Le sfide del perdono. The Challenges of Forgiveness

Today, again, but differently, it is necessary to reflect on forgiveness in a philosophical, moral, historical, theoretical, religious and political way. In this particular historical moment, the dead – people who died due to wars, indifference, pandemic or even due to the death penalty – do not cease, in their silence, to appeal to the conscience (s) of the West and perhaps they do not stop granting them “something” similar to forgiveness. According to the great philosophers of the twentieth century who perhaps more than others, for historical necessities, have questioned about the challenges, paradoxes, ambiguities of forgiveness, in this volume we will try to understand its meaning or non-meaning, or better its plurality of meanings and challenges. Without ever leaving the more theoretical aspects of the question that somehow remain its center, we will try to give attention to the "practical" challenges of forgiveness, comparing our strident and often intolerable present – the present of that “enlighted”, “progressist”, democratic, religious or secular, doubly vaccinated West – and to his “bad conscience” (Emmanuel Levinas). For example, in a very practical way, can we somehow think to forgive the white policeman who knocks the black afro-american man to the ground kicking him without hesitation and without the slightest hint of regret? In similar conditions, what about the case of the woman beaten, violated and killed? People who dies in the Mediterranean instead of finding their “land of salvation”, who should they have to forgive considering the fact that nobody is to blame? Again, the one condemned to death is not only on the threshold between life and death, but also on the threshold of the forgiveness to ask (to his victims) and of the forgiveness to be granted (to his legal executioner)? Alongside the “practical” or photographic approach, relating to these “human scenes”, as well as many others not mentioned here, great attention will be given to the more theoretical and philosophical challenges that the concept of forgiveness imposes. Does forgiveness concern individuals and their personal relationships or can we also speak of forgiveness in a collective way and for collectivities? Or, according to another theoretical challenge already taken by Jacques Derrida, does forgiveness concern what is forgivable or what is unforgivable? Does it provide for a preliminary request, that is, a knowledge and a question or can it be agreed without considering the acknowledgment and conscience by the one who would like to receive it? In other words, can the request for forgiveness go beyond words or can it be formulated only with the use of the language, and specifically, with the human language? Does this mean that there is no forgiveness in silence? Even more provocatively, does this mean that an animal is not able to forgive? Does forgiveness have to deal with God, with others or with oneself? At the end or in limine, but certainly at the limit, on the threshold just entered and immediately interrupted by this proposal, can the dead forgive?