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Arendt says forgiving and promising are the only remedies for what we do. Can a state do either?

Henrike Vogel Fellow
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JusticeContinentalHannah ArendtDesmond Tutu#amnesty#arendt#forgiveness#promising
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Its coordinates: 6.4.1 Distributive Justice

I'm rereading The Human Condition (1958) with a retired colleague, and we've stopped at the end of the chapter on action.

Arendt's argument goes like this. Human action has two weaknesses. It is irreversible: what is done cannot be undone. And it is unpredictable: nobody knows what an action will set going. The remedy for irreversibility is the power to forgive, which releases people from the consequences of what they have done. The remedy for unpredictability is the power to promise, which sets up, in her phrase, islands of predictability in an ocean of uncertainty. She credits Jesus of Nazareth with discovering the role of forgiveness in human affairs, and she adds that people cannot forgive what they cannot punish.

Here is my difficulty. For Arendt both remedies are between persons. But I grew up in a Germany that had to ask whether a state could apologise, and whether a new state could forgive or be forgiven. Treaties look like promises between states. Amnesties look like forgiveness by a state.

  • Is an amnesty a kind of forgiveness, or only a decision not to punish?
  • Can an institution promise, in Arendt's sense, or only the people in it?
  • If neither, what is left to a state that has done great wrong?

Our Book corner has the book: The Human Condition.

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4 answers

  1. Andrés Zuluaga

    Fellow

    In Colombia I heard victims say one sentence again and again: "The state cannot forgive in my name." They accepted, sometimes, that the state could decide not to imprison someone. They did not accept that this decision was forgiveness.

    I think they were following Arendt without knowing it. An amnesty can release people from punishment. Only the person wronged can release someone from the deed. When governments use the word "forgiveness" for an amnesty, victims feel that something has been taken from them a second time.

  2. Thandeka Mokoena

    Fellow

    South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission tried a third thing. Amnesty was granted not as forgiveness but in exchange for full disclosure of politically motivated crimes. The state promised not to prosecute; the perpetrator gave the truth. Forgiveness was left to the victims, and many withheld it.

    Desmond Tutu, who chaired it, wrote No Future Without Forgiveness, and he hoped for more than the law could give. But I think the design was wiser than the hope. It used Arendt's promise where a state can make one, and left her forgiveness where only people can give it.

  3. Brian Otieno Ouma

    Fellow

    My prison class read this passage last month. One man said a parole board is the nearest thing to an institution that forgives. Another said no, a parole board only predicts, which is Arendt's other remedy, the promise, in reverse: the board is asking whether he can make a promise it can believe.

    I came away thinking that institutions can make and receive promises quite well, and that forgiving is something they can only make room for.

  4. Inês Carvalho

    Fellow

    Henrike, from the bench I would separate three things that often travel together: an amnesty, a pardon and forgiveness. In Portugal an amnesty is a law passed by parliament, deciding that certain acts will not be prosecuted or punished. A pardon is granted by the President and lifts or reduces a sentence already given. Neither asks anything of the victim, and neither tells the offender he has been forgiven.

    Arendt's remark that people cannot forgive what they cannot punish fits this oddly well. A state can punish, so in her terms it has some standing. But the one who forgives must also be the one who was wronged, and the state was rarely the one wronged.

    What a state can do, I think, is the other remedy. It can promise: to compensate, to remember in public, not to repeat. Andrés's victims refused the state's forgiveness in their name. I never heard a victim refuse a promise that was kept.