1

The (in)Human Condition- The politics of resentment and forgiveness in the

work of Jean Améry and Hannah Arendt

Franz Bernhardt: 140010328

I hereby certify that this dissertation, which is approximately 14,955 words in length, has been

composed by me, that it is the record of work carried out by me and that it has not been

submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. This project was conducted by me

at the University of St Andrews from May 2015 to August 2015 towards fulfilment of the

requirements of the University of St Andrews for the degree of M.Litt, under the supervision

of Professor Patrick Hayden.

Date of Submission: ……….............. Signature of Candidate: .............................

 2

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Patrick Hayden for his continued support and helpful

assistance in the process of researching and writing this dissertation. Furthermore, I would

like to thank my partner Emily for her support and patience during this long summer.
 3

Contents

1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 5

2. The concept of resentment in At the Mind's Limits .......................................................... 9

2.1 Resentment and Ressentiment: Nietzsche, Scheler and Améry....................................... 9

2.2 Disordered temporality and the "twisted sense of time"................................................ 12

2.3 Abandonment and Loneliness: the moral conflict ......................................................... 15

3. (Un)Forgiveness in The Human Condition ...................................................................... 21

3.1 The redemption from Irreversibility .............................................................................. 21

3.2 Plurality and political forgiveness ................................................................................. 25

3.3 Radical Evil and the "Unforgivable" ............................................................................. 30

4. The politics of coexistence and reconiliation ................................................................... 34

4.1 Before Forgiving- Arendt on reconciliation with the world .......................................... 34

4.2 Améry's settlement and the unreconciled past ............................................................. 38

4.3 "Fugitive reconciliation" and the risk of politics ........................................................... 41

5. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 46

6. Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 49
 4

Abstract

This dissertation concerns the extent to which resentment can constitute an instrument of

social reconciliation. In particular, it aims to investigate the nature and rationale of victims’

refusal to forgive and their fostering of resentments after crimes against humanity. To do this

it analyses Jean Améry phenomenological account of victim's resentment and the immorality

of forgiving in the context of escapist forgetfulness, as described in his essay Resentment

(1966). It compares this perspective to the concept of worldly and political forgiveness

developed by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition (1958). It argues that a more critical

understanding of forgiveness and its implications are helpful for theoretical and practical

reasons. Theoretically, it reveals important tensions in Arendt’s writing. Practically it

highlights the importance of developing new modes of reconciliation in the field of

transitional justice. The dissertation concludes that critical engagement with resentment as a

instrument for reconciliation between antagonistic groups can be an effective catalyst for such

an endeavor.
 5

1. Introduction

"This is a remarkable century which opened with the Revolution and ended with the Affaire!

Perhaps it will be called the century of rubbish" (Roger Martin Du Gard)

Whoever begins Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism is confronted by this

statement, on the title page of the first chapter on anti-Semitism. If the nineteenth century was

the ‘century of rubbish’, there is little doubt that the twentieth will be referred to as the

century of catastrophes and violence. This insight has so often been emphasized it has

become "quite nearly platitudinous" (Hirsch 2011: 166). The long list of brutal excesses in

post-Shoa history incontrovertibly highlights the prevalence of catastrophic violence in the

contemporary world. Therefore, subsequent questions on how to deal and reconcile with it

were, and still are, on the agenda of political theory. Hirsch has remarked that: "one might

rightly argue that much of Arendt's oeuvre was composed in an effort to reflect on what

political responsibility, freedom and judgment mean after the terror and reign of catastrophe"

(2012: 2). Moreover, since Arendt, the concept of forgiveness has gained prominence as the

basis according to which theories of transitional justice are based and political reconciliation

is negotiated in the aftermath of violence.

Levy and Sznaider have argued that most current debates about forgiveness start from a

central and unquestioned assumption: that the notion of forgiveness is the morally superior

sentiment, while the notion of resentment is understood to be archaic, as perpetuating further

revenge and renewed cycles of violence (2006: 83). The concepts of forgiveness and

resentment have predominantly been articulated as dichotomies, with a clear philosophical

bias towards the former. Indeed, the prevailing trend has been to view forgiveness as the main

driving force towards social reconciliation, while downplaying the issue of resentment or

treating it with "symptomatic unease" (Zolkos 2007: 25).

 6

The aim of this dissertation is therefore to examine more closely the nature and justifications

of victim's refusal to forgive and preserve resentments after crimes against humanity. As

Brudholm has pointed out, a collection of essays first published in 1966 under the title Beyond

Guilt and Atonement (English translation At the Mind's Limits) by Jean Améry, a surviving

victim of the Nazi-genocide, constitutes a "nearly unmatched moral defense of the victim's

harboring of resentment and resistance to social pressures to forgive and forget" (2006: 8).

This dissertation will therefore investigate to what extent both Améry's phenomenological

description of the conditio inhumana of the Nazi-victim, and his particular account of "being-

in-resentment", challenge the theoretical underpinnings of the human faculty of forgiveness as

understood by Arendt in The Human Condition (1958). This is important for two principal

reasons. Firstly, the faculty of forgiveness is central for Arendt's depiction of the dual

character of action, which is understood to be both unpredictable and irreversible.

Consequently, this dissertation argues that more critical investigations of forgiveness and its

implications can bring to light important tensions at the heart of Arendt's work. Secondly,

analyzing Améry's thoughts on resentment is helpful for understand more clearly the

qualifications and limitations Arendt places on forgiveness. While her description of radical

evil within The Human Condition remains rather short, the engagement with the

“unforgivable" later led her to revise her notion of evil and reflect on the incompatibilities of

law and justice in Eichmann in Jerusalem (Weigel and Kyburz 2002: 322).

In this way, reading Arendt reveals important conceptual problems for current theories of

political reconciliation (Levy and Snzaider 2006: 85). In order to understand what constitutes

the "unforgivable" and what its political implications are, it is therefore appropriate to begin

by grasping the philosophical account of victim's resentment as the explicit 'refusal to

forgive'. In recognition of the fact that Améry is explicitly concerned with the "subjective

state of the victim" (1999: 64) and committed to philosophical reflection which is strictly tied
 7

to concrete and experienced reality (Scheit in Brudholm 2008: 70), this dissertation will adopt

a phenomenological approach in its theoretical investigation of both resentment and

forgiveness. This is appropriate in light of Arendt’s similar belief that there is no thought

process possible “without personal experience” (in Baer 2003: 19).

In order to develop these arguments, the first part of this dissertation will concern itself with

Améry's examination of the subjective state of the victim, with a particular focus on the essay

"Resentments" in At the Mind's Limits (1999). Indeed, his conceptualization provides a unique

account of victim's resentment that is "neither a matter of revenge [...] nor of problematic

atonement" (1999: 77). Such a notion stands in clear opposition to the dominant philosophical

accounts that shaped our current understanding of resentment, namely the portrayal of the

loathsome and pathological "man of ressentiment" that Nietzsche provided in his On the

Genealogy of Morals (1967), and which Scheler echoes in Ressentiment (2010). After

positioning and assessing Améry's writing in relation to these accounts and the wider

literature on resentment, this dissertation will examine two important dimensions of the

conditio inhuman of the surviving Nazi victim. The first one will be identified as a dimension

of disordered temporality and "twisted time-sense" (Améry 1999: 68). The second one will

focus on the extreme sense of abandonment and loneliness, the inability of the victim of terror

and oppression to "feel at home in the world" (Améry 1999: 40).

