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Overview
Originally published in 1967, Le Pardon, or Forgiveness, is one of Jankélévitch’s most influential works. In it, he characterizes the ultimate ethical act of forgiving as behaving toward the perpetrator as if he or she had never committed the action, rather than merely forgetting or rationalizing it—a controversial notion when considering events as heinous as the Holocaust.
Like so many of Jankélévitch’s works, Forgiveness transcends standard treatments of moral problems, not simply generating a treatise on one subject but incorporating discussions of topics such as free will, giving, creativity, and temporality. Translator Andrew Kelley masterfully captures Jankélévitch’s melodic prose and, in a substantive introduction, reviews his life and intellectual contributions. Forgiveness is an essential part of that legacy, and this indispensable English translation provides key tools for understanding one of the great Western philosophers of the twentieth century.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226045658 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 02/27/2013 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 204 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.30(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Forgiveness
By Vladimir Jankélévitch
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2005 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-39213-4
Chapter One
Temporal Decay
If decay is a natural effect of duration, then it is necessary to admit that forgiveness truly confirms and even ratifies the very intention of nature. It is not that the decay of material things or minerals results from the temporality of time, strictly speaking. It is not time itself that transforms things, nor that gradually erodes them (because time is impalpable). It is the action of certain physical factors in time; it is the wind and the sea over the course of years but it is not the years themselves. It is not the minutes that muffle the sound waves of an echo or the vibrations of a diapason that fade, but it is the resistance of the air! On the other hand, the decay of living organisms, if it is accelerated by physical or chemical agents, results above all from a qualitative and irreversible entropy that is essential to a lived becoming. No, certainly, man never bathes twice in a row in the same river. Rather, it is necessary to say more: it is not the same man who bathes two times in a row ... If we believe Heraclitus, at least the bather would stay the same over the course of his baths, for even in mobility there is an immobile system of reference. We know that Bergsonian superevolutionism renounces this last kernel of substantiality and immutable fixedness. All is change, including the subject that changes. Situations are modified along with the people who are in these situations. Other times, other problems! In this respect, forgiveness is very much headed in the direction of evolution, which always forges ahead. Forgiveness is opposed to rancor as that which makes itself is opposed to what is ready-made. Let us show in what manner forgiveness confirms the natural dimension of becoming and annuls the obstinate resistance of men to this becoming. For in all temporality there is a recto and a verso, a position and a negation ...
I. To Come Back Is Still to Come to Pass. Becoming Is Always Right Side Out.
Becoming, in the first place, is essentially futurition and, secondarily, preterition. That is, depending on whether one looks toward the future or toward the past, becoming ceaselessly posits a future, and with the same stroke and at the same time it deposits a past behind it. Successively, it makes the future present and makes the present past, and it does this in the same movement and with the same continual renewal. Indeed, to construct a becoming, a recollection and an appearing are necessary at the same time. But here there are not two opposite movements made for thwarting each other, for if appearing and "settling up" pulled in diametrically opposed directions, they would neutralize each other reciprocally, and, when all is said and done, becoming would come to a halt at dead center. Indeed, becoming qua advent of the future is secondarily a factory of memories. But these souvenirs, which are the natural deposit of position just as valleys are the reverse of mountains, fill the imagination and normally print an élan and an increased push on futurition, the role of memory being to enrich experience and not to retard the action; on the trampoline of memories, the action leaps higher and more energetically. Such is the effect of the alternative! Alteration makes what is other come to pass by driving back what is the same. Innovation actualizes novelty by draining the overabundance of memories, by favoring the deflation of the memory. And while the Not-yet becomes a Now, the Now, ipso facto, becomes an Already-more. Tomorrow will be Today, and Today will be Yesterday, and all of this in one single and same direction; such is the intention of becoming, for irreversible becoming has one direction and one vocation! All that goes in the