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2 years ago in Political Philosophy By Pragya Chauhan
What role does the concept of ’reconciliation’ play in Hannah Arendt’s political philosophy, particularly regarding the aftermath of violence and injustice?
I'm writing on political forgiveness and came across Arendt's distinction between forgiveness, punishment, and reconciliation in The Human Condition. She seems skeptical of reconciliation as a political goal, seeing it as a potentially coercive demand for closure that can obscure the reality of the wrong. Is this accurate? How does her view of reconciliation differ from, say, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission model? Does she see any legitimate place for reconciliation in the public realm, or is forgiveness the key political faculty for new beginnings?
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By Bharathi Answered 1 year ago
Arendt is profoundly skeptical of reconciliation as a political concept. In her framework, forgiveness is the political faculty that releases actors from the consequences of past actions, enabling the unpredictability of natality (new beginnings). Reconciliation, by contrast, implies a restoration of a prior harmony or unity, which she views as a sentimental or theological ideal inappropriate to the pluralistic, agonistic public sphere. It risks imposing a false closure, obscuring the reality of the wrong and the need for judgment. For Arendt, the political response to atrocity is forgiveness (for the unforgivable, to free the future) or punishment (to assert the reality of the law), not reconciliation, which she might see as belonging to the private realm of the heart or the purview of religious communities, not the polis.
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