Subsequently, the second chapter will start by assessing how the disordered temporality and

'twisted time-sense' of the victim affect the theoretical basis of Arendt's notion of forgiveness

in The Human Condition, as she "sharply perceives the bi-directional attitude on the time axis

of human action" (Heyd 2004: 197). Indeed, for Arendt, forgiving "serves to undo the deeds

of the past" and constitutes the "possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility"

(1958: 237). Thus, the chapter will focus on Améry's desire for a "regression into the past and
 8

nullification of what happened" (1999: 68), and his impossible demand to turn time back.

Furthermore, it will investigate how the acute sense of abandonment and inability to "feel at

home in the world" (Améry 1999: 40) might undermine the human faculty of forgiveness.

This is important because, for Arendt, the capacity to forgive depends “on plurality, on the

presence and acting of others" (1958: 237). It is therefore necessary to investigate how such a

theoretical concept for political forgiveness can hold up when victims no longer feel at home

in the world. With regard to that, it will be possible to analyze the understanding of radical

evil as the deeds which can neither be punished nor forgiven in more detail.

Finally, the third chapter examines how these theoretical considerations on both resentment

and forgiveness might play out in the political realm. This is important because, as both Levy

and Snzaider have argued, Arendt's reflection on the nature of radical evil "poses a huge

conceptual problem for theorists and activists of reconciliation" (2006: 85). In this context,

the chapter will investigate the relation between Arendt's accounts of forgiveness and

reconciliation in her Denktagebuch, as it sheds light on the difficulties in coming to terms

with evil in Eichmann in Jerusalem. The chapter then focuses on Améry's demand for a

shared relationship with the past through a moralization of the perpetrator's sense of time. In

doing so, it investigates the extent to which such a notion can be more than a struggle for

personal dignity, in the Arendtian understanding of political action. Consequently, with regard

to this, the manner in which Améry's and Arendt's positions relate to contemporary accounts

in the literature on reconciliation and transitional justice, such as Schaap's concept of the 'risk

of politics', is examined. Ultimately, the chapter argues that Wolin's notion of fugitive

democracy may provide a useful alternative perspective on the politics of reconciliation as an

"experimental temporal struggle" (Hirsch 2011: 181).

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2. The concept of resentment in At the Mind's Limits

The purpose of this chapter is to critically assess Améry's phenomenological examination,

clarification and justification of his resentments as a victim and survivor of Nazism, focusing

primarily on the essay entitled "Resentments" in At the Mind's Limits. To do so, the chapter

begins by investigating the relation between the concepts of resentment and ressentiment, and

how their contemporary meanings in moral philosophy have been shaped by dominant

accounts such as Nietzsche's in On the Genealogy of Morals. With regard to these distinct

meanings, the main body of the chapter will then outline two important dimensions of

Améry's unique concept of victim’s resentment: the notion of disordered temporality and

‘twisted time-sense’, and an extreme sense of abandonment and loneliness, which are

understood to be existential determinants of the conditio inhumana. Subsequently, the

conclusion explains how these dimensions can provide us with important theoretical tools

with which to further investigate the human faculties of forgiveness and reconciliation.

2.1 Resentment and Ressentiment: Nietzsche, Scheler and Améry

After twenty years of silence, the Holocaust survivor and author Jean Améry wrote a

collection of essays on the conditio inhumana of surviving victims of the Shoa, which was

first published in 1966 under the title Beyond Guilt and Atonement (Brudholm 2006: 7).

During this period, other intellectuals such as Arendt had become aware of widespread

discord concerning swift reconciliation in Germany, which revealed for her the degree to

which "systematic mendacity" and "self-deception" had been internalized by the general

population (in Brudholm and Rosoux 2009: 33). It was in such a climate that Améry felt that

victims of Nazism were increasingly being blamed for their perceived "enduring resentment

and a vengeful desire for retribution" (Wood 1998: 259). This becomes clear in the opening

pages of his essay, when he identifies both the subject matter and task at hand:
 10

The people of whom I am speaking and whom I am addressing here show muted
understanding for my retrospective grudge. But I myself do not entirely understand this
grudge, not yet; and that is why I would like to become clear about in this essay…I speak as a
victim and examine my resentments (Améry 1999: 63).

While, at first, the project seems simply concerned with the examination and clarification of

his resentments, Améry radicalizes his task one page later, when he declares that:

What matters to me is the description of the subjective state of the victim. What I can
contribute is the analysis of the resentments, gained from introspection. My personal task is to
justify a psychic condition that has been condemned by moralists and psychologists alike. The
former regard it as a taint, the latter as a kind of sickness (1999: 64).

Thus, Amery’s intention to first undertake a clarification, and then an explicit justification of

resentment becomes clear. Analyzing Améry’s twin aims therefore requires adopting a

phenomenological approach. Indeed, interpretative approaches, which draw on

phenomenological philosophies, seek to understand the meanings people attach to social

action (Bevir and Rhodes 2002: 132) and are therefore more appropriate for analyzing

Améry’s resentment than mere descriptive accounts.

According to Brudholm, the concept of resentment has a distinct meaning in the philosophy of

morality, where resentment proper is seen as a legitimate and sometimes valuable form of

anger that responds to perceived moral wrongs (2006: 12). Moreover, theorists such as

Murphy have pointed out that: "resentment stands as an emotional testimony that we care

about ourselves and our rights" (2003: 19). This is emphasized by other contemporary

philosophers who argue that resentment can play a valuable social-ethical role (Brudholm

2008: 10). For example, Wallace stated that through expressing resentment "we are not just

venting feelings of anger and hatred, in the service of an antecedent desire to inflict harm for

its own sake; we are demonstrating our commitment to certain moral standards, as regulative

of social life" (1994: 69).

 11

However, the question remains: why has resentment been so condemned, if it is such an

important regulative emotion for social life? For Brudholm, the reason why the term

"resentment" continues to be ambiguous lies in its the relation with ressentiment (2008: 11).

The dominant understanding of the concept of ressentiment derives from the account

Nietzsche provided in his On the Genealogy of Morals, where he argues that: "the man of

ressentiment is neither upright nor naive nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul

squints, his spirit loves hiding places" (1967: 914). The man of ressentiment is pictured here

as loathsome and pathological, his condition is understood to be self-poisoning and deceitful

(Brudholm 2008: 13). Other influential accounts, such as Scheler's Ressentiment, built on

these assumptions when he states that "Ressentiment is a self-poising of the mind" which is

caused by the repression of certain emotions, most importantly "revenge, hatred, malice,

envy, the impulse to detract and spite" (2010: 25).

While it seems that the categories of resentment and ressentiment are often conflated, it is

necessary to distance the two in order to fully capture the particularities of resentment. This is

because resentment proper may be a morally defendable condition, whereas the moral worth

of ressentiment may not be (Brudholm 2008: 12). Indeed, part of Améry's clarification

process includes pointing out against whom his examination is directed:

Thus I must delimit our resentments on two sides and shield them against two explications:
that of Nietzsche, who morally condemned resentment and that of modern psychology, which
is able to picture it only as a disturbing conflict (1999: 68).

