/dp/0310278422/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196272910&sr=8-1">Jesus for President</a>" is </span><span style="font-size:100%;">a summer 2008 tour</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> and the title of a forthcoming book by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw (Zondervan, 2008. It also will include a "Litany of Resistance" created by Claiborne and Haw with the help of Jim Loney </span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" >(CPT Reservist) and Brian Walsh (activist theologian)</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> as an appendix).<br />It looks interesting. The title has me a little nervous, I am interested in what they mean by "Jesus for President." Would Jesus run for president? Also the online summary of Section 4 of the book reads, </span>"the question is not are we political, but <em>how </em>are we political" which sounds vaguely familiar to a quote from Hauerwas and Willimon's "Resident Aliens." I am concerned about what they mean by "political" and what they would put forward as to "how" we should be political.<br />I guess I'll have to wait until the book comes out, but, as I said, it looks interesting. Check out the website and let me know what you think.<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><a href="http://www.billybragg.co.uk/releases/albums/mermaid_avenue/mer9.html"></a></span></div>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-29186781822516939982007-08-20T21:09:00.000-04:002007-08-20T21:17:18.426-04:00God and Morality<span style=""><span style="font-family: webdings;font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;" >It is my contention that Christians should understand God as neither the sole author of a morality they must passively and slavishly obey, nor as being removed from the activity of moral reflection altogether.</span><span style=""> </span></span>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-29014802178339920382007-02-21T14:36:00.000-05:002007-02-21T15:52:00.434-05:00The Hawk and the Dove: Some Thoughts on Just War and Pacifism1. It seems that in Just War Theory particulars are subsumed under some general rule. For Just War Theory, for a war to be just it must align to the general rule that usually consists of comparative justice (injustice suffered by one party must outweigh the injustice suffered by another), right intention (force can be used only for a just cause), legitimate authority (public authorities), probability of success (those waging a just war must have a high probability of "winning"), proportionality (the good must outweigh the destruction), and last resort (just war is only an option after other alternatives are exhausted). To subsume particular instances under this general rule is what Kant, in the <em>Critique of Judgment</em>, calls "Determinate Judgment". The criteria of the general rule of Just War seem neat and tidy until you try to apply them to particular instances. The general rule does not easily map onto particular instances.<br /><br />2. Whose justice are we referring to when we say that something is just or not? Every war has been just, in the sense that everyone who has gone to war has in some way justified it, and has viewed it as just. Did Hitler see WWII as a just war? He was a legitimate authority. He thought that the good (German <em>Lebensraum</em>) would outweigh the bad (Holocaust). There was high probability of "success". He thought that he had the "right intention". He thought it was just. We do not.<br />Is the Iraq war "just"? For Bush, Iraqi freedom and democracy is a right intention. Bush thought there was a high probability of "winning". He thought the good (freedom and democracy) would outweigh the bad (Hussein's continual reign). Bush is a legitimate authority. Is the war just? Bush thinks so. I do not.<br />Particular instances are not so easily subsumed to general rules.<br /><br />3. If war is an option, will all other options be tried first? It seems that if a nation goes to war, then it has not tried all other possible options. If war is a last resort, it seems that in the end we will become frustrated with other options and instead move right to this so-called "last resort" which isn't the failure of all other alternatives but is instead the failure of imagination. It seems to me that Just War theory is not so much concerned with justice, but is instead a theory of just war in the sense of only war.<br /><br />4. Just War theory seems to employ the escape clause of "if nonviolence fails, try violence." If war is a last resort then one is "still enmeshed in the belief that violence saves" and still trusts domination and violence to bring justice and peace. You cannot fight fire with fire. You cannot fornicate for chastity. You cannot put an end to violence and domination by being violent and domineering. Peace and Justice have never been, nor will ever be, the result of war.<br /><br />5. Pacifism seems to be a reflective judgment. A reflective judgment for Kant is a general rule that is derived from the particular. In pacifism, a general rule can be perceived in particular instances. We see examples in the particular instances of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. Examples, for Kant, are particular instances that contain in themselves, or is supposed to contain, a concept or a general rule. These instances have exemplary validity. But still, you cannot take these examples that have become general rules and map them onto every particular instance. Ghandi as an example cannot be directly used as a way to inform our response to Hussein's murders in Dujail. This example requires further imagination. A general rule of nonviolence must be reworked when applied to particular instances.<br /><br />6. Pacifism is not to be confused with passivity. Passivity is not the root word of pacifism. Pacifism is not passifism. Passivity is inactivity. Pacific (the root word of pacifism) is an activity, a making or preserving of peace. Pacifism is probably more active than war. Pacifism is about peaceableness and peaceableness is a way of life. Peace is not the result of war, but is instead the result of peaceableness.<br /><br />7. Through the prism of war, peace is simply the time between wars. Through the prism of peace, peace is only possible if we live peaceably.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-53230275917287477402007-02-04T16:46:00.000-05:002007-02-04T17:05:06.877-05:00Romans 13, Black History Month, and Wine Before BreakfastAs I am finishing up my papers, I have lacked all motivation to write new posts. Actually that's not really true. I lack motivation to write my papers, so instead I post. But I post blogs that are not really blogs. They have been exercises that I have been tagged to do, so they don't really take too much time. I can't justify writing a new post while I should be writing my papers, but since I lack the motivation to write the papers, I post to waste time but they aren't really blogs so I can justify writing them. Does that make any sense? It does to me. <br /><br />So onto the blog that is not a blog, a post with/out posting.<br /><br />I recently recieved a new email from <a href="http://www.plaosmos.blogspot.com">Stu</a>, who periodically sends around emails to the <a href="http://www.icscanada.edu">ICS </a>community to share what will be discussed at the upcoming <a href="http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/07winter/faith.asp">"Wine Before Breakfast,"</a> a weekly Bible study that gathers on Tuesday mornings at 7:30 am in the Wycliffe Chapel under the superintendence of <a href="http://www.culturalencounters.org/Volumes/volume1/vol1-2-Walsh.html">Brian Walsh</a>. I have never been to "Wine Before Breakfast" as I am not a morning person (at least not a 7:30-in-the-morning person). However, the email that was sent around this week is an email from Brian Walsh who will be preaching this week on Romans 13 and Black History Month. I found the email to be very interesting, so I decided to include it here and see if it would warrant any responses.<br /><br /><br /><em>So here's the question: how many folks out there think that we should bring back slavery? What? No hands at all? Ok, let's try another question: how many of you think that "every personshould be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authorityexcept from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted byGod."(Hmm sounds like St. Paul, so I should put up my hand, but there's something about that question following the first question that's got me worried ) Come on, come on who thinks that every person should be subject to thegoverning authorities because all such authority is instituted by God? Somehands up, some half up, some down, a lot of perplexed and worried looks out there. Alright, let's put it this way. Here at the beginning of Black History monthhow many of us would want to say that black slaves and their helpers alongthe underground railroad should have obeyed the authorities because theywere instituted by God and not opposed slavery? I mean really, is there anyamongst us who would dare suggest such a thing? I doubt it.So let's put it another way. If a duly appointed leader lies to the peopleand then sends thousands of his own citizens to fight a war on falsepretense and to kill and injure many thousands of people in another land,then do we really believe that such a leader acts on an authority institutedby God? Do we really believe that we should be subject to such a deceitfuland murderous leader? And if we don't think that such a leader should receive our loyalty, thenwhat do we do with Paul's injunctions about governmental authority in Romans13?