which was introduced in the opening pages of this book, this chapter theorizes a world-centric, “caring forgiveness” devoted to the maintenance, reparation, and preservation of the human relationships that comprise the public realm of the political. Whereas chapter one reveals the conceptual boundaries identified by a Derridean deconstruction of forgiveness, this chapter employs Arendt’s body of thought to confront the aporetic, binary relationships that give rise to the undecidability of (un)forgivable transgressions, the (un)conditionality of enacting forgiveness, and to demonstrate how a “pure” practice of forgiveness demands a form of power which is simultaneously unconditional and without sovereignty. Although Arendt does not explore forgiveness in terms of a Derridean deconstruction, I contend that it is with her body of thought, and through the prism of public care, that it becomes possible to consider these paradoxes anew, effectively re-thinking the unthinkable—at least as it pertains to the act of forgiving.
In the third chapter of this book, cosmopolitanism is considered in terms of an Arendtian conceptualization of care and a Derridean understanding of cosmopolitan hospitality. Appropriating aspects of Arendt’s understanding of political action, and Derrida’s conceptualization of universal, cosmopolitan hospitality, I construct a world-centric theory of radically welcoming the narrative voice of the (unknown) Other: a caring cosmopolitanism. A caring cosmopolitanism is an ethico-political form of cosmopolitan theory guided by the idea of caring for the worldly space of political action that emerges when a plurality of people speak and act together in the public realm. More specifically, this Arendtian-inspired conception of cosmopolitanism is concerned with the narrative nature of the political interactions that occur in these public spaces. In this sense, cosmopolitan care refers to a form of public practice that cares for the storied realm of political action. This discussion illustrates how caring for the world can be understood in terms of acting hospitably to the (unknown) Other, offering new insights into the ways in which we think about caring for the most human aspect of human beings: an individual’s voice.
In the final chapter of this book’s effort to read Arendt and Derrida’s work together for the purpose of constructing a world-centric theory of public care, I use these two thinkers’ respective understandings of temporality to reconsider the paradoxicality of humankind’s being-ness in time and to theorize the type of temporal orientation needed to negotiate the ever-transitory, never fully present moment of the “now.” Although time and temporality may—on first glance—seem an odd topic on which to conclude a book about the notions of forgiveness and cosmopolitanism, it is my belief that that no investigation into these two forms of practice is more important. It is humankind’s being-ness in time that conditions human existence entirely and—ultimately—constrains people’s ability to act politically in the world. As a part of this book’s attempt to rethink the boundaries of the political in terms of a “caring forgiveness” and “caring cosmopolitanism,” then, its fourth chapter uses Arendt and Derrida’s unique understandings of human temporality to rethink the (n)ever-present confrontation occurring in the ever-fleeting moment of the “now,” where the forces of past and future play perpetually on all people as they attempt to “negotiate” (Derrida) the boundaries of their existence in both time and space.
NOTES
1. Megan Phelps-Roper, “I Grew Up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here’s Why I Left,” TED Talks, 2017, https://www.ted.com.
2. “Westboro Baptist Church,” Extremist Files Database (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2018). https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/westboro-baptist-church.
3. Phelps-Roper, “I Grew Up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here’s Why I Left.”
4. Though the nature and notion of “the political” has long been debated by scholars of the philosophy and politics, most especially by those working in the Anglophone world, I invoke this idea throughout this book specifically in reference to Arendt’s theory of the political. As is subsequently shown, by “the political,” I mean the worldly realm of public “action,” or the “space for politics” where freedom can be experienced and power can be (re)engendered between a plurality of persons and peoples in the mode of human togetherness. For readers interested in the concept of “the political,” I recommend James Wiley’s recent book, Politics and the Concept of the Political: The Political Imagination (New York: Routledge, 2016).
5. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), 254; Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968), 14.
6. Hannah Arendt, “The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its Political Significance,” in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 214.
7. Siobhan Kattago, “Hannah Arendt on the World,” in Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts, ed. Patrick Hayden (Durham, UK: Acumen Publishing, 2014), 52–65.
8. Arendt, The Human Condition, 52.
9. Hannah Arendt, “On the Nature of Totalitarianism: An Essay in Understanding,” in Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1994), 358.
10. Hannah Arendt, “‘What Remains? The Language Remains’: A Conversation with Günter Gaus,” in Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1994), 17.
11. See: Jacques Derrida, Without Alibi, ed. and trans. Peggy Kamuf (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 28–70. “History of the Lie” was originally a lecture given by Derrida in 1993, as part of a lecture series at The New School of Social Research. The particular lecture series was devoted to Arendt’s thinking about “the political.”
12. See, in particular: Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, eds. Simon Critchley and Richard Kearney, trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes (London: Routledge, 2001); Jacques Derrida, “To Forgive: The Unforgivable and the Imprescriptable,” in Questioning God, eds. John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley, and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 21–51.
13. Samir Haddad, “Arendt, Derrida, and the Inheritance of Forgiveness,” Philosophy Today 51, no. 4 (2007): 416.
14. For example, see: Bonnie Honig, “Declarations of Independence: Arendt and Derrida on the Problem of Founding a Republic,” The American Political Science Review 85, no. 1 (1991): 97–113; Marguerite La Caze, Wonder and Generosity: Their Role in Ethics and Politics (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2013); Marguerite La Caze, “It’s Easier to Lie If You Believe It Yourself: Derrida, Arendt, and the Modern Lie,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 13, no. 2 (2017): 193–210; James R. Martel, “Can There Be Politics Without Sovereignty? Arendt, Derrida and the Question of Sovereign Inevitability,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 6, no. 2 (2010): 153–66; Cláudia Perrone-Moisés, “Forgiveness and Crimes against Humanity: A Dialogue between Hannah Arendt and Jacques Derrida,” HannahArendt.Net: Journal for Political Thinking 2, no. 1 (2006); Andrew Schaap, “The Proto-Politics of Reconciliation: Lefort and the Aporia of Forgiveness in Arendt and Derrida,” Australian Journal of Political Science 41, no. 4 (2006): 615–30.
15. A notable exception to this claim can be found in the work of Siobhan Kattago. Underlining the political pertinence of an Arendtian notion of “care for the world” to practices of forgiveness and cosmopolitanism, Kattago gestures toward the line of thought that I have pursued throughout this book. In passing, she highlights how “Arendt’s use of the phrase amor mundi, or ‘love of the world,’ includes care, concern, and responsibility” and that
