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the link between the notions of forgiveness and gifts. The logics of both these two concepts are aporetic in nature, for they are each characterized by the paradoxicality of the unconditional and the conditional, whereby a “pure” forgiveness and a “pure” gift must be “good,”⁴⁷ or—alternatively stated—be given without conditions and be free of a sovereignty that could establish a hierarchical relation of power between the donor and donee of this gift. According to Derrida, gifts purely and truly given are a type of “goodness,” or a “giving goodness,” whose “source remains inaccessible [to both parties].”⁴⁸ Stemming from a so-called goodness that is only accessible in terms of the “hyperbolic,” gifts—and thus forgiveness—must be given entirely without condition, which is to say, their being given must defy the logic of reciprocity. Describing a gift, Derrida states:

      It must not circulate, it must not be exchanged, it must not in any case be exhausted, as a gift, by the process of exchange, by the movement of circulation of the circle in the form of return to the point of departure. If the figure of the circle is essential to economics, the gift must remain aneconomic.⁴⁹

      There can be no exchange or transactionality with regard to “pure” (for)giving, for the “goodness” of such a deed exceeds the conceptual bounds imposed by any logical and semantic conditions. Although Arendt does not theorize forgiveness in such transcendental, hyper-ethical terms, it is significant that she too emphasizes that acts of forgiveness are “aneconomic,” since it is an action that interrupts vicious cycles of violence and counterviolence. The “gift,” to foreshadow my subsequent discussion, is the new beginning that the act of forgiving instigates in both time and space.

      Closely related to his observations about the gift-like nature of unconditional forgiveness is Derrida’s third criticism of conditional “forgiveness”: its teleological character, whereby forgiving is a means of achieving some end goal. Arguing that a “pure” forgiveness must not seek any predetermined end, Derrida is critical of how—for instance—the active pursuit of a reconciled relationship between actors, and/or a national healing, directly challenges the “infinite” quality of a “pure,” unconditional forgiveness. Because forgiveness—in its “pure” form—is unending, unfathomable, and thought to exceed human capability, it cannot serve as a means to an end. Again, Arendt similarly suggests that forgiveness cannot be considered or understood in utilitarian, instrumental terms because it is directly related to her theory of freedom, which is explored in chapters 2 and 4. In an effort to illustrate how forgiveness must be non-teleological and non-utilitarian, Derrida writes:

      The language of forgiveness, at the service of determined finalities, [is] anything but pure [. . .] each time forgiveness is at the service of a finality, be it noble and spiritual (atonement or redemption, reconciliation, salvation), each time that it aims to re-establish a normality (social, national, political, psychological) by a work of mourning, by some therapy or ecology of memory, then the “forgiveness” is not pure—nor is its concept.⁵⁰

      Summarizing this point, Ernesto Verdeja suggests that as “forgiveness becomes instrumentalized, it is drained of its transformative power and simply becomes a tool in a larger political and social project.”⁵¹ Unconditional forgiveness must therefore remain a “moral action in its own right,” and it must “eschew any telos of reconciliation.”⁵² It must not aim at, according to Derrida, a “finalized” forgiveness, since such a predetermined “forgiveness” is not forgiveness at all, as it is a “political strategy or a psycho-therapeutic economy.”⁵³ Unconditional forgiveness, then, is non-instrumental and serves no end, while the predetermined purpose-driven nature of a conditional “forgiveness” is related to an “economy of reparation” that facilitates the production of some end state.⁵⁴

      Although Derrida calls into question the logistics, transactional character, and telos of a conditional “forgiveness,” he highlights that this conception is indissociable from the supernatural, unconditional understanding of it. Conditional forgiveness, which conforms to some type of predetermined, transactional process between parties, is fundamentally irreducible but nevertheless linked to the infinite, unfathomable understanding of unconditional forgiveness. Derrida argues that because unconditional forgiveness forms the essence of conditional forgiveness and because it is impossible to conceptualize pure forgiveness in human terms, the two forms of forgiveness cannot be dissociated from one another. As he states:

      The unconditional and the conditional are, certainly, absolutely heterogeneous, and this forever, on either side of a limit, but they are also indissociable. There is in the movement, in the motion of unconditional forgiveness, an inner exigency of becoming-effective, manifest, determined, and, in determining itself, bending to conditionality.⁵⁵

      Derrida argues that without its unconditional form, forgiveness is not a comprehensible concept. However, he also contends that because the actualization of a preternatural, “pure” forgiveness must assume a semantic—and therefore human—form (whether it be in the form of a spoken/written language, actions shared between parties, or some other exchange of meaning), the unconditional is inseparable from the conditional. It is impossible to think of, understand, grant or, ultimately, experience forgiveness without appealing simultaneously to both the “pure” and “impure” conceptions of this notion, even though it is only the “pure,” transcendental understanding of this idea—if such a thing exists at all—that can be truly understood as the unconditional “gift” of which he speaks.

      B. Forgiveness and the Unforgivable

      In addition to the aporetic relationship between the heterogeneous indissociability of the conditional and the unconditional, Derrida uncovers a second aporia that intersects with this initial paradox: that true forgiveness only forgives the unforgivable. In this regard, Derrida takes issue with the positions adopted by Arendt and thinkers like Vladimir Jankélévitch (1903–1985), both of whom focus on the atrocities committed during the Holocaust and both of whom affirm that the imprescriptibility of crimes committed inhibits the forgivability of such offenses. Jankélévitch famously claims that the act of “pardoning died in the death camps.”⁵⁶ He describes the atrocities of the Holocaust as “metaphysical crimes,” and he asserts that the “ontological wickedness” of the Nazis exceeded the scope of legal prescription precisely because their efforts aimed at the eradication of the “human essence or, if you will, the “hominity” of human beings in general.”⁵⁷ Like Jankélévitch, Arendt observes that when the concentration camps became “laboratories where changes in human nature [were] tested,” and when totalitarian regimes carried out the seemingly impossible task of rendering masses of people superfluous, the Nazis “discovered without knowing that there are crimes which men can neither punish nor forgive.”⁵⁸ She claims that “when the impossible was made possible it became the unpunishable, unforgivable absolute evil.”⁵⁹ Accordingly, Arendt writes:

      Men are unable to forgive what they cannot punish and that they are unable to punish what has turned out to be unforgivable [. . .] we can neither punish nor forgive such offenses and that they therefore transcend the realm of human affairs.⁶⁰

      While Arendt’s position evolved over time, as the people of the world began to develop a political and legal language, or means of talking about and responding to genocidal atrocities, the crimes of the Holocaust were, initially, impossible to forgive because they defied the possibility of human understanding and, ultimately, humankind’s power to levy punishments. For both Arendt and Jankélévitch, then, the crimes against humanity committed under the reign of totalitarian governments originally marked a boundary between what is forgivable and what is unforgivable: delineating between the realm of human affairs and the realm of the preternatural.

      Suggesting that the possibility of punishment cannot serve as the indicator of what is forgivable, Derrida takes issue with both Arendt and Jankélévitch’s positions. Derrida argues that the unforgivable character of a crime is that which, paradoxically, makes it possible to forgive. It is the unfathomable nature of unpunishable crimes that may be capable of being forgiven. In this sense, forgiveness only becomes possible at the point of the unforgivable, which—for both Arendt and Jankélévitch—are imprescriptible wrongs that

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