Violence and collective forgiveness Imprescriptible debts in the contemporary world

Abstract

This paper aims at delving further into the philosophical and historical grounds underlying the notion of collective forgiveness. Due to its hybrid nature –between the ethical and the political– of this notion, many authors have reframed it by integrating it either in the practices of legitimization of sovereignty or, on the contrary, in an ethical space incompatible with political relations. Both interpretations deny the possibility of an authentic collective forgiveness in the public sphere. Opposing them both, this paper develops different ethical and philosophical arguments to defend the suitability of resorting to political forgiveness when dealing with transitional justice.