</em>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1170383496078934072007-02-01T21:20:00.000-05:002007-02-04T14:20:49.209-05:00i'm important and people like meI have been tagged by <a href="http://thedevelopingdiversity.blogspot.com">Evan</a> (again)! Here's what I'm suppose to do:<br />1) Grab the book closest to you.<br />2) Open to page 123; go down to the fourth sentence.<br />3) Post the text of the following three sentences.<br />4) Name the author and book title.<br />5) Tag three people to do the same.<br /><br />"And then the interesting justification: 'For thus you would rob and steal your body from your master, which he has bought or otherwise acquired, after which it is not your property but his, like a beast or other goods in his possession.' Here, therefore, certain worldly property and power relationships are made the justification of a state of unfreedom in which even the total abandonment of the Christian to the unbeliever is of subordinate importance to the preservation of these property relationships.<br />"With the emergence of the independence of worldly authority, and its reifications, the breach of this authority, rebellion and disobedience, becomes a social sin pure and simple, a 'greater sin than murder, unchastity, theft, dishonesty and all that goes with them.'"<br /><br />The text comes from Herbert Marcuse's "A Study on Authority: Luther, Calvin, Kant", in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Frankfurt-School-Religion-Eduar-Mendieta/dp/0415966973/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product/102-1938420-9940903"><em>The Frankfurt School on Religion</em>.</a> The first quote within the text comes from Luther's <em>On War Against the Turk. </em>The second comes from Luther's <em>Treatise on Good Works</em>.<br /><br /><br /><br />Now I tag 3 people to do the same:<br />I tag <a href="http://saragerritsma.blogspot.com">Sara</a>, <a href="http://mymolseylife.blogspot.com">M&Y</a>, and <a href="http://jeffinanutshell.blogspot.com">Jeff</a>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1169616903281176892007-01-23T23:59:00.000-05:002007-01-27T14:22:13.736-05:00Tag, I'm it.I read <a href="http://thedevelopingdiversity.blogspot.com">Evan's blog.</a> That means that I have been tagged to share 5 interesting or unique things about myself that you may not know. I'm actually pretty boring, so I'm not very interesting nor unique, so this may be somewhat difficult.<br /><br />1. I have a mini fridge. Magnetically held to this mini fridge are two finger puppets, two images graven in the likeness of Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky. They often have conversations concerning whether Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky's <em>Crime and Punishment </em>is an <em>übermensch</em> or if he is all-too-human. When they start to discuss this, I usually try to direct the conversation toward either the similarities between Woody Allen's <em>Crimes and Misdemeanors </em>(and <em>Match Point</em>)<em> </em>and Dostoevsky's <em>Crime and Punishment </em>or whether Paul Dano's character "Dwayne" in <em>Little Miss Sunshine</em> is an <em>übermensch </em>just because he doesn't speak (I say no, because he still has desires that are communicated). So that's interesting.<br /><br />2. Flying doesn't make my arms tired. I flew for the first time on Sunday January, 14. I found that, despite popular opinion, flying does not make my arms tired.<br /><br />3. I have a towel that is brown on one half and white on the other. The brown side is adorned with the word "BUTT" in big white letters, while the white side has the word "FACE" in big brown letters. This towel is to ensure that once you are out of the shower you do not dry your face with the same part of the towel that you dry your butt with. I think it is an ingenious invention and I thank my Aunt and Uncle for gifting in to me for my birthday. Now I can leave all worries behind while I dry off after a shower.<br /><br />4. I like to put peanuts in my Coke. It's good, try it.<br /><br />5. Thursday is laundry day. I get up in the morning and put all of my dirty clothes and my laundry detergent into my army bag and walk to the laundry mat. I fill two loads and pay the $1.50 per load. Then I walk down the road to Big Fat Burrito and get a 12 inch steak burrito. After I finish the burrito, I return to the laundry mat to put my laundry in the dryer. I then venture out again and do my grocery shopping. I usually buy sourdough bread, cheddar cheese, broccoli, apples, blueberries, and milk for the week. I put all of this in my army bag and walk it home, where I then, after putting all of my groceries in their proper place, exchange my bag for my clothes basket. Subsequently, I return to the laundry mat to remove my clothes from the dryer, fold them, and place them into my laundry basket for the return trip home. When I arrive back home, I put the clothes in their proper places and then sit on my butt for the remainder of the day.<br /><br />I told you that I was uninteresting and lack uniquetitude.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1167507086944201352006-12-30T13:04:00.000-05:002006-12-30T14:31:27.020-05:00(In)Justice is Served:Killing for Justice is like Screwing for Virginity?At 6:10 this morning (Dec. 30, 2006), Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq for 3 decades, was executed by hanging for the 1982 killings of 148 men and boys in the Iraqi town of Dujail. In a statment, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said: “To you who have endured the anguish of the years, and suffered from the injustice of the tyrants during the era of odious dictatorship, your pure land has gotten rid of impurity of the dictator.” In a statement prepared in advance, George W. Bush (who was sleeping at the time of the execution) said that Hussein “was executed after receiving a fair trial — the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime.” He continued: “Saddam Hussein’s execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops...Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror.”<br />I wish to draw attention to the rhetoric of "justice" and "injustice" in these two men's statements. To whose notion of justice does such an act of execution align? How are they describing "justice" and what does it mean to have "[brought] Saddam Hussein to justice"? <br />In one sense, "justice" seems to be described in the sense that Thrasymachus described it in <em>The Republic</em>, as the interest of the strong. Those in power make the rules, might makes right. Now that there are new people in power, these killings are viewed as unjust. Also with new people in power, and backed by the USA as a superpower, the execution of Hussein is viewed as just, because those in power judge them as just. This may be a good description of of what is politically called justice but I wouldn't want to hold this up as normative, as something that we should strive toward. <br />The execution itself is seen as being just by those in power, but this sense of justice seems to go along with the assumption that justice is getting what you deserve (and what you deserve is decided by those in power). Saddam Hussein had 148 men and boys killed at Dujail, therefore he deserves to die. <br />My question is this: can the hanging of Hussein be viewed as just? Instead of stopping the body count at 148 , it is now at 149. Are the injustices done by Hussein made right through further injustice? Do two injustices make justice prevail? Is justice a zero-sum game? Basically, can killing a human being serve justice?Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1165706832982183542006-12-09T17:49:00.000-05:002006-12-09T18:27:13.053-05:00Jesus, Son of the Father"Now it was the governor's custom at the Festival to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. At that time they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Jesus Barabbas. So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, 'Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?'" <br />Matthew 27:15-17<br />(for the parallel stories in the canonical gospels see also Mark 15:6-15, Luke 23:13-25, and John 18:38-19:16)<br /><br />In this passage, there are (at least) three things that make me suspicious of a "literal" reading of this event of Jesus' Passion week. The first two are more historical, though they implications in the third which is more theological. First, nowhere other than the New Testament do we see any evidence that "it was the governor's custom at the Festival to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd." Second, historically (though little is known) Pontius Pilate was not considered a nice guy, as he is often portrayed in the canonical gospels. For example, according to Josephus, in approximately 36CE, Pilate attempted to suppress what appears to have been a Samaritan religious procession in arms that may have been interpreted as an uprising, by arresting and executing the Samaritans. Pilate's behavior was so offensive to the morals of the time that, after complaints to the Roman legate of Syria, Pilate was recalled to Rome, where he disappears from historic record. Third, and this is my big question, are Jesus Barabbas and Jesus the Messiah one and the same? In most manuscripts, we just read the name of the prisoner as "Barabbas", however, in a few manuscripts and the discussion of this passage by Origen, Barabbas is refered to as "Jesus Barabbas". The name Jesus Barabbas means Jesus, Son of the Father. Jesus the Messiah was often called Son of the Father. Are these seemingly distinct men really the same man? It seems odd that the crowd that ushered Jesus into the city as a king at the beginning of the week, all of a sudden wants him crucified. Perhaps, there was only one man, Pilate was afraid of a riot, so he asked if they wanted Jesus (the son of the Father, the messiah) set free. They responded by saying set Jesus (the son of the Father, the messiah) free, Pilate agreed and the crowd dispersed. Then Pilate had Jesus crucified anyway for his crimes of sedition. <br /><br />Maybe.