direction of the current and of history is, therefore, right side out. Everything that goes in the opposite direction or swims in the countercurrent, meaning upstream, is headed in reverse. It is a matter of becoming in the direction of time and not of coming back to a countertime or against the grain of time ... Even if the "recollection" is not an "appearing" in reverse, it is more the "coming to pass" that is the true "coming" right side out. Does not what has come to pass express the Elpidian essence of coming, which is entirely hope, adventure, and advent? Coming back is not so much coming in reverse, it is rather in the manner of ghosts to feign coming, for "coming back" is a simulacrum and a phantom of what has come. As an inverted progression, regression especially is a fundamental immobility under the appearance of movement: it stays stationary more than it goes backward. Recollection is this false coming. But in certain cases it can appear as a wave of return that tends to neutralize futurition. Among all the forms of false coming and of anachronism, rancorous retrogradation, even though it is not literally regressive, is without a doubt the most passionate, for rancor is not a recollection like others; rancor does not consent to evolve, as does recollection; nor does it allow itself to be colored by the chronological succession of events, as does recollection. Rather, the man of ressentiment, being similar to the remorseful man, clings and clutches to the preterit and stubbornly hardens against futurition. Aggressive rancor resists becoming; and forgiveness, on the contrary, favors becoming by ridding it of impediments that weigh upon it, it cures us of rancorous hypertrophy. The conscience having liquidated its old objects of rancor resembles a voyager without baggage; with a light step, it goes out to meet life. Or, if one prefers the vertical dimension, conscience, lightened of the weight of memories and ressentiments, surmounts the weight like an astronaut and raises itself toward a height in one leap, after having jettisoned the ballast. Make way for novelties! In this way, forgiveness undoes the last shackles that tie us down to the past, draw us backward, and hold us down. By allowing the coming times to come to pass, and, in doing so, accelerating this coming, forgiveness indeed confirms the general direction and the sense of a becoming that puts the tonic accent on the future. Forgiveness helps becoming to become, while becoming helps forgiveness to forgive. In general, rancorous anachronism does not resist the irresistible force of futurition for very long ... -In truth, becoming is always right side out, even when it seems to come back. Becoming always forges ahead even when it seems to retrace its steps: apparent steps backward follow in a chronological succession invariably directed toward the future, and that is that. In this way, everyone is in the direction of history, including those who seem to move against the current. The movement that posits in depositing and deposits in positing is position, in the end: this is its last word. Futurition-preterition is futurition in the end, and it is only this. Better yet, preterition itself is a moment of futurition, a futurition that is more rapid in growth, more laborious in aging, a futurition all the same and in every case! Erchomenos exei, veniens veniet! Idou erchetai, ecce venit. There is only one sole "coming," and this coming, positive or apparently negative, is becoming itself! For example, however much the events of which our memory holds a recollection have taken place in times past, nevertheless the act by which we remember them surely comes to pass now. The recollected event indeed carries its date in the past of chronicles, but recollection itself is each time a novelty in the present of the chronology. My present memories are an event of this very day. Saint Augustine said this using other terms. And thus, even anachronism too in its way, in its turn, and in its anachronistic manner is a piece of the chronology of which it is an anachronism: anachronism is an untimely episode of temporality. But if anachronism does not reverse the irreversible, then it slows down the tide. Reactionary forces hinder progress without, however, stopping it and a fortiori without inverting its course; on the whole, they do not change anything in the general tendency of evolution. Regression does not go in the opposite direction of progression, regression is simply a retarded progression. Retrogression that believes itself to be retrograde is simply a sluggish progress. Regressive progress, then, only differs from progressive progress in its qualitative tonality. The souvenir is this rallentando of becoming; it does not make becoming come back and it just barely slows it down. And as for rancor, it too acts only as an obstacle and as a retarding cause. Sooner or later, the rancorous person will give in to the omnipotence of time and to the weight of the accumulated years, for time is almost as omnipotent as death, and time is more tenacious than the most tenacious of wills, for it is irresistible! And the rancorous person will grow weary of holding a grudge against his