However, reading Améry poses a semantic problem. Brudholm points out that, in the original

German text, Améry uses the word ressentiment when talking about his victim condition

(2008: 12). It is only in the English translation that the term 'resentment' is substituted.

Nevertheless, translating the concept as the core of Améry's discussion as 'resentment', and

thus marking the difference with the Nietzschean ressentiment remains justified because
 12

Améry explicitly emphasizes that what he is concerned with is a "special kind of resentment,

of which neither Nietzsche nor Max Scheler [...] was able to have any notion" (1999: 71).

Consequently, other theorists such as Hirsch have argued that by conceptualizing a particular

victim's resentment, Améry wants to distance an "unabashed ethics of anger from the

debilitating and malevolent paralysis of ressentiment" (2012: 12).

2.2 Disordered temporality and the "twisted sense of time"

After clarifying the purpose of his essayistic investigation, Améry starts to reflect on his

condition of 'being-in-resentment' which, according to Brudholm, is an aspect of the conditio

inhumana: the state of being which the survivor has to endure (2006: 20). One of the most

significant sections of the essay states that:

Resentment is not only an unnatural but also a logically inconsistent condition. It nails every
one of us onto the cross of his ruined past. Absurdly, it demands that the irreversible be turned
around, that the event be undone. Resentment blocks the exit to the genuine human
dimension, the future. I know that the time-sense of the person trapped in resentment is
twisted around, dis-ordered, if you wish, for it desires two impossible things: regression into
the past and nullification of what happened [...] In any event, for this reason the man of
resentment cannot join in the unisonous peace chorus around him, which cheerfully proposes:
not backward let us look but forward, to a better, common future (Améry 1999: 68-69).

This description of the victim's condition as 'being-in-resentment' seems to suggest a

deterministic nature: this condition is a "violent occupation" of the will and the time-sense of

the person; it nails the victim to the past and twists or dis-orders the time-sense of the

survivor who is trapped (Brudholm 2008: 105). However, Améry's resentments are not just

something which he suffers from, but also something he will later embrace and to which he

grant the character of a deliberative moral response, as the moral anatomy of this

"appropriation" is slowly revealed throughout the essay (Brudholm 2008: 101). First,

however, Améry suggests that, when the victim is trapped in resentment, the passing of time

does not lead to the healing or diminishing of anguish, which becomes clear through the way
 13

the "natural" and the "twisted” sense of time conflict (Brudholm 2008: 106). Sebald describes

how the experience of terror dislocates time and breaks the chronological thread, how the

"only fixed points are traumatic scenes recurring with a painful clarity of memory and vision"

(2003: 150). Nevertheless, Améry acknowledges the common perception that: "What will be

tomorrow is more valuable that what was yesterday. That is how the natural feeling of time

will have it" (1999: 76). While the man of resentment desires regression into the past, the

person with the natural sense of time looks towards the future; and while the man of

resentment demands that the irreversible be turned around, the person with the natural time

sense will accept that what has happened cannot be changed (Brudholm 2008: 106).

In this context, the term healing becomes a central metaphor – likening forgiveness to a

fundamental physiological process capturing the natural aspect of the direction of biological

and social movement oriented towards the future (Heyd 2004: 191). Indeed, Améry connects

the natural sense of time to biological and social time: "Natural consciousness of time actually

is rooted in the physiological process of wound-healing and became part of the social

conception of reality" (1999: 72). However, the natural sense of time entails that the passing

of time will eventually weaken the legitimacy of resentment (Brudholm 2008: 106).

Therefore, the victim's resentment is also meant to be a protest against a consciousness of

time based on the "physiology of wound-healing" (Wood 1998: 259). This is because this

social conception of temporality negates the victim's experience of how "time's passage

mediated his or her perceptions of the injury suffered" (Wood 1998: 260). Indeed, Améry

transforms resentment into a radical protest against the social communities' dominant

perception of time and their notions of healing, moving on, or "letting bygones be bygones"

(Sebald in Zolkos 2010: 22). In particular, this subversion of the dominant imagery of time

takes place through the dialectical force of two dynamics: Améry's impossible desire for the

malleability of time and the acknowledgement of its irreversibility (Zolkos 2007: 29).
 14

This perspective is important because it allows us to see why the victim is feeling trapped in

'being-in-resentment', why he cannot join the chorus around him suggesting to look towards

the future – it points to the compelling force of an absurd demand "that the irreversible be

turned around, that the event be undone" (Améry in Brudholm 2008: 108). The sense of time

and temporality is twisted out of a desire for two impossible things: "regression into the past

and nullification of what happened" (Améry 1999: 68). This entails that, if the release from

the condition of 'being-in-resentment' can only be achieved through the satisfaction of the

demand in question, one faces chronic and inescapable entrapment (Brudholm 2008: 108).

Moreover, it is interesting to note that Améry's description of the resentful victim echoes

certain aspects of Nietzsche's and Scheler's ressentiment, by describing the experience of the

victim as a presence affixed to the past, which is haunted and immobilized (Zolkos 2010: 23).

However, as Brudholm has argued, the desire and predicament of Améry's man of resentment

seems to more closely resemble Walter Benjamin's famous angel of history, who "wants to

stay back and mend what has been broken" (2008: 109). In such a context, the condition of

resentment not only keeps the past alive, but deliberately open or unfinished, as the victim

cannot accept that what happened has happened (Brudholm 2008: 109).

This poses the crucial question of whether Améry's impossible demand for a regression and

undoing of the past should be understood literally or figuratively. Indeed, when Arendt argues

in The Human Condition that "forgiving serves to undo the deeds of the past" (1958: 237), she

seems to be more concerned with the release from the effects or implications of the past event

(Brudholm 2008: 112). The extent to which Améry's concept of resentment can be read along

the lines of Arendt's undoing, or whether he is really concerned with an impossible desire,

will therefore be investigated more closely in the following chapter on forgiveness.

 15

2.3 Abandonment and Loneliness: the moral conflict

Thus, Améry refuses to accept the demanding call to 'move forward'. Furthermore, he declares

himself opposed to his contemporaries who propose to "internalize our past suffering and bear

it in emotional asceticism, as our torturers should do with their guilt" (1999: 69). This is

evident, for instance, when he states that:

It is impossible for me to accept a parallelism that would have my path run beside that of the
fellows who flogged me with a horsewhip. I do not want to become the accomplice of my
torturers; rather, I demand that the latter negate themselves and in the negation coordinate
with me. The piles of corpses that lie between them and me cannot be removed in the process
of internalization [...] but, on the contrary, through actualization [...] by actively settling the
unresolved conflict in the field of historical practice (Améry 1999: 69).