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1164909149194047192006-11-30T12:49:00.000-05:002006-11-30T17:23:12.030-05:00R.S.V.P.: A Letter from Mahmoud Amhadinejad to the American PeopleMessage of H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad<br />President of the Islamic Republic of Iran<br />To the American People<br />In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful<br />O, Almighty God, bestow upon humanity the perfect human being promised to all by You, and make us among his followers.<br /><br />Noble Americans,<br />Were we not faced with the activities of the US administration in this part of the world and the negative ramifications of those activities on the daily lives of our peoples, coupled with the many wars and calamities caused by the US administration as well as the tragic consequences of US interference in other countries; Were the American people not God-fearing, truth-loving, and justice-seeking, while the US administration actively conceals the truth and impedes any objective portrayal of current realities; And if we did not share a common responsibility to promote and protect freedom and human dignity and integrity; Then, there would have been little urgency to have a dialogue with you.<br />While Divine providence has placed Iran and the United States geographically far apart, we should be cognizant that human values and our common human spirit, which proclaim the dignity and exalted worth of all human beings, have brought our two great nations of Iran and the United States closer together. Both our nations are God-fearing, truth-loving and justice-seeking, and both seek dignity, respect and perfection.<br />Both greatly value and readily embrace the promotion of human ideals such as compassion, empathy, respect for the rights of human beings, securing justice and equity, and defending the innocent and the weak against oppressors and bullies.<br />We are all inclined towards the good, and towards extending a helping hand to one another, particularly to those in need. We all deplore injustice, the trampling of peoples’ rights and the intimidation and humiliation of human beings. We all detest darkness, deceit, lies and distortion, and seek and admire salvation, enlightenment, sincerity and honesty. The pure human essence of the two great nations of Iran and the United States testify to the veracity of these statements.<br />Noble Americans,<br />Our nation has always extended its hand of friendship to all other nations of the world. Hundreds of thousands of my Iranian compatriots are living amongst you in friendship and peace, and are contributing positively to your society. Our people have been in contact with you over the past many years and have maintained these contacts despite the unnecessary restrictions of US authorities. As mentioned, we have common concerns, face similar challenges, and are pained by the sufferings and afflictions in the world.<br />We, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people. Persistent aggressions by the Zionists are making life more and more difficult for the rightful owners of the land of Palestine. In broad daylight, in front of cameras and before the eyes of the world, they are bombarding innocent defenseless civilians, bulldozing houses, firing machine guns at students in the streets and alleys, and subjecting their families to endless grief. No day goes by without a new crime.<br />Palestinian mothers, just like Iranian and American mothers, love their children, and are painfully bereaved by the imprisonment, wounding and murder of their children. What mother wouldn’t?<br />For 60 years, the Zionist regime has driven millions of the inhabitants of Palestine out of their homes. Many of these refugees have died in the Diaspora and in refugee camps. Their children have spent their youth in these camps and are aging while still in the hope of returning to homeland.<br />You know well that the US administration has persistently provided blind and blanket support to the Zionist regime, has emboldened it to continue its crimes, and has prevented the UN Security Council from condemning it. Who can deny such broken promises and grave injustices towards humanity by the US administration?<br />Governments are there to serve their own people. No people wants to side with or support any oppressors. But regrettably, the US administration disregards even its own public opinion and remains in the forefront of supporting the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people.<br />Let’s take a look at Iraq. Since the commencement of the US military presence in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, maimed or displaced. Terrorism in Iraq has grown exponentially. With the presence of the US military in Iraq, nothing has been done to rebuild the ruins, to restore the infrastructure or to alleviate poverty. The US Government used the pretext of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but later it became clear that that was just a lie and a deception.<br />Although Saddam was overthrown and people are happy about his departure, the pain and suffering of the Iraqi people has persisted and has even been aggravated.<br />In Iraq, about one hundred and fifty thousand American soldiers, separated from their families and loved ones, are operating under the command of the current US administration. A substantial number of them have been killed or wounded and their presence in Iraq has tarnished the image of the American people and government.<br />Their mothers and relatives have, on numerous occasions, displayed their discontent with the presence of their sons and daughters in a land thousands of miles away from US shores. American soldiers often wonder why they have been sent to Iraq.<br />I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure.<br />Noble Americans,<br />You have heard that the US administration is kidnapping its presumed opponents from across the globe and arbitrarily holding them without trial or any international supervision in horrendous prisons that it has established in various parts of the world. God knows who these detainees actually are, and what terrible fate awaits them.<br />You have certainly heard the sad stories of the Guantanamo and Abu-Ghraib prisons. The US administration attempts to justify them through its proclaimed “war on terror.” But every one knows that such behavior, in fact, offends global public opinion, exacerbates resentment and thereby spreads terrorism, and tarnishes the US image and its credibility among nations.<br />The US administration’s illegal and immoral behavior is not even confined to outside its borders. You are witnessing daily that under the pretext of “the war on terror,” civil liberties in the United States are being increasingly curtailed. Even the privacy of individuals is fast losing its meaning. Judicial due process and fundamental rights are trampled upon. Private phones are tapped, suspects are arbitrarily arrested, sometimes beaten in the streets, or even shot to death. I have no doubt that the American people do not approve of this behavior and indeed deplore it.<br />The US administration does not accept accountability before any organization, institution or council. The US administration has undermined the credibility of international organizations, particularly the United Nations and its Security Council. But, I do not intend to address all the challenges and calamities in this message.<br />The legitimacy, power and influence of a government do not emanate from its arsenals of tanks, fighter aircrafts, missiles or nuclear weapons. Legitimacy and influence reside in sound logic, quest for justice and compassion and empathy for all humanity. The global position of the United States is in all probability weakened because the administration has continued to resort to force, to conceal the truth, and to mislead the American people about its policies and practices. Undoubtedly, the American people are not satisfied with this behavior and they showed their discontent in the recent elections. I hope that in the wake of the mid-term elections, the administration of President Bush will have heard and will heed the message of the American people.<br />My questions are the following:<br />Is there not a better approach to governance?