Beyond Forgiveness

Samantha Rose Hill

“It is therefore quite significant, a structural element in the realm of human affairs, that men are unable to forgive what they cannot punish and that they are unable to punish what has turned out to be unforgivable. This is the true hallmark of those offenses, which, since Kant, we call a ‘radical evil’ and about whose nature so little is known, even to us who have been exposed to one of their rare outbursts on the public scene. All we know is that we can neither punish nor forgive such offenses and that they therefore transcend the realm of human affairs and the potentialities of human power, both of which they radically destroy wherever they make their appearance.”

— Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

Last Friday afternoon, Dylann Roof appeared in court for arraignment through a closed-circuit television, all the while flanked by law enforcement officers. The protection of the blue screen seemed a testament to the degree of his offence: murdering 9 people during a Bible study at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The scene was made more surreal for viewers who listened to the disembodied voices of the victims’ family members address Roof directly, confronting him with their suffering and pain and offering their forgiveness. The daughter of one victim, Ethel Lance, said: “I forgive you. You took something very precious from me and I will never talk to her again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.” The words of forgiveness were so remarkable even President Obama tweeted: “In the midst of darkest tragedy, the decency and goodness of the American people shines through in these families.”

[caption id="attachment_16190" align="aligncenter" width="531"] Source: Twitter[/caption]

Where does this sense of forgiveness come from? And why was it so startling to witness?

In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt’s discussion of forgiveness offers one answer. The act of forgiving allows individuals to repent for injuries, pain, and suffering caused to others. Our ability to forgive, for Arendt, hinges on the principle that we cause harm by not thinking about what we are doing. Because the outcome of action can never be wholly predicted, and because people act without thinking, there is an assumption that the outcome of an action was not intended.

But what happens when the perpetrator does know what he is doing? What about Dylann Roof? Should we forgive him?

The answer is no.

Forgiveness allows us to act anew and move forward, meeting an action with re-action, but acts of willed evil cannot be met with forgiveness. Drawing from the New Testament gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Arendt argues that we have a duty to forgive trespasses so that we are released from vengeance and so that people who harm us are released “from what they have done unknowingly.” By limiting forgiveness to relatively minor trespasses, Arendt makes an important distinction too frequently overlooked. Forgiveness is not called for in response to intentional crimes or acts of radical evil. Only when confronted with trespasses is forgiveness necessary.

Trespasses are a common, everyday occurrence. If we were to punish or avenge all trespasses, we would never act anew. Forgiveness allows us to move beyond our initial reaction to an offense, beyond the desire for revenge, beyond ‘re-acting’ against the action that caused harm in the first place. Revenge and vengeance perpetuate a chain reaction of harm that causes more of the same, whereas forgiveness “acts anew.” But Arendt also tells us that “[t]he reason for the insistence on the duty to forgive is clearly ‘for they know not what they do’ and it does not apply to the extremity of crime and willed evil . . .”

When faced with such acts of willed evil, forgiveness is not appropriate. Roof’s act was one of professed racist hatred: thought through, complete with a manifesto and will to action. Roof told investigators that he intentionally targeted the South Carolina church because it was an historic African-American church. The minimalist manifesto on his website, lastrhodesian, concludes with the ominous judgment: “I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ration [sic] of blacks to White in the country . . . Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.” He goes on to apologize for not having time to share the rest of his, what he calls “best thoughts,” and asks his readers to forgive any typos. There can be no question, whether or not he knew what he was doing.

In cases of willed evil, like that of Dylann Roof, forgiveness is not called for. Forgiveness absolves the guilty and says, “But for the grace of God we all could have done what Roof did.” Forgiveness offers solidarity with the wrongdoer based on the Christian principle that we are all sinners: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” But Arendt rejects that Christian view of forgiveness in the case of radical evil. While we may all commit transgressions based on human weakness, racist acts of willful criminality—especially acts that attack human difference—mark the criminal as nearly inhuman in his rejection of human plurality. Such acts, like Adolf Eichmann’s participation in genocide and Dylann Roof’s hate crimes, are not to be forgiven.

If forgiveness is not called for, should Roof be punished? Perhaps. But Arendt also suggests that certain radically evil acts are beyond punishment. Punishment is a response to a crime that reintegrates the criminal back into society. Once the punishment is born, the criminal again is to become a member of society. But some crimes are so horrible that no reintegration into society is possible, and the institutions we have are not designed to deal with such acts. There are times when legal punishment is unable to do what must be done, to simply expel the wrongdoer from our world, rejecting him and his act. This is why Arendt, in her judgment of Adolf Eichmann, argues that he should “hang” not according to legal precedents but in accord with free and political judgment.

[caption id="attachment_14817" align="aligncenter" width="530"] Source: Die Welt[/caption]

We cannot forgive what we cannot punish, and we are unable to punish what we cannot in the end forgive. The question is, is Roof’s act, like Eichmann’s, an act that is so evil that it is beyond both forgiveness and punishment? The answer to such a question requires a political judgment, the kind Arendt made when she condemned Eichmann to die on the final pages of her book Eichmann in Jerusalem.

In my judgment, we do not have the power to forgive or punish Roof; even sentencing Roof to the death penalty would constitute recognition of his act. His act is the kind of willed evil that “radically destroy[s]” our “potentialities of human power.” We must refuse to forgive Roof and also resist the urge to normalize his acts by punishing him within our legal system. There is no punishment equal to his crime. Thus we must ask the question: How do we confront Roof’s willed evil act of racism that terrorizes Black Americans? Absent the ability to punish and forgive, we are left with the political duty to deny Roof membership in the human community.

The forgiveness that we heard from family members is a testament to the human capacity for grace and love and to a faith in divine justice. While this act of personal, private forgiveness may restore faith in the resiliency of the human spirit during this ‘darkest tragedy,’ in cases of willed evil like the Charleston shootings, it is not necessary for us, the public, to forgive. We should resist as well mere punishment. What is needed instead is a willingness to admit the horrific nature of Roof’s crime and call for his death as a political rejection of his membership in our shared world. This judgment is not an endorsement of the death penalty, which is a punishment levied on those who commit a crime like murder. Roof did not only murder 9 people. In an act of thought-through racism and hatred, he attacked the entire black community and, in so doing, attacked the very principle of humanity that allows us to share and inhabit a common world together.

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