This part of the essay is of central importance, marking the transition from Améry's

description of the resentful victim and disordered temporality to his discussion of the

explicitly social aspect of resentment, namely the relationship between the victim and the

perpetrators (Brudholm 2008: 118). This is because Améry considered the context of post-war

Germany to be dominated by only a "muted understanding" of the resentment he harbored

(1999: 63). Indeed, the beginning of Améry's essay had made clear that the object of his

resentment was also Germany's post-war attitude of indifference to the past, and the

widespread sentiment that the past had already been atoned for and was hence "overcome"

(Heyd 2004: 189). Adorno investigated similar tendencies when he argued that the often-

invoked working through the past "has to this day been unsuccessful and has degenerated into

its own caricature" (1963: 98). This indicates another essential problem Améry grapples with

in his essay: the unresolved conflict between victim and perpetrator (Brudholm 2008: 118).

Moreover, Améry acknowledges that his resolute defense of resentment, as well as his

position as a victim, might be used to discredit his deliberations about potential solutions and

settlements as biased (Brudholm 2008: 120). Nonetheless, he continues to argue that: "When I
 16

stand by my resentments […] I still know that I am the captive of the moral truth of the

conflict"(Améry 1999: 69-70). For Heyd, the suggestion that the authentic voice of a victim

should be given a particular moral weight follows from the argument that important aspects of

ethical judgment are influenced by the experience of the individual making them. Heyd

understands this as a personalistic view of ethical judgment: the justified moral response to

historical evil should be determined by the mental attitude of the victims (2004: 188). Indeed,

for Améry, the moral nature of this conflict is clear: "The crimes of National Socialism had no

moral quality for the doer, who always trusted in the norm system of his Führer and his Reich

[...] Only I possessed, and still possess, the moral truth of the blows that even today roar in my

skull" (1999: 70).

Thus, for Améry, the different relations to the moral truth are of importance. While the

survivor is the only captive of the truth, the perpetrator has never experienced it and the

political community seems not concerned (Brudholm 2008: 120). In order to establish the

sense of “the” moral truth beyond that of the victim’s own perception, to establish “this”

particular wrong as an undeniable moral truth, it is necessary to keep in mind the

unprecedented nature of victimization that appeared with totalitarianism, and to which Améry,

as a victim of torture, was subjected to in particular. In this context, Scarry emphasized that

pain more than any other phenomenon carries inexpressibility and resists verbal

objectification (1985: 2). This is important because the difficulty with which a given

phenomenon can be verbally represented also influences the difficulty with which it comes to

be politically represented (Scarry 1985: 12).

Furthermore, Améry clarifies the purpose of his resentments when he states that they “are

there in order that the crime becomes a moral reality for the criminal [...] that he be swept into

the truth of his atrocity” (1999: 70). This truth of atrocity is identified by Améry as the innate
 17

sense of abandonment and loneliness he experienced in being tortured and persecuted, and

which persist into his present reality (Walker 2006: 142). As he reflects on the memories of

one of his torturers, Améry explains:

SS-man Wajs from Antwerp, a repeated murderer and an especially adroit torturer, paid with
his life. What more can my foul thirst for revenge demand? But I have searched my mind
properly; it is not a matter of revenge, nor one of atonement. The experience of persecution
was, at the very bottom, that of an extreme loneliness. At stake for me is the release from the
abandonment that has persisted from that time until today (1999: 70).

This leads the essay to another crucial point: it is neither revenge nor atonement that is at

stake for the resentful victim, but the release from abandonment. It is therefore necessary to

examine the importance Améry attaches to alienation as an intrinsic quality of victimhood

(Zolkos 2007: 31). In At the Mind's Limits, his essay entitled “Torture” describes in detail the

victim’s experience of persecution as one of extreme loneliness. Here, loneliness is depicted

as the sense of being reduced to a mere bodily existence by torture. This results in both

estrangement and an acute sense of the perpetrator as the absolute other (Zolkos 2007: 31).

Through the experience of torture, the victim loses what Améry calls “trust in the world”

(1999: 28), which includes the expectation that he will receive help and concern for injuries

suffered. This means that, when no help can be expected, the experience of the other person,

either as an instrument of torture or mere bystander, becomes an “existential consummation”

(Brudholm 2008: 124). Thus, Améry concludes that: “Whoever has succumbed to torture can

no longer feel at home in the world […] That one’s fellow man was experienced as the

antiman remains in the tortured person as accumulated horror” (1999: 40).

This argument is supported by the fact that, for Améry, the experiences of loneliness and

abandonment are as much about the indifference and passivity of the bystanders as they are

about the torturers themselves (Brudholm 2008: 125). His resentment also emphasizes the

moral failure of responsible parties and communities of judgment, from which he, as a victim,
 18

“expects and demands affirmation and defense of the reality and depth of his injury” (Walker

2006: 141). Walker has argued that what Améry protests against in his essays is not the

inexorability of time or the natural healing of wounds as such, but the failure of fellow human

beings – past perpetrators and a judging community – to “revolt” in light of massive atrocities

against such an inexorable process (2006: 141). Therefore, it is this failure that creates "the

loneliness of the person whose normative expectations of interhuman solidarity and care are

most radically disrupted" (Brudholm 2008: 125).

This helps explain Améry’s articulation of why he does not want to let go of his resentments.

He wants to use them to force both perpetrators and bystanders to face the moral reality of

their atrocities. In so doing, he hopes to initiate a moral “conversion” that would release him

from his existence in the described condition of abandonment (Brudholm 2008: 125). Améry

imagines the conditions of possibility for such release:

When SS-man Wajs stood before his firing squad, he experienced the moral truth of his
crimes. At that moment, he was with me- and I was no longer alone […] I would like to
believe that at the instant of his execution he wanted exactly as much as I to turn back time, to
undo what had been done. When they led him to the place of execution, the antiman had once
again become a fellow man (1999: 70).

Wood has argued that it is not the Nietzschean ressentiment which best grasps the nature of

Améry's reaction when he heard of his torturer's fate, but rather the brief respite he

experiences in his own memory of acute abandonment (1998: 260). The desire for revenge or

imposition of suffering on others is absent in the notion of resentment defended by Améry –

he does "not want a fellow sufferer but a fellow man" (Brudholm 2008: 126). This explains

why Améry demanded that the torturers "negate themselves and in the negation coordinate

with me “(1999: 69). Indeed, with such an enactment, two moral transformations would be

made possible: the rehabilitation of the perpetrator into a fellow man, and the release of the

victim from abandonment (Brudholm 2008: 126). However, Améry makes clear that the
 19

moral conversion is not reduced to SS-man Wajs, but that he, as a victim, faces an "entire

inverted pyramid" of SS men, helpers and officials that "is still driving me with its point into

the ground" (1999: 70-71). The problem is social and persistent, and Améry considers how to

reach "a settlement in the field of historical practice" (1999: 77). Nevertheless, the application

of this moral encounter on the collective level is of a political nature, and will therefore be

investigated in more detail in the chapter on political reconciliation and coexistence.