<br />Is it not possible to put wealth and power in the service of peace, stability, prosperity and the happiness of all peoples through a commitment to justice and respect for the rights of all nations, instead of aggression and war?<br />We all condemn terrorism, because its victims are the innocent. But, can terrorism be contained and eradicated through war, destruction and the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents?<br />If that were possible, then why has the problem not been resolved? The sad experience of invading Iraq is before us all.<br />What has blind support for the Zionists by the US administration brought for the American people? It is regrettable that for the US administration, the interests of these occupiers supersedes the interests of the American people and of the other nations of the world.<br />What have the Zionists done for the American people that the US administration considers itself obliged to blindly support these infamous aggressors? Is it not because they have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors?<br />I recommend that in a demonstration of respect for the American people and for humanity, the right of Palestinians to live in their own homeland should be recognized so that millions of Palestinian refugees can return to their homes and the future of all of Palestine and its form of government be determined in a referendum. This will benefit everyone.<br />Now that Iraq has a Constitution and an independent Assembly and Government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people? As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness.<br />I’d also like to say a word to the winners of the recent elections in the US: The United States has had many administrations; some who have left a positive legacy, and others that are neither remembered fondly by the American people nor by other nations.<br />Now that you control an important branch of the US Government, you will also be held to account by the people and by history<br />If the US Government meets the current domestic and external challenges with an approach based on truth and Justice, it can remedy some of the past afflictions and alleviate some of the global resentment and hatred of America. But if the approach remains the same, it would not be unexpected that the American people would similarly reject the new electoral winners, although the recent elections, rather than reflecting a victory, in reality point to the failure of the current administration’s policies. These issues had been extensively dealt with in my letter to President Bush earlier this year.<br />To sum up:<br />It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice.<br />It is possible to sincerely serve and promote common human values, and honesty and compassion.<br />It is possible to provide welfare and prosperity without tension, threats, imposition or war.<br />It is possible to lead the world towards the aspired perfection by adhering to unity, monotheism, morality and spirituality and drawing upon the teachings of the Divine Prophets.<br />Then, the American people, who are God-fearing and followers of Divine religions, will overcome every difficulty.<br />What I stated represents some of my anxieties and concerns.<br />I am confident that you, the American people, will play an instrumental role in the establishment of justice and spirituality throughout the world. The promises of the Almighty and His prophets will certainly be realized, Justice and Truth will prevail and all nations will live a true life in a climate replete with love, compassion and fraternity.<br />The US governing establishment, the authorities and the powerful should not choose irreversible paths. As all prophets have taught us, injustice and transgression will eventually bring about decline and demise. Today, the path of return to faith and spirituality is open and unimpeded.<br />We should all heed the Divine Word of the Holy Qur’an:<br />“But those who repent, have faith and do good may receive Salvation. Your Lord, alone, creates and chooses as He will, and others have no part in His choice; Glorified is God and Exalted above any partners they ascribe to Him.” (28:67-68)<br />I pray to the Almighty to bless the Iranian and American nations and indeed all nations of the world with dignity and success.<br /><br />Mahmoud Ahmadinejad<br />President of the Islamic Republic of Iran<br />29 November 2006Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1164778300400825942006-11-29T00:31:00.000-05:002006-11-29T00:31:40.403-05:00The Phonograph and My Existential CrisisToday, November 29th, 2006 (the 333rd day of 2006) is the 119th anniversary of the day that Thomas Edison first demonstrated his invention for recording and replaying sound, the phonograph ("sound writer"). This first phonograph recorded on tinfoil cylinders that had low sound quality and destroyed the track during replay so that one could listen to it only a few times. A few uses for the phonograph that Edison proposed include: recording books for blind people to hear, preserving the last words of dying people, announcing the time, and teaching spelling. The reproduction of music was not very high on Edison's list. A few years past without the phonograph really catching on, and eventually Edison proclaimed that the phonograph had no commercial value. After a few more years, Edison changed his mind and began selling phonographs as office dictating machines. However, other inventors wanted to take the phonograph in a different direction and they created jukeboxes by arranging phonographs to play popular music at the drop of a coin. Edison saw this as a debasement of his serious invention. Eventually, after 20 years, Edison conceded that the phonograph's purpose is to record and play music. I do not claim to be an expert on Edison's life, but it seems to me that he began inventing because he enjoyed inventing. It seems to me that he made money in order to continue what he loved to do; invent. He survived to continue inventing. As the years went on, however, his love seemed to change. With his improvement of the incandescent light bulb, Edison was a promoter of DC (direct current) for electric distribution. He went to extremes to put his new adversary, George Westinghouse, out of business. Westinghouse was a promoter of AC (alternating current). Edison went so far as to electracute animals, including an elephant, to show the "danger" of AC. He even went so far as promoting the electric chair and the death penalty to delegitimate AC. I don't want to go into the details, but it seems that Edison's focus shifted here, from making money in order to continue inventing to continue inventing in order to make money. (I don't really care if this isn't exactly true. This story about Edison is merely a means to an end, and I feel that the end justifies the means, at least in this blog post.)And this is the point that my existential crisis arises. What do I want to do? What do I want to survive in order to keep doing? Instead of keep doing in order to survive? What do I want to do that I will make money to continue doing and not continue doing in order to make money? This is where I am stuck. Especially since I have become rather disenchanted with graduate school (apparently reading Habermas will do that to you). So here I am crossing the threshold into the yet-to-be determined future, and as I do, I am trying to find my passion in life. Because right now, I am growing evermore passionate about apathy.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1160433523525952692006-10-09T18:09:00.000-04:002006-10-09T18:38:43.653-04:00Natality and the Detroit TigersThe Detroit Tigers are appearing in the MLB playoffs for the first time since 1987 (I was 5 years old). Since winning the division title in '87, the team had a sucessful year in '88 leading the AL East for most of the season before entering a late season slump. In '89, the Tigers held the worst record in baseball with a 59-103 record. In '90 - '93, the team began to improve thanks to Fielder's bat, but the team lacked pitching and the players were beginning to age. From '94-'05, the Tigers did not post a winning record. <br />However, this year, 2006, the Tigers have made it at least to the American League Championship Series. <br />The '06 Tigers are a young team. With the likes of Granderson (MLB debut in '04), Monroe (MLB debut '01), Thames (MLB debut '02), Verlander (rookie), Zumaya (rookie), Bonderman (MLB debut '03), Robertson (MLB debut '02), Maroth (MLB debut '02), and Miner (rookie) among others, the Tigers are a team that may be less experienced than other teams, but "every newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew." <br />This reminds me of Hannah Arendt's notion of natality (contra Heidegger's notion of mortality). Arendt writes of the "human condition of natality" is "the new beginning inherent in birth [that] can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew".<br />"The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, 'natural' ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Only the full experience of this capacity can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope...It is this faith in and hope for the world that found perhaps its most glorious and most succinct expression in the few words with which the Gospels announced their 'glad tidings': 'A child has been born unto us.'"