offender before becoming grows weary of becoming ... No, nothing resists this silent, continuous, and implacable force, this truly infinite pressure of progressive forgetting. No ressentiment, no matter how stubborn it is, can hold fast in the face of this mass of indifference and disaffection. Everything counsels forgetting! The memory, which is conquered in advance, can oppose futurition only by a defensive measure that is always provisional and generally hopeless ... One day or another, in the long run, oceanic forgetting will submerge all rancor underneath its leveling grayness, just as the desert sands finish by burying dead cities and defunct civilizations, and just as the accumulation of centuries and millennia ultimately will envelop inexpiable crimes and undying glories in the immensity of nothingness. We know that Marcus Aurelius cast an eagle's eye view on this infinity of history that crushes even the most long-lasting renowned figures and on this infinity that annihilates the most memorable exploits: mikron de hemekiste husterophemia. Minimal is the longest posthumous glory. By comparison with infinite history, every memory goes toward zero, like a point in space. Centuries follow upon centuries; in the end, it is as if the exploit never took place, as if the hero never existed. And in the end we come to doubt whether the unforgivable crime was ever actually committed. The fact and the nonfact, factum and infectum, reabsorbed in the one same nonbeing, become indiscernible from each other. Ducunt fata volentem, nolentum trahunt ... This amounts to saying: volens nolens, and whether you like it or not, the person has to march in the direction of futurition, to go where time leads him. Sooner or later, time will have the last word. Volens nolens? Then, rather volens! Since in the two cases the result will be the same, it is better to consent to time and be in full agreement with history. It is better spontaneously to assume one's destiny, in order not to have to suffer it. Sooner or later? Then, better sooner than later, right away is even better; and in any case as soon as possible! Yes, the sooner the better. Since it decidedly concerns a dilemma, since temporality in any case will be the strongest, since in any case forgetting will one day or another do its job, and since memory is a lost cause, one might as well forgive forthwith and finish once and for all with the lost cause and a condemned memory. Forgiveness, forestalling inevitable forgetting and inevitable obsolescence, recognizes in sum the invincibility of inexorable destiny, for we can apply what Aristotle and after him Leon Shestov said about the ametapeistos anagke. In order not to be crushed by the machine of the temporal process, the good memory anticipates its certain defeat, it takes the part of forgetting without getting to the point where becoming compels it, and as a consequence it hastens to forgive. It does not persist stubbornly in conserving outdated modes, in keeping in circulation decirculated currencies, in remaining stuck on outdated hatreds: it favors becoming by accelerating it.
II. Forgetting
And besides, even if the rancorous person does not forget the offense, those around him and new generations have already forgotten in his place. The latecomer, risking being swept up by his epoch, must thus compensate for the anachronism and salvage the general movement. He resembles an instrumentalist who is late and who runs and even leaps several measures ahead in order to get back in sync with the orchestra. In its own way, forgiveness erases a sort of dissonance. Before the discrepancy becomes irremediable, the rancorous person hurries to forgive ... for history marches on more quickly than the healing of our wounds. The man who has been passed up will survive if he remains contemporary with his time or places himself in the same time as that of his contemporaries. We often say: the circumstances have changed, actuality and opportunity have been displaced, problems today arise in a completely different manner, and so on. Old feelings of rancor, inhibited by the present and by the transformation of the historical context, become just as unreal as ghosts, as unreal as superstitious relics, as ridiculous as the outdated dresses of our grandmothers.-The evolution of each individual, including the offender himself, sums up, in its own way, that of successive generations. The person against whom I hold a grudge today is no longer the person who offended me earlier; in short, I continue to have rancor toward someone who no longer exists, toward the shadow of a guilty person, toward a phantom of the sinner. The refusal to forgive immobilizes the guilty person in his misdeed, identifies the agent with the act, and reduces the being of this agent to the having-done. But the misunderstood person protests against this simplification: one lie does not yet make a liar. The person infinitely exceeds the sin in which our rancor wants to imprison him. When we aim at a planet with the intention of hitting the target, it is necessary to take the movement of the planet into account, that is to say, the place that it will occupy in the sky when the rocket is supposed to reach it, and that is not its present place. Without this correction, we would be aiming at an empty place, at a place where there was indeed something at the moment of ignition and where already there is no longer anything. The rancorous person, fixing the offender in his immutable, incorrigible, and definitive essence as a guilty man, also sets out after an empty place. All the despair of ressentiment is contained in this powerlessness. Ressentiment does not even know whom to go after; the person whom it blames no longer exists!