On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness

Both essays comprise a response by Derrida to a specific solicitation or set of questions. In the case of ‘On Forgiveness’, this takes the form of a considered address to a number of queries put to Derrida by a leading French intellectual journal, Le Monde des débats (December 1999). Derrida argues that true forgiveness consists in forgiving the unforgivable: a contradiction all the more acute in this century of war crimes (from the Holocaust, to Algeria, to Kosovo) and reconciliation tribunals, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. If forgiveness forgave only the forgivable, then, Derrida claims, the very idea of forgiveness would disappear. It has to consist in the attempt to forgive the