<br />These newcomers on the Tigers give me faith and hope and they have brought and are capable of bringing new beginnings to my favorite baseball team. Let's go Tigers!Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1160100737194279372006-10-05T20:39:00.000-04:002006-10-05T22:26:33.353-04:00With Dick in Hand: Dick Devos, Michigan, and Economic MasturbationWith mid-term elections coming up on November 7, I'm sure the gubernatorial elections in America's high five (Michigan) are becoming more and more ominous and the reminders to vote are increasing toward ubiquity. Thankfully, I am in Toronto and no one will be riding me for not voting and then telling me that since I don't vote, I can't complain. First, if you vote for a candidate or a proposition, and said candidate or proposition loses, what good is it to have "a right to complain"? Exactly who do you complain to? Why do I have to have a "right" in order to complain? Do people under 21 have no right to complain? If in good conscience you can't vote for any candidate in a presidential election, it would seem that you have legitimate grounds for complaint.<br />Secondly, I'm not a political romantic. America, Michigan, and Grant Township will always do things that I disagree with whether I vote or not. You can't say you are politically active simply because you fill in a dot next to someone's name. But because you filled in that dot and I didn't, you have the right to complain and I don't? Politics aren't going to change the world for the better. Get off your tuckus more than just to travel down to the polls and actually do something to change the world. Ways of life only change in living...and it begins at home. Because politics aren't going to change the world for the better and, if even it could, there is no one I can support and still sleep at night, I'm not going to vote and I think I have the "right" to complain.<br />Sorry about the pseudo-rant, I'm sure I will be lambasted by the "politically-aware" readers (oh, I forgot, no one reads this blog anymore).<br />My actual intent for this post was to talk about <a href="http://www.devosforgovernor.com/">Dick Devos</a> and his <a href="http://www.devosforgovernor.com/Media/TurnAroundPlan/TheMichiganTurnAroundPlan.pdf">"The Michigan Turn Around Plan". </a>So, basically, said plan can be (and has been by Devos himself) divided into four sections or "missions" (which are actually one "mission", but enough of these parenthetical statements); 1) Create a Job Climate Second to None, 2) Overhaul State Government, 3) Diversify our Economy, and 4) Conquer the International Marketplace.<br />Let's begin at the beginning. Dick Devos wants to create a job climate second to none. How (besides getting rid of the Business Tax), you ask? I'll focus on a few "jobs" that Devos says he hopes to do. I'll start off with one I like, Mission #1 Job#2 focuses on helping small businesses. Which I like, but helping them how? Implicitly, it seems that he wants to "help" small businesses by making them big businesses. Nevermind, I don't like it anymore.<br />Mission #1 Job #2 - Devos wants to "Improve Education: Give Our Kids the Skills They Need". I agree. Improve education and give them the skills they need! Right on! Wait a minute. Devos is reducing education to economics. Give them the skills they need so that they "are able to meet the requirements of the 21st Century economy - and get high quality jobs." But if everyone is getting this "improved education", can everyone get these "high quality jobs"? Who is going to bag groceries or clean toilets? We are already keeping kid's from flooding the job market by keeping them in school until they are 18. What would happen if they get the high quality jobs when they are finally released into the job market? What would happen to all the people who are, in the job market, obtaining the skills they need and working their way up to those jobs? <br />Mission #1 Job #5 - Protect and Promote Michigan's Environment. Sounds good. Again, I agree. But why Mr. Devos? "I believe our environment is an engine for job creation and quality of life." This is the point where I hang my head.<br />Let's move to Mission #2, "Overhaul State Government". You may be thinking of that good ol' Sesame Street (ADD-inducing) shorts and singing to yourself, "one of these things is not like the others". The other three are about the economy, this one is about the government. But you would be wrong because "The Governor's Job is Jobs" and as our Governor, "Devos would be the CEO of Michigan's economic efforts."<br />Maybe we should move along to Mission #3 - "Diversify our Economy". Here he talks of universities, but again he is only interested in how it will help the economy; "I will get more job-creating ideas from our universities to the marketplace."<br />In Job #14, Devos wants to "Support Michigan Agriculture" and he "knows that we can<br />protect the environment and grow Michigan’s family farms at the same time." I like what I hear. Wait...what does he mean by "grow"? What is all this talk of "Agriculture business leaders will always have a seat at my table" and "agriculture industry" and "Michigan’s agriculture businesses"? I thought we were talking about Michigan's family farms not Michigan's agribusinesses?<br />I don't even want to talk about Mission #4 - "Conquer the International Marketplace". It just sounds ridiculous. But he talks about Fair Trade in Job #17, my interest is peaked. "Enforce trade agreements. Michigan workers can compete anywhere, but we need a level playing<br />field. When these agreements are not enforced, our job providers struggle, and we lose jobs"... "Stand up to countries whose laws discriminate against American-made products"... "Fight for the protection of intellectual property rights"..."Stop currency manipulation that harms our Michigan made products." What does this have to do with doing justice to those who are mistreated because of their status as a farmer in a periphery country being trammeled by the global capitalist economy?<br /><br />It seems that Dick Devos believes two things. 1. Everything (education, agriculture, government, the environment...etc.) is a means to the end of "stimulating" the economy. 2. If the economy is being "stimulated", then everything is working as it should be. This may be too simplistic, but I don't care. I'm glad that I can complain. All I'm saying is that when I come home I don't want to catch you all with Dick in Hand "stimulating" the economy.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1160019147928281032006-10-04T23:24:00.000-04:002006-10-04T23:32:27.943-04:00GermanApparently no one checks my blog anymore, but I don't really care. If I keep writing posts on this blog, is it like talking to myself? If it is, I don't really care. <br />Anyway, I started learning how to read German last Wednesday. Today, I had my second German class. I've had a great time learing Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, and Dative cases, and the corresponding articles for Masculine, Feminine, Neutral, and Plural. Anyway (again), German is a weird language (but its not like English isn't weird). It seems that Germans don't like to use the space bar or move their hand over between nouns. These are called compound nouns. One such compound noun I learned this week was (are you ready for this?)..."staatsangestelltenkrankheitsversicherungsgesellschaft". Yes, that's one word! It means: State Employees health insurance company, and yes, it has 55 letters! <br />What is it with Germans and spaces? Do they not get along?Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1159392079407619702006-09-27T16:04:00.000-04:002006-09-27T17:40:07.980-04:00Christology with a Dash of Freud and a Pinch of MarxHere are some excerpts from Erich Fromm's essay "The Dogma of Christ" in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Frankfurt-School-Religion-Eduar-Mendieta/dp/0415966973/sr=8-1/qid=1159391172/ref=sr_1_1/002-9233376-0549631?ie=UTF8&s=books"><em>The Frankfurt School on Religion</em></a> and the collection of essays entitled <a href="http://http://www.amazon.com/Dogma-Christ-Owl-Book/dp/0805071172/sr=1-1/qid=1159392811/ref=sr_1_1/002-9233376-0549631?ie=UTF8&s=books"><em>The Dogma of Christ</em>. </a>This is an extremely interesting essay, Fromm employs two of the "Masters of Suspicion" to read (and critique) the doctrine of Christology for the early Church and later its shift away from the early Church's Christology to the Christology of the Catholic Church. Both doctrines of Christ are rooted in the Church communities' social and economic standings.<br />I want to include enough to interest people to read it, but not too much to give it all away. The parts that I focus on a Marxian reading of first century Palestine which sets up for a Freudian reading of the doctrine of Christ for the first century Christian community. Without further ado, dear reader, let's get started.<br />In the first century C.E., "Palestine was a part of the Roman Empire and succumbed to the conditions of its economic and social development".