In conclusion, Améry arguably conceptualizes a unique notion of resentment that has little to

do with the pathological and self-poisoning "man of ressentiment" that Nietzsche and Scheler

had imagined. While Améry's phenomenological exercise reflects also his personal stake in

the conflict, his resentments concern far more than simply personal injury and traumatic self-

preoccupation (Brudholm 2006: 15). His victim's resentment constitutes a radical protest,

which is concerned with the restoration of a human community and shared common world

that had been destroyed through the atrocities committed under Nazism. Consequently, the

concern for restoring lost trust in the world makes this account a useful starting point for

critical investigation of Arendt's notions of forgiveness and reconciliation. Indeed, this

chapter has shown that two dimensions are central for Améry' victim condition: the problem

of disordered temporality, and an acute sense of abandonment and loneliness that precludes

his ability to "feel at home in the world" (1999: 40). However, it has also deliberately left

open the question of the extent to which Améry's impossible demand for a regression into the

past should be understood literally or figuratively. The subsequent chapter will therefore

investigate the extent to which Améry's concept of resentment can be read along the lines of

Arendt's forgiveness as 'undoing', or whether he is really concerned with an impossible desire.

With regard to this, it is also necessary to examine the effects the sense of abandonment can

have on concepts of political forgiveness. The end of this chapter posits that Améry is highly

concerned with potential solutions and settlements for this problem on a collective level.
 20

Moreover, Arendt made clear in her Denktagebuch that being properly at home in the world

requires being reconciled with it as it is, and with the people that inhabit it (1950: 4). The

question now therefore concerns the extent to which Arendt and Améry’s approaches are

similar or different as they both endeavor to achieve such a human goal.

 21

3. (Un)Forgiveness in The Human Condition

This chapter will investigate the extent to which Améry's notion of a particular victim's

resentment challenges the theoretical underpinnings of the human faculty of forgiveness,

which Arendt had conceptualized in The Human Condition. To do so, the chapter begins by

assessing how the disordered sense of temporality and time affects the theoretical basis of

Arendt's concept of forgiveness. In particular, it problematizes her assertion that forgiveness

"serves to undo the deeds of the past" and constitutes the "redemption from the predicament

of irreversibility" (1958: 237). Thus, the first part of the chapter focuses on Améry's desire for

a "regression into the past and nullification of what happened" (1999: 68), and whether this

notion is more concerned with a release from the effects and implications of the past event, or

with a genuine impossible demand to turn time back. Then, the chapter analyses the effects

the sense of abandonment and loneliness can have on forgiveness, since Arendt considers the

former to depend "on plurality, on the presence and acting of others" (1958: 237). With this in

mind, it is necessary to assess how political forgiveness can hold up when the condition of the

victim precludes the ability to "feel at home in the world" (Améry 1999: 40). The last part of

this chapter will confront this analysis to Arendt's identification of radical evil as offences that

can "neither be punished nor forgiven" (1958: 241).

3.1 The redemption from Irreversibility

In The Human Condition, Arendt designated labor, work and action as three fundamental

activities that constitute the vita activa, as they are correspond to basic conditions under

"which life has been given to man" (1958: 7). However, it is the capacity for action in

particular that "goes on directly between man without the intermediary of things or matter",

and corresponds more closely to the human condition of plurality (Arendt 1958: 7). While all

aspects of the human condition are somehow related to politics, action and plurality are for
 22

Arendt the conditions of political life (1958: 7). Ricoeur identifies the frailty of human affairs

as a new temporal condition that is introduced with political action, after the futility of life and

the durability of the man-made world (1983: 67). This frailty of human affairs arises from the

more general human condition of natality, in the sense that something new is always done that

unsettles any stable existence (La Caze 2014: 209). Furthermore, human action always enters

a web of relationships and intentions "where every reaction becomes a chain reaction and

where every action is the cause of new processes" (Arendt in Walker 2006: 151).

These implications point to an essential aspect of Arendt's account of action and political life:

with the activity of action, the two fundamental problems of irreversibility and

unpredictability arise, which are addressed through the human faculties of forgiving and

promising (La Caze 2014: 209). Indeed, Arendt states that: "The possible redemption from the

predicament of irreversibility – of being unable to undo what one has done though one did

not, and could not, have known what he was doing – is the faculty of forgiving" (1958: 237).

Forgiveness is therefore understood as the faculty of undoing, or reversing, deeds and words

that have been done or spoken, which makes it the "necessary corrective for the inevitable

damages resulting from action" (Young-Bruehl 2006: 96). Young-Bruehl argues that as a

potentiality of action itself, forgiveness arises out of action to address the predicament of

irreversibility within action, the impossibility of actually undoing deeds once they have been

initiated (2006: 96). The action of forgiveness alone can release us from the "boundlessness"

of another action, the chain of reactions that cannot be controlled or stopped (Arendt 1958:

190). Through the fact that forgiving releases us from the consequences of our mistakes, and

promising binds us to others and the future, these faculties "save the human condition from

destruction from within through action" (La Caze 2014: 210).

 23

Arendt develops this argument further when she states that "forgiving serves to undo the

deeds of the past" (1958: 237). In this context, Pettigrove points out that "undoing" in the

strict sense is precisely what forgiving cannot do, as the offence cannot be removed from the

realm of social facts, and forgiveness itself necessary presupposes the wrongdoing (2006:

484). That is because, every time forgiveness is offered, the original transgression is invoked

and remembered. However, for Pettigrove the real distinctiveness of forgiveness is based on

the fact that it is not even a consequence of the initial wrongdoing, as unlike revenge, it is not

merely a re-action to the transgression (2006: 484). This becomes clear when Arendt argues:

Forgiving, in other words, is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts
anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore
freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven
(1998: 241).

Forgiving therefore provides an undoing in several ways: it moves outside the domain of

natural consequences of the original wrongdoing and sets it aside, making it a thing of the past

rather than something that is consistently present (Pettigrove 2006: 485). Thus, it reinterprets

the perpetrator in light of present and future possibilities rather than in terms of the past. This

serves to create opportunities for new actions which are not determined by the misdeed

(Pettigrove 2006: 485). Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that the term releasing is

better for Arendt's purposes than undoing, as it does not suggest that the wrong is forgotten or

dissolved, it rather implies being unbound from the past in order to go on (Young-Bruehl

2006: 100). Arendt identifies the importance of this when she states: "Only through this

constant mutual release from what they do can men remain free agents" (1958: 240).

This notion echoes Améry's victim resentment and the twisted time-sense, as it "desires two

impossible things: regression into the past and nullification of what happened" (1999: 68).

When Arendt argues for an undoing, she does not grant the forgiver the power to suspend the
 24

predicament of irreversibility, nor does she attribute a desire for this "kind of absurd moral

intervention in history" (Brudholm 2008: 112). Instead, nullification of the deed, or undoing,

refers to release oneself and others from the effects and implications of the past event

(Brudholm 2008: 112). Ricoeur makes a similar argument when he identifies the power of

forgiveness lies in its capacity to "[shatter] the law of the irreversibility of time by changing

the past, not as a record of all that happened but in terms of the meaning for us today" (1996:

10). In that sense, the "shattering" of irreversibility is primarily about the significance of the

past deed, which means that philosophers have spoken rather figuratively about "undoing" the

past (Ricoeur in Brudholm 2008: 112).