-All is thus dragged along in the general movement of becoming. The epoch that evolves irreversibly, the offender who is no longer the same but another person, and finally the offended himself-all of these advance along the route of time, with unequal speed, whether they like it or not. And just as the rancorous person is a sort of anachronism in full contemporaneousness, the rancor of this rancorous person can also be a local anachronism and an outdated element at the heart of the individual. For all the ingredients of this individual syncrasy that we call a psychism do not necessarily have the same cadence, nor do they necessarily march to the same step or with the same speed. All are not regulated by the same diapason, or at the same tempo. Personal life is a complex of lines that are relatively independent and each of which sometimes develops on its own terms. A man in the avant-garde of progress in the social sphere can be completely reactionary in his aesthetic prejudices. A lover of abstract painting can be completely outdated in his musical tastes and prefer Ambroise Thomas to Stravinsky. Similarly, little islands of inactivity-an unconsoled distress, an obsessive remorse, an old and undigested rancor, the tenacious memory of an unforgiven offense-can survive in the midst of a conscience that is wholly modern. The articulation and the pluralism of lines of conscience most often save us the trouble of resembling the pope's mule that kept its kick in reserve for seven years and that itself wholly became this vengeful kick. In general, man is not this mule that is offended, humiliated, and passionately obsessed with the fixed idea of revenge. The part of oneself that has stayed vindictive and that resists the natural movement of history is generally a local portion of lived life. Rancor often resembles a lump that becoming has not yet succeeded in dissolving. While our vital interests are moved according to new friendships and preoccupations of the hour, according to novel terms in which problems henceforth pose themselves, a ghost has survived in full modernity. A witness of time gone by, the antiquated phantom continues to wander in our memory. And this survival is all the more anti-vital because it is the survival neither of a defunct love, nor of a ridiculously tenacious fidelity, nor of an out-of-season gratitude, but rather of a truly posthumous hatred. If the love that we have for a specter is a "bewitched love," then rancor itself would be bewitched in two respects-first, because it too outlives its cause, and then because it is the memory of evil, a heinous recollection and inverted gratitude, which is, on the contrary, eumnémie and a good memory of kindness. Is not ressentiment a type of recognition in reverse? Love at least has not always been bewitched and becomes bewitched only beyond the grave, once it is bewitched by magic spells of reminiscence. Instead, hatred was already bewitched on the day of the affront, when everything justified it and when its actuality was indeed alive. What psychoanalysis will exorcise this specter from long ago? Time obliges the old-fashioned person not only to be a contemporary of the times of everyone, not only to mark the same time as his epoch, but also to be a contemporary of his own time and to adjust all the contents of his conscience to the same "Now." Let evolution carry away our last fidelities, erase our last superstitions, and dispose of that which survives from an absolute past! Temporal forgiveness dissolves the worries and migraines that linger in our present, just as time of itself makes the regional dischronisms of chronology proper disappear. It mobilizes all fixed ideas, consoles sorrows that are incapable of being consoled, wards o! obsessive remorse, and, in a word, thaws tenacious rancors. It liquidates by liquefying. The man who consents to becoming and renounces the delight of constant repetition makes fluid the advent of the future and lubricates the succession of the before and the after. He abounds in the direction of alteration that makes the other come to pass. For this man, slippery futurition will dissolve the pebbles of rancorous preterition that constantly tend to re-form themselves behind us.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Forgiveness by Vladimir Jankélévitch Copyright © 2005 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents
Translator's IntroductionIntroduction
1. Temporal Decay
2. The Excuse: To Understand Is to Forgive
3. Mad Forgiveness: "Acumen Veniae"
Conclusion
The Unforgivable: More Unfortunate Than Wicked, More Wicked Than Unfortunate
Appendix: Jankélévitch's Philosophical Works
Glossary
Index