<br />Economically, there were basically three classes. First, "the rural population was exhausted by an extraordinarily heavy tax burden" and either became debt slaves, or as the farmers lost their means of production or their small land holdings, they "swelled the ranks of the large-city proletariat of Jerusalem" or "resorted to desperate remedies, such as violent political uprising and plundering." Second, just above the impoverished proletariat there arose a middle economic class, "though suffering under Roman pressure, was nevertheless economically stable." Third, there was a "small but powerful influential class of the feudal, priestly, and moneyed aristocracy." Within the Palestinian population, there was a corresponding social differentiation to this severe economic cleavage. Sadducees represented the rich upper class, Pharisees represented the middle economic class, and the Am Ha-aretz (literally, land folk), corresponded to the "lowest stratum of the urban <em>Lumpenproletariat </em>and the oppressed peasants." There was much hatred between the lowest class and the Pharisaic circles (if you question this, ask me for some literary instances where this arises), and the conflict increased as "Roman oppression became heavier and the lowest classes [became] more crushed and uprooted." This is where we see the rise of national, social, and religious revolutionaries; mainly embodied in political attempts at revolt like the Zealots and Sicarii (dagger carriers), and religious-messianic movements (but "there is by no means a sharp deperation between these two streams moving toward liberation and salvation; often they flow into each other).<br />Out of these lowest classes - "the masses of uneducated poor, the proletariat of Jerusalem, and the peasants in the country", those who "because of the increasing political and economic oppression and because of social restriction and contempt, increasingly felt the urge to change existing conditions" - arose the kind of people who supported early Christianity.<br />Do passages like Luke 6:20 ff, then, not only "express longing and expectation of the poor and oppressed for a new and better world, but also their complete hatred of the authorities - the rich, the learned, and the powerful"?<br />How did the early Christian community view Christ? In Acts 2:36, wee see that "God made him [Jesus] both Lord and Christ". This "is the oldest doctrine of Christ that we have, and is therefore of great interest, especially since it was later supplanted by other, more extensive doctrines." This is called the "adoptionist" theory "because here an act of adoption is assumed". "The thought present here is that Jesus was not the messiah from the beginning; in other words, he was not from the beginning the Son of God, but became so only by a definite, very distinct act of God's will. This is expressed in the fact that the statement in Psalms 2:7, 'You are my son, today I have begotten you," is interpreted as referring to the moment of the exaltation of Jesus (Acts 13:33)." According to the ancient Semetic idea, the king is a son of God on the day he mounts the throne. "It is therefore in keeping with the oriental spirit to say that Jesus, as he was exalted to the right hand of God, became the Son of God."<br />"We see thus that the concept of Jesus held by the early community was that he was a man chosen by God and elevated by him as a 'messiah', and later as 'Son of God'. This Christology of the early community resembles in many respects the concept of the messiah chosen by God to introduce a kingdom of righteousness and love, a concept which had been familiar among the Jewish masses for a long time." Except there are a few new elements: "in the fact of his exaltation as Son of God to sit at the right hand of the Almighty, and in the act that this messiah is no longer the powerful, victorious hero, but his significance and dignity reside just in his suffering, in his death on the cross."<br />This is where we add the dash of Freud, and may get a little controversial.<br />"The first Christians were a brotherhood of socially and economically oppressed enthusiasts held together by hope and hatred." "While the Zealots and Sicarii endeavored to realize their wishes in the sphere of political reality, the complete hopelessness of realization led the early Christians to formulate the same wishes in fantasy." "If there was nothing left for the Zealots but to die in hopeless battle, the followers of Christ could dream of their goal without reality immediately showing them the hopelessness of their wishes. By substituting fantasy for reality, the Christian message satisfied the longings for hope and revenge, and although it failed to relieve hunger, it brought a fantasy satisfaction of no little significance for the oppressed."<br />1. A man is rased to a god; he is adopted by God. "We have here the old myth of the rebellion of the son, an expression of hostile impulses toward the father-god." "These people hated intensely the authorities that confronted them with 'fatherly' power. The priests, scholars, aristocrates, in short, all the rulers who excluded them from the enjoyment of life and who in their emotional world played the role of the sever, forbidding, threatening, tormenting father - they also had to hate this God who was an ally of their oppressors, who permitted them to suffer and be oppressed. They themselves wanted to rul...but it seemed hopeless to try to acheive this in reality and to overthrow and destroy their present masters by force. So they satisfied their wishes in fantasy. Consciously they did not date to slander the fatherly God. Concious hatred was reserved for the authorities, not for the elevated father figure, the diving being himself. But the unconscious hostility to the divine father found expression in the Christ fantasy. They put a man at God's side and made him a co-regent with God the father. This man who became a god, and with whom as humans they could identify, represented their Oedipus wishes; he was a symbol of their unconscious hostility to God the father, for if a man could become God, the latter was deprived of his priveleged fatherly position of being unique and unreachable. The belief in the elevation of a man to god was thus the expression of an unconscious wish for the removal of the divine father.<br />2. The figure of the suffering savior was determined "by the fact that some of the death wishes against the father-god were shifted to the son. In the myth of the dying god (Adonis, Attis, Osiris), god himself was the one whose death was fantasied. In the early Christian myth the father is killed in the son."<br />3. "Since the believing enthusiasts were imbued with hatred and death wishes - consciously against their rulers, unconsciously against God the father - they identified with the crucified; they themselves suffered death on the cross and atoned in this way for their death wishes against the father. through his death, Jesus expiated the guilt of all, and the first Christians greatly needed such an atonement."Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1157990998491830472006-09-11T12:08:00.000-04:002006-09-11T12:09:58.516-04:009/11: In MemoriamPrior to the commencement of his presidency, George W. Bush’s campaign slogan was “Bringing America Together”. Apparently, according to the Republican Party in general, and Bush in particular, the grand old U.S. of A. was experiencing a crisis of national identity. Whether there was an internal conflict of Us/Them in the United States or not, Bush’s dreams were answered at the precise moment that two planes crashed into the national monument known as the World Trade Center, five years ago. The “crises of national identity found its provisional resolution by displacing the internal conflict of Us/Them on an external screen.” (Richard Kearney) The body politic known as the United States was (re)united on September 11, 2001, just like the separatist Puritans and the non-religious adventurers were united under the Mayflower Compact or like how frontiersmen put there differences aside while expanding America’s borders westward. This time, however, “we” were not arriving to the New World on the Mayflower or pushing the frontier further west in stagecoaches or covered wagons and uniting against the savage “Indians”, instead, “they” were the savages arriving on airplanes, crashing into buildings, nevertheless, again we united against “them”. Our crises of national identity, our differences were put behind us; America had been brought together against “them”; against savage terrorists. We were once again the <em>United</em> States of America. <br />However, it was indeed a “provisional resolution”. Between the attack upon the World Trade Center and today, five years later, we have seen the Bush administration declare preemptive war on Iraq, declare an endless “war on terrorism”, curtail civil rights, defy laws, resort to overwhelming force, and other actions, like these, that are “ready products of fear and hasty thought.” (Wendell Berry) Again we are experiencing crises of national identity; Americans are no longer united over the issues of war in Iraq (how is this connected to 9/11 again?), war in Afghanistan, or war on terrorism. Words like “freedom” are evoked to reunite the body politic, because who is against “freedom”? Terrorists. This administration is fighting for “freedom” against those who are against “freedom”, so if you are against this administrations actions, you are against “freedom” (you are no better than a terrorist) because this administration is fighting for “freedom”. This logic disintegrates public dialogue into ad hominem arguments, words