The wish for a turning back of time and undoing would then, in a figurative interpretation of

Améry's disordered time-sense, mean that he is more concerned with an overcoming of the

negative legacy of the past for the present. This would be neither ontologically absurd nor

impossible (Brudholm 2008: 112). However, Améry was clear about his concern with an

"absurd" demand and desires which are "impossible" to fulfill. Furthermore, this more offers a

more convincing explanation of why the resentful victim feels "trapped" (1999: 68). While it

might be impossible to satisfy the demand, the desire that what happened had not happened is

for Brudholm "eminently human and testimony to a moral capability to revolt against what

should have never been" (2008: 112). He argues for a literal interpretation of Améry's

description: the demand he puts forward is absurd. While the desire in question is also about

an overcoming of the unbearable past, the problem is that a genuine reconciliation, one that

would satisfy the terms set by the victim's resentment, would require an absurd and

impossible undoing (Brudholm 2008: 112). Moreover, one could argue that the very response

of an absurd demand mirrors the fact that what did happen is also absurd. This sense of

absurdity and rebellion is reminiscent of Arendt’s world-alienation as well as Camus’s

account of modernity in which “the divorce between man and his life, the actor and his
 25

setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity” (in Issac 1992: 92). Indeed, Améry states in the

foreword to his book that:

What happened, happened. But that it happened cannot be so easily accepted. I rebel:
against my past, against history, and against a present that places the incomprehensible
in the cold storage of history and thus falsifies it in a revolting way (1999: xi).

3.2 Plurality and political forgiveness

The relation between Améry's being-in-resentment and the problem of reconciling with the

past shows again that he is concerned with both a temporal and an intersubjective dimension

of the victim condition. It is therefore important to avoid the notion that Améry's resentment

is "only about either the original atrocities or about the ongoing lack of acknowledgement and

accountability" (Brudholm 2008: 114). Améry resents what happened, but also a variety of

people and groups for having forgotten, forgiven or accepted far too quickly that it happened

(Brudholm 2008: 113). Here it is important to emphasize that a possible pacification of

Améry's resentment cannot be achieved through forgiveness. Indeed, he explicitly indicates

that "forgiving and forgetting induced by social pressure is immoral" (1999: 72). What should

be met with moral resistance, under the given historical circumstances, should be the social

pressure on the victims to forgive, forget or accept what happened because it is “already-

being-long-past” (Améry in Brudholm 2008: 128). Améry’s main question behind the critique

of the moral superiority of the forgiving victim concerns what kind of person would be able

and willing to forgive in the given context, under “circumstances of massive impunity and

escapist forgetfulness?” (Brudholm 2008: 128). Indeed, both Améry and Arendt understand

forgiveness to be conditional, related to clear limitations and qualifications, which are not

necessarily fulfilled in the socio-historical context of their writing.

 26

The first of these qualifications, which Arendt identifies for the human faculty of forgiveness,

is the dependence "on plurality, on the presence and acting of others" (1958: 237). In The

Human Condition, Arendt develops a conception of forgiveness that is secular and political,

focusing on the potential to initiate new beginnings that can be of advantage in political life

(La Caze 2014: 211). La Caze argued that, while personal forgiveness is normally understood

to involve some change of mind and depth of sincerity, political forgiveness as Arendt

imagines it does not rely on a particular state of mind of the person being forgiven (2014:

211). Forgiveness is not a moral sentiment, but part of politics and justice, and should

therefore be de-privatized and made public (Levy and Sznaider 2006: 86). For Arendt, one

does not forgive a deed but the doer. Indeed, it is an affair "in which what was done is

forgiven for the sake of who did it" (1958: 241). Consequently, she understands forgiveness as

an action and a type of relationship, as an expression of the human condition of plurality

(Young-Bruehl 2006: 97). This is because Arendt focuses on "trespasses" as actions that

might be forgiven, suggesting that forgiveness is appropriate for wrongs that have been

committed unknowingly, or without an awareness of how wrong the deed was (La Caze 2014:

211). With regard to this, Arendt claimed that "crime and willed evil are rare" (1958: 240),

and that most wrong actions will be deserving of forgiveness. These wrongs and their

boundless consequences are part of the irreversibility of human life, and Arendt's focus is on

the role of these wrongs in politics and possible political responses to them (La Caze 2014:

211).

Furthermore, Arendt argues that: "The moral code, on the other hand, inferred from the

faculties of forgiving and making promises, rests on experiences which nobody could ever

have with himself" (1958: 238). This points towards the importance of plurality for the human

faculty of forgiveness. Indeed, Walker identifies three features that are assumed to be

"essential marks of forgiveness" in philosophical discussions and debates: the overcoming of

 27

resentment, setting a wrong to rest in the past, and the restoration of relationships (2006: 153).

The damage forgiveness tries to work through is that one was being treated wrongly, which

means also a "failure in moral relationship" (Walker 2006: 162). This position focuses on

moral repair, where forgiveness is seen as reparative when it revives trust in the viability of

moral relations, which means to restore for the victim a "sense of equilibrium in acting as a

moral agent" (Walker 2006: 165). Walker therefore emphasizes the importance of a

community of moral support for forgiveness to be possible:

One need to be able to trust other people, and one needs to be able to trust oneself in
making judgements about the condition of moral relationship...and about when others,
including the offender, are or are not trustworthy (2006: 167).

However, Arendt argued that forgiveness is of political and not of sentimental nature, through

which she positions herself against authenticity (Levy and Sznaider 2006: 85). Political

forgiveness should be based on respect rather than love, as it enables space between people

and is not dependent on qualities that we esteem or admire (La Caze 2014: 214). Arendt sees

ethical questions as distinct from the political realm. This is because, in her view they do not

concern what we share with others but rather our dialogue with ourselves in thought (La Caze

2014: 219). While her phenomenological approach does not demand that forgiving provides a

full normative justification, it nevertheless implies that, as a form of public connection,

forgiveness creates certain expectations and obligations (La Caze 2014: 219). Levy and

Sznaider have argued in this context that for Arendt it is the "moral equality between the

forgiver and the recipient of forgiveness that matters" (2006: 85). For forgiveness to be

possible, perpetrator and victim need to share a common world, as it is this living in plurality

that conditions politics in the first place. This leads Arendt to identify an essential limitation

and qualification for the human faculty of forgiveness: deeds that destroy politics and
 28

plurality can neither be punished nor forgiven, and need to be excluded from the politics of

forgiveness (Levy and Sznaider 2006: 85).

This notion is of central importance to understand why Améry will not get rid of his

resentment. Améry described in detail how the experience of torture and persecution led to an

acute sense of abandonment and loneliness, and both relate to alienation as an intrinsic quality

of victimhood. Through torture, Améry experienced perpetrators and bystanders as the

absolute other. This transformed the fellow man into the anti-man and made it impossible to

"feel at home in the world" (Améry 1999: 40). These characteristics are those of a deed that

destroyed the human condition of plurality and politics, and therefore cannot be forgiven in

the Arendtian sense of the term. Moreover, for Améry, the impossibility of forgiveness also

relates to the responsible parties and communities of judgment in post-war Germany, and to

their lack of insistence on the violated standards and concern for the victims of terror. The

human faculty of forgiveness does depend, as it was shown, on the condition of plurality, and

subsequently on relationships and communities were these are formed. As Brudholm has

argued, the offensive and morally untenable postwar attitudes to the Nazi past reinforced for

Améry painful memories of the original atrocities, and constituted one of the objects of his

resentment (2008: 115). This impact illustrates the profound role of what Walker

conceptualized as moral repair to the victims of terror and violence, and for the process of

forgiveness. The absence of any reassurance or support by others that would acknowledge the

violated standards, and the missing of a community of moral support where it is expected to be

(Walker 2006: 166), makes it difficult to share a common world, which is needed for the

human faculty of forgiveness.

