For Derrida, forgiveness occurs and first becomes possible only when it passes through its own impossibility, when it becomes exposed to the impossible itself.
To forgive only what can be forgiven or what is considered to be forgivable is not to forgive at all, for this forgiving is nothing but a repeating and a confirming of the already established laws, norms, codes, and duties. To merely forgive the forgivable is to conform to a pre-determined way of turning, thinking, acting, and behaving.
In a word, to merely forgive the forgivable, for Derrida, is to repeat a response already prescribed, preconditioned, and governed by a specific field of possibility.
According to Derrida, the paradox of forgiveness lies in that in order for forgiveness to be genuinely worthy of the name, its aim must not be the forgivable and what can be forgiven, it must turn itself toward the impossible, that is, the unforgivable and what cannot be forgiven.
This means that the impossible is the ground in which forgiveness is grounded. That is, the unforgivable is the condition of possibility of forgiving. To forgive what is impossibly forgivable, the unforgivable, or what cannot be forgiven, is to achieve a forgiveness that is truly worthy of its name.
According to Derrida, the relation linking together this impossible forgiveness— which is the only forgiveness that is truly worthy of the name— with ethical norms, moral standards, and accepted codes is aeconomical, discontinuous, and asymmetrical, for this impossible act of forgiving is radically singular and absolutely inventive.
No relation can contain this impossible act of forgiving, and it cannot be reduced to the already known, thought, or imagined; it cannot be reduced to the ethical or the cultural. Neither philosophy nor law could take this act of forgiving and reproduce it; it cannot be repeated, for it is impossible, singular, and inventive.
According to Derrida, to impossibly forgive, to forgive the impossible, or to forgive the unforgivable, is to come face to face with what cannot be repeated, reproduced, or imitated, for it is never present, it never achieves presence; it fades away and erases itself once it passes through its own impossibility, that is, once it takes places.
In other words, this impossible forgiveness, for Derrida, erases itself once it is glimpsed, for if it enters into a domain in which it offers itself as what can be repeated, reproduced, or imitated, the unforgivable becomes immediately transformed into merely the forgivable, into what can be forgiven, into what is accepted, known, and already repeated, produced, or imagined.
Derrida’s aim is neither to render paralyzed all acts of forgiving nor to render illegitimate every attempt at forgiving, but rather to refer forgiveness back to its divided origin, in which both conditional and unconditional forgiveness dwell.
This referring of forgiveness back to its already divided origin disrupts and problematizes all acts of forgiving, for it shows how the origin of forgiveness is itself never simple or present. This referring of forgiveness back to its origin reminds conditional forgiveness that its origin is divided and that to this divided origin belongs also the unconditional.
This means that inventive and singular negotiations between the conditional and the unconditional in forgiving must always take place in every act of forgiving.
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