like “freedom” disintegrate into rhetoric of self-righteousness and self-justification, and critical self-appraisal is thrown out with the bathwater. We are implored to remember the victims aboard the planes and in the towers who died on this fateful day, but these are just disguised calls to revenge and resentment, to increase military funding (recall Eisenhower’s warning against the military-industrial complex), to give our endless support to the thriving bureaucracy, in order to stamp out these “embittered few”, these “thousands of trained terrorists” so “innocents” who died on 9/11 and others will not have died in vain (The National Security Strategy). But will retaliating in immature and dangerous ways, will the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of “innocents” in Iraq and Afghanistan, will the deaths of thousands of American, Canadian, English, Iraq, and Afghan soldiers, will the severed head of Osama bin-Laden, save the victims deaths from banality? It doesn’t look like America’s typical unoriginal and uncreative response of war and violence will save or is saving the victims death from be(com)ing trivial. Perhaps it is now, five years out, to start thinking of different ways to handle the crises that 9/11 has placed in our laps. When should we start forgiving? When is it right to remember and when is it right to forget? How much should we remember and how much should we forget? Is this a time and place (like Northern Ireland, Bosnia, or Rwanda) where we should take note of Nietzsche’s call to “actively forget the past” in order to surmount revenge and resentment? To rework Adorno’s question about Auschwitz (which he later retracted), “Is poetry possible after 9/11?” Or is this a time and place (like Auschwitz) in which “it is essential to remember the past in order to honour our ‘debt to the dead’ and try to insure that it never happens again” (Kearney)? If we are to remember the past, if we are to narrate the events of half a decade ago, how do we do so without “losing the unique character of unspeakable horror” (Kearney)? Let’s not follow the easy path of many Christians, both conservative and liberal, and create or subscribe to some Master Narrative that attempts to explain it away. 9/11 did not happen because God called down destruction on America because of homosexuals, or gay marriage, or whatever. We must avoid “banalising” it “by reducing it to voyeuristic spectacle or kitsh” (Kearney) or a commodity of the culture industry (a real and present danger with the appearance of numerous emotive 9/11 films). <br />Either way, we must take seriously <em>both</em> the September 11th attack on the Twin Towers <em>and</em> the dissent of the populace concerning the subsequent actions taken by the Bush administration in order to make occasion for strenuous self-appraisal. First, what has the United States done to stimulate such an attack? Could it be that we are trespassers in the Islamic holy land, not just Mecca, but the whole Saudi Arabian peninsula? Could it be because of the untrammeled spread of the global market leaving the Islamic people maimed in its path? Second, why are citizens dissenting? Obviously, some people aren’t pleased with the way this administration is handling things. Instead of hijacking, raping, and using religious vocabulary to justify your actions and arrogantly proclaiming the superiority of your stance while ignoring the critique, why not actually engage the critique and confront the disagreement? How could there possibly be a quandary if your stance and actions are divinely sanctioned? Displacing internal conflict onto an external screen is only a temporary cover-up for crises of national identity, attention cannot be diverted ad infinitum from the internal conflicts (though an endless war on terror was a creative attempt), eventually these crises will have to be dealt with. <br />If America is to be brought together, let it be brought together not by identifying outside enemies like America did in the 20th century with communists, fascists, Cubans, Iraqis, Vietcong, or North Koreans nor by trivializing the deaths of victims by using their deaths as a method to continually fuel the military-industrial machine to satiate our perceived need for revenge. Perhaps, it is time to think of new ways to “bring America together”. But first it is time to think of new descriptions as to what is meant by “America”, both ideally and in actual performance, or whether or not America should be “brought together” at all.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1157387741824814152006-09-04T12:29:00.000-04:002006-09-04T12:50:23.936-04:00"Who Disturbs My Slumber? The Faces of Poor People, Ethical Obligation, and DifféranceNo, the allusion to (actually, the direct quotation of) the magical sand tiger and the (literal) mouth of the “Cave of Wonders” in Disney’s <i>Aladdin</i>, who – subsequently to having those golden bug halves become his eyes and prior to his persistent goings on about a “diamond in the rough” – asks “Who disturbs my slumber?”, does not start this essay (article, blog post, whatever) out on the proverbial wrong foot with a confusion of pronouns. My (at least perceived) intent is not to address the abstract, universal notion of “poverty”, I would go so far as to say that I’m not really all that concerned with the problem of poverty. Now before I get in trouble, let me say that instead I am kept up at night by the one-legged, homeless Jamaican man who plays percussion on an upside down plastic trash can in hopes to insight some subjective pleasure in Chinatown/Spadina Street pedestrians to accumulate enough “spare” change to buy a decent lunch. Sure, he isn’t that good – Kant with his objective aesthetic judgment and his pockets full of Loonies and Toonies would just keep walking – but he is hungry. The woman who feeds the cats that hang around by my garbage cans, who built them a shelter out of a Styrofoam cooler, and asks them if they are going to catch pigeons, she too disturbs my sleep. She is probably homeless and most likely doesn’t have any food for herself. There is also the man in the jean jacket with the worn elbows who stands outside Burger King on College and Spadina everyday and asks everyone who passes if he can have money for a burger. Or the woman with the thick harlequin-esque makeup who smells like urine and walked me and Jeff all the way from Spadina to Bathurst mumbling incessantly, but seemed to enjoy a “listening” ear and the occasional affirmation to her incoherent mumblings. These people, these faces, keep me up at night. Not because I invite them all over to watch Spiderman cartoons in French on the Quebecois CBC station and then they can’t take a hint when midnight rolls around and I keep yawning and saying “well, it’s about that time”. They disturb my slumber because these are actual faces that are calling me, in some way, to relieve their suffering and I do not even now how to begin to respond. Therefore, the question is not “what disturbs my slumber?”, but precisely “<i>who</i> disturbs my slumber?”. These are, at least a few, who disturb my slumber.<br /> It seems that <em>différance</em> is the im/possibility of everything (is <em>différance</em> also the im/possibility of <em>différance</em> making <em>différance</em> it’s own condition and therefore “unconditional” and metaphysical? (Dudiak’s critique of Caputo?)) . If this is the case, if <em>différance</em> is the im/possibility of everything, then <em>différance</em> is (always?) prior to any call (face/flesh) of the other that elicits my/our response and obligates me/us in their singularity (Levinas). This may be what Levinas is signifying when he says the other is “Absolutely Other” (however, can you have a relationship with an absolute? (Caputo’s critique of Levinas?)). If the other is always “Absolutely Other”, if <em>différance</em> is the im/possibility of ethics, how can I respond in such a way that relieves these faces from their suffering? It would seem that the typical response to the faces of those mentioned above is to give them money. But is this simply reducing them to the Same? By tossing them a Toonie am I simply assimilating them into the competitive market? Am I responding as a <em>bourgeois</em>, capitalist oppressor as if I can relieve their suffering by reducing them to the Same? Will the act of giving them some spare change relieve their suffering as singularities that call for a singular response? Is this what they want? Do they even know what they want? Do they want to be parasitic upon or be assimilated into a culture that locks up food and forces people to labor so an elite few can be “free” and “truly human” (*jab at Hannah Arendt*)? <br /> I’m experiencing an existential crisis. First, these people I mentioned are poor and homeless. Their faces call me, place an obligation upon me, and I am responsible to respond. However, I must interpret this call. I am a bourgeois, capitalist oppressor who drank single malt scotch aged 12 years while typing this post full of obscure, philosophical references, and I will interpret this call from this place I find myself in, which normally elicits the response of giving money. They are poor because they are not like me, so I make them like me by giving them money. How can I respond otherwise? How can I respond to their call without reducing them to the Same? Which brings me to my second point. They are calling me to relieve their suffering. But they must also interpret their suffering. This is similar to the well-trodden authorial intent discussion. They may entertain private meanings inaccessible to anyone, but they may also have blind spots concerning their suffering and their call and their hoped-for response. They want to eat, maybe their suffering is more of an existential desire that they are looking to satiate, but if they could satiate it indefinitely by being assimilated into this culture would it be worth it? Is that what they really want? <br />Please respond, whether to my (mis?) readings of <em>différance</em> and ethical obligation, or to how I should respond to those who disturb my slumber.