However, Brudholm had pointed out that the essay "Resentments" is also about "the possible

transformation of the relationship between victims and survivors, on the one hand, and
 29

perpetrators, bystanders, and their descendants on the other hand" (2008: 115). Arendt noted

in her Denktagebuch that to properly be "at home in the world" means to be reconciled with

the world and the people in it (1950: 4). Moreover, Chaumont argued that, while Améry

positions himself against premature, thoughtless conciliatoriness and empty pathos of

forgiveness, he is not per se against honest reconciliation that is properly understood and

premised (in Brudholm 2008: 163). Indeed, Améry ends the foreword to the first edition of his

essay collection by stating that: "I sometimes hope that this study has met its aims; then it

could concern all those who wish to live together as fellow human beings" (1999: xiv).

While it has become clear that Améry strictly refuses to "forgive and forget" (1999: 72), there

is further interesting ground to explore on Améry's and Arendt's notion of reconciliation. For

Brudholm, it seems plausible that Améry desires, through his resentment, two different

outcomes for two different contexts. On the one hand, in relation to the Germans, Améry

desires, as Arendt does, an overcoming of the negative significance of the past for the present.

On the other hand, while in relation to the past he posits the much more radical demand that

what happened had not happened (Brudholn 2008: 114). Furthermore, the two dimensions

stand in an almost dialectical relationship. Indeed, overcoming the legacy of the past, and the

potential for a relationship between resentful victim and perpetrator to be rebuilt, rests on

whether the Germans will come to share with the victim the impossible wish to turn back time

(Brudholm 2008: 114). In how far reconciliation between victims and perpetrators can be

based on an unreconciled relation to the past will be explored in more detail in the subsequent

chapter. However, for such an investigation to be effective, it is necessary to assess Arendt's

identification of radical evil, those offenses which can "neither be punished nor forgiven"

(1958: 241). This is because these extreme deeds pose the main conceptual problems for

theorists and activists of reconciliation (Levy and Sznaider 2006: 84-85).

 30

3.3 Radical Evil and the "Unforgivable"

Young-Bruehl pointed out the fact that Arendt did not use the words forgivable and

unforgivable about offences, only about actors: for actions, she used the terms punishable and

unpunishable (2006: 101). The alternative to forgiveness, although not it’s opposite, is

punishment as a response to wrongful deeds, as both forgiveness and punishment attempt to

put an end to a process which, without interference, would be boundless and unending

(Arendt 1958: 241). In this context, Arendt states that it is a significant "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 hast turned out to be unforgivable" (1958: 241). Derrida's

famous statement that "forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable" (2001: 32) contrasts with

this perspective. It is obvious that in this formulation Arendt focuses on totalitarian crimes

against humanity, not just established criminal categories such as murder (Young-Bruehl

2006: 101). This becomes clear when she argues that unforgivability and unpunishability are

"the true hallmark of those offenses which, since Kant, we call radical evil" (Arendt 1958:

241). The point is that one can neither punish nor forgive radical evil, because these offenses

"transcend the realm of human affairs and the potentialities of human power, both of which

they radically destroy wherever they make their appearance" (Arendt 1958: 241).

Written before Eichmann in Jerusalem, her remarks in The Human Condition are categorical

about the unforgivability of radical evil. Furthermore, they leave partly unexplored the actors

or offenders who are neither trespassers, which are both forgivable and punishable, nor doers

of radical evil, both unforgivable and unpunishable (Young-Bruehl 2006: 102). Before

listening to Eichmann at the trial in Jerusalem, Arendt had written about ideologies, but had

never discussed the individual motives of the perpetrators – though she had assumed that they

had motives. Those criminal motives, or intentions to harm, were for Arendt deeply rooted
 31

and radical "to the point of being incomprehensible" (Young-Bruehl 2006: 107). Neiman has

argued hereby that: "Auschwitz stood for moral evil as other war crimes did not because it

seemed deliberate as others did not" (2002: 270).

However, after the trial Arendt concluded that Eichmann was neither a man who did not know

what he was doing, nor a man who explicitly intended to do harm, but someone who failed

altogether to grasp the meaning of what he was doing (Young-Bruehl 2006: 107). This led

Arendt to argue that it was not any particular wickedness but thoughtlessness, the inability to

judge and grasp reality, which constituted the core element of what she called the "banality of

evil" (Rensmann 2014). This is an extreme but thoughtless evil, which cannot be forgiven and

must be punished, even though that any punishment will be "incommensurable with the

extremity and the nature of the crime" (La Caze 2014: 213). Forgiveness for perpetrators like

Eichmann was not a possibility, and no reflection on the incommensurable nature of the

punishment should have kept the court from demonstrating that, as Arendt had paraphrased it,

Eichmann had violated the fundamental order of the human condition by carrying out this

new crime against humanity (Young-Bruehl 2006: 109). Digeser provides in Political

Forgiveness an similar account by arguing that wrongdoings that go beyond anything that can

be rectified fall out of the realm of political forgiveness: "Some wrongs may be so severe that

they preclude the possibility for minimally meeting the requirements for rectificatory justice

and, hence, political forgiveness" (2001: 5).

The most intuitive examples the justifiability of judgment of unforgivability concern those

wrongdoings which seems unfathomable in motivation, where cruelty and mindlessness are

extreme, or were the magnitude of the crime is devastating (Walker 2006: 187-188). These

were the kind of atrocities that Améry, as a survivor of the concentration camps, was forced to

experience. Walker has argued that with the phrase "never again", the victims expressed the
 32

sense that particular wrongdoings should set "permanent limits on the trust or hopefulness in

humanity with which human beings may in conscience comfort themselves" (2006: 189). This

is one of the core aspects Améry is articulating when he describes the “foreignness in the

world” which remains from the experience of torture (1999: 39). Experiencing the fellow-man

as the antiman “blocks the view into a world in which the principle of hope rules”, and turns

the victim into a “defenseless prisoner of fear” (Améry 1999: 40). Therefore, the phrase

“never again” can be seen as both a warning and an invitation: one must never again believe

that such unforgivable events do not happen, and instead join the victim in insisting that there

is real evil in the world (Walker 2006: 189). For Walker, the response of calling these actions

“unforgivable” is a way of saying that those who have stepped outside any recognizable moral

relationship to other human beings should be condemned to be left there, unable ever to return

(2006: 189). Indeed, as Arendt has formulated it, in cases where the deed dispossesses us of

all power, we can only repeat with Jesus: “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged

around his neck, and he cast into the sea” (1958: 241).