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1156800293615438272006-08-28T16:59:00.000-04:002006-08-28T17:24:53.730-04:00Terrorism through the Prism of Peace<div align="left">Friends, Aquaintances, and Fellow Bloggers soujourning in the wild spaces of Blogdom, </div><div align="left">Here is an interesting and much-needed interpretation of the United States' response to terrorism. Cortright sees the Bush administration as viewing all terrorism through the "prism of war" which leads to the killing of all militants to put the kibosh on the threat of terrorism. However, this tends to "[ignite] hatred and vengeance and creates a cycle of violence that can spin out of control." To quote Miroslav Volf (from memory), "Today's victims are tomorrow's perpetrators". Cortright critiques the Bush administration's response from a Ghandian perspective and proffers a "non violent strategy" that "seeks to reduce the appeal of militants’ extremist methods by addressing legitimate grievances and providing channels of political engagement for those who sympathize with the declared political aims." He believes "[a] two-step response is essential: determined law enforcement pressure against terrorist criminals, and active engagement with affected communities to resolve underlying injustices." </div><div align="left">I'll just include the article and hope that it initiates some dialogue, hopefully including both criticism and affinity</div><div align="left"><br /> </div><div align="left"><strong>Nonviolence and the strategy against terrorism</strong></div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left">by David Cortright<br /></div><div align="left">In the months after 9/11, Jim Wallis challenged peace advocates to address the threat of terrorism. “If nonviolence is to have any credibility,” he wrote, “it must answer the questions violence purports to answer, but in a better way.” Gandhian principles of nonviolence provide a solid foundation for crafting an effective strategy against terrorism. Nonviolence is fundamentally a means of achieving justice and combating oppression. Gandhi demonstrated its effectiveness in resisting racial injustice in South Africa and winning independence for India. People-power movements have since spread throughout the world, helping to bring down communism in Eastern Europe and advancing democracy in Serbia, Ukraine, and beyond. The same principles - fighting injustice while avoiding harm - can be applied in the struggle against violent extremism.<br />Bush administration officials and many political leaders in Washington view terrorism primarily through the prism of war. Kill enough militants, they believe, and the threat will go away. The opposite approach is more effective and less costly in lives. Some limited use of force to apprehend militants and destroy training camps is legitimate, but unilateral war is not. In the three years since the invasion of Iraq, the number of major terrorist incidents in the world has increased sharply. War itself is a form of terrorism. Using military force to counter terrorism is like pouring gasoline on a fire. It ignites hatred and vengeance and creates a cycle of violence that can spin out of control. A better strategy is to take away the fuel that sustains the fire. Only nonviolent methods can do that, by attempting to resolve the underlying political and social factors that give rise to armed violence.<br />The most urgent priority for countering terrorism, experts agree, is multilateral law enforcement to apprehend perpetrators and prevent future attacks. Cooperative law enforcement and intelligence sharing among governments have proven effective in reducing the operational capacity of terrorist networks. Governments are also cooperating to block financing for terrorist networks and deny safe haven, travel, and arms for terrorist militants. These efforts are fully compatible with the principles of nonviolence.<br />Terrorism is fundamentally a political phenomenon, concluded the U.N. Working Group on Terrorism in 2002. To overcome the scourge, “it is necessary to understand its political nature as well as its basic criminality and psychology.” This means addressing legitimate political grievances that terrorist groups exploit - such as the Israel-Palestine dispute, repressive policies by Arab governments, and the continuing U.S. military occupation in Iraq. These deeply-held grievances generate widespread political frustration and bitterness in many Arab and Muslim countries, including among people who condemn terrorism and al Qaeda’s brutal methods. As these conditions fester and worsen, support rises for the groups that resist them. Finding solutions to these dilemmas can help to undercut support for jihadism. The strategy against terrorism requires undermining the social base of extremism by driving a wedge between militants and their potential sympathizers. The goal should be to separate militants from their support base by resolving the political injustices that terrorists exploit.<br />A nonviolent approach should not be confused with appeasement or a defeatist justification of terrorist crimes. The point is not to excuse criminal acts but to learn why they occur and use this knowledge to prevent future attacks. A nonviolent strategy seeks to reduce the appeal of militants’ extremist methods by addressing legitimate grievances and providing channels of political engagement for those who sympathize with the declared political aims. A two-step response is essential: determined law enforcement pressure against terrorist criminals, and active engagement with affected communities to resolve underlying injustices. Ethicist Michael Walzer wrote, counterterrorism “must be aimed systematically at the terrorists themselves, never at the people for whom the terrorists claim to be acting.” Military attacks against potential sympathizers are counterproductive and tend to drive third parties toward militancy. Lawful police action is by its nature more discriminating and is more effective politically because it minimizes predictable backlash effects.<br />Gandhi’s political genius was in understanding the power of third party opinion. He did not try to challenge the British militarily but instead organized mass resistance to weaken the political legitimacy of the Raj. The nonviolent method, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, undermines the authority and “moral unction” of the adversary. Gandhi realized that political struggles are ultimately a battle for hearts and minds. In all his campaigns, he assiduously cultivated the support of third parties by avoiding harm to the innocent and addressing legitimate grievances. These are essential insights for the struggle against terrorism. The fight will not be won on the battlefield. The more it is waged on that front, the less likely it can be won. The goal of U.S. strategy, said the 9/11 Commission, must be “prevailing over the ideology that contributes to Islamic terrorism.” Nonviolent resistance is the opposite of and a necessary antidote to the ideology of extreme violence. Gandhi often said, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” Better to keep our eyes open as we search for more effective means of eroding support for extremism, while protecting the innocent and bringing violent perpetrators to justice.<br /></div><em></em><div align="left"><em></em> </div><div align="left"><em>David Cortright is the author of Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for an Age of Terrorism (Paradigm Publishers, 2006) and co-founder of the Center on Global Counter-Terrorism Cooperation.</em></div><div align="left"><em></em> </div><div align="left"><em></em> </div>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18581909.post-1155270745408331052006-08-11T00:27:00.000-04:002006-08-11T00:32:25.420-04:00Evan tagged me because he is an inclusivist.<br />1. One book that changed your life: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry<br />2. One book that you’ve read more than once: Jurassic Park<br />3. One book you’d want on a desert island: Home Economics by Wendell Berry<br />4. One book that made you laugh: Everybody Poops<br /> 5. One book that made you cry: The Holy Bible<br />6. One book your glad has been written: Any Wendell Berry book<br />7. One book you wish had never been written: Wild at Heart or The Prayer of Jabez<br /> 8. One book you’re currently reading: The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt<br />9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: Kant's Critique of JudgmentChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10499307093510870059noreply@blogger.com4