In conclusion, it is possible to argue that Améry's victim resentment does in fact pose some

conceptual problems for Arendt's account of secular and political forgiveness. While Arendt

sees forgiveness as the capacity to release oneself and others from the effects and

implications of the past, Améry's resentment emphasizes the impossible demand to regress

into the past and nullify what happened. However, while Améry is aware of the "logically

inconsistent condition" (1999:68), it has also become clear that his refusal to forgive is "not a

matter of atonement, nor of revenge" (1999: 70). There are aspects of Améry's essay which

indicate that he is concerned with an honest reconciliation between victims and perpetrators

through an unreconciled relation to the past. This serves to turn his resentment and the

demand for a literal undoing into the instrument for the restoration of a sense of plurality.

Moreover, Arendt's notion of forgiveness has been shown to depend on the existence of a
 33

common world and moral equality between forgiver and recipient. In his essays, Améry

described in detail how the experience of persecution led to an acute sense of abandonment, to

the experience of fellow human beings as the absolute other, making it impossible for him to

"feel at home in the world" (1999: 40). The wrongs Améry was forced to experience

destroyed the human condition of plurality and thus politics so necessary for political

forgiving. The atrocities which conditioned Améry's resentments therefore fall into Arendt's

category of radical evil, the deeds which transcend and destroy the realm of human affairs and

which "we can neither punish nor forgive" (1958: 241).

However, the question remains: how do these unforgivable crimes affect Arendt's being "at

home in the world" through reconciliation with the world and the people in it (1950:4)? The

relationship of the two discourses of reconciliation highlighted in the discussion on Améry is

of central importance here (Brudholm 2008: 116). On the one hand, to what extent can one

refuse to reconcile with the atrocities of the past, and at the same time be willing to reconcile

with the group who committed these atrocities, or with those who merely stood by? On the

other hand, is it possible to reconcile with the past as given and refuse reconciliation between

people? (Brudholm 2008: 116). Finally, in how far could Améry's resentment be a

constructive instrument to facilitate reconciliation? These questions and challenges require an

investigation of Améry's proposal for a moralization of the perpetrators' sense of time and a

settlement in the field of historical practice. It also entails discussing the extent to which his

demands can be fulfilled, and how they would potentially affect Arendt's notions of

reconciliation and forgiveness.

 34

4. The politics of coexistence and reconciliation

This chapter will examine how the notions of resentment and forgiveness affect the politics of

reconciliation and coexistence. The first part of the chapter will investigate the relation

between Arendt's accounts of forgiveness in The Human Condition and reconciliation in her

Denktagebuch. In particular, it will analyze the extent to which the similarities and differences

can shed light on the difficulties involved in coming to terms with evil in the modern world.

The second section will then critically assess Améry's demand for a shared relationship of the

past and a "settlement in the field of historical practice" (1999: 77). It also examines how such

notions can be anything more than a struggle for private dignity. It will therefore focus on

whether resentment can play a constructive role as an instrument of political reconciliation

between groups. This is because Améry is concerned with a multitude of wrongdoers, and

with the participation and passivity of an entire society (Brudholm 2008: 152). Finally, the

chapter will analyze how Améry's and Arendt's positions relate to contemporary accounts of

reconciliation and transitional justice, such as Schaap's concept of the risk of politics and

Wolin's notion of fugitive democracy, which could offer alternative politics of reconciliation

as "experimental temporal struggles" (Hirsch 2011: 181).

4.1 Before Forgiveness- Arendt on reconciliation with the world

Lavi identifies three important moments in Arendt’s writings were she contemplates the

response to human failings, and seeks to come to terms with both the crimes of human action

and the failures of human thought (2010: 230). In the first moment, which appears in her

Denktagebuch in June 1950, Arendt rejects not only revenge, but also forgiveness as the

proper response to wrongdoings. This is because both fail to ground a political community on

the basis of human equality (Lavi 2010: 230). This contrasts with the important role she

affords to forgiveness in The Human Condition. Here, in opposition to forgiveness and

 35

revenge, Arendt develops the idea of reconciliation as the appropriate response to past

wrongdoings (Berkowitz 2011). Arendt argues that forgiveness is not a worldly equality, but

an otherworldly equality that is grounded in the abstract notion that all humans share an

original common sin, and that victims could just as well have committed the acts attributed to

the perpetrator (Lavi 2010: 230). Compared to revenge and forgiveness, which are based on

the admission of equal sinfulness, reconciliation understands wrongdoings as burdens which

we have “laden upon” ourselves (Arendt 1950: 3). This notion of reconciliation does not

attempt to undo past wrongs, but acknowledges the possibility of mutual recognition that a

wrong has been committed. In turn, this might encourage “acceptance of the past as given”

(Lavi 2010: 231). This is one of the few Hegelian undertones in Arendt's account, as the

concept of reconciliation in Hegel’s political philosophy entails the acceptance and embracing

of the world as one’s home (Digeser 2001: 66). Through thankfulness for what is given, it is

possible to accept the wrongdoer and his deeds without identifying with them. Thus, the

burden remains on the perpetrator’s shoulders, rather than being lifted through forgiveness,

but the vengeful need to return the wrong with another wrong is rejected (Berkowitz 2011).

Lavi emphasized that reconciliation creates a form of worldly solidarity: for the wrongdoer,

the burden is a result of their own doing, while for the person coming to terms with the

wrong, it becomes a chosen acceptance of the past (2010: 231).

Arendt suggest that faced with a wrong, one can decide to reconcile with it, affirming one's

acceptance of the existence of a world where such a wrong took place, or to pass by, silently

allowing the wrong to exist. However, she also entertains another essential choice, which is

the possibility to deny reconciliation in the face of the irreconcilable (in Berkowitz 2011).

This is the case with radical evil- those deeds which ought not to have happened, which

cannot be reconciled with, and which one should not silently pass (Arendt 1950: 7). The crux

of the decision to reconcile or not is the judgment to affirm a common fatefulness. Indeed,
 36

acting in public is only possible when one knows how to be in the world (Berkowitz 2011).

This knowledge comes from understanding, which Arendt identified in her essay

Understanding and Politics as coming "to terms with and reconcile ourselves to reality, that

is, try to be at home in the world" (1954: 308). Through the decision to affirm participation in

a shared world, reconciliation can built political solidarity free from universal sinfulness. This

is because what is reconciled with is the world containing the "actually existing wrong"

(Arendt in Berkowitz 2011).

Arendt second attempt makes to respond to human failings appears in The Human Condition.

Here she delivers an account of worldly forgiveness as the necessary foundation for human

action (Lavi 2010: 231). Human action is both irreversible and unpredictable, which turns the

human capacity to forgive into the ontological basis for action and politics (Berkowitz 2011).

Nevertheless, Arendt writes that forgiveness "does not apply to the extremity of crime and

willed evil", and clarifies that she does not equate it with the divine act of forgiving one his

sins, but rather with mutual release that allows further acting in this world (1958: 240). Here,

Berkowitz finds a common thread between Arendt’s discussion of the forgiveness of

trespasses and her earlier discussion of reconciliation developed in her Denktagebuch (2011).

This is because, in both cases, "political action is only possible insofar as one judges whether

or not to forgive minor trespasses and reconcile oneself to wrongs" (Berkowitz 2011).

However, the question remains why Arendt focuses specifically on reconciliation in her

Denktagebuch notes from 1950, and later emphasizes forgiveness in The Human Condition.

One answer may lie in a later note in her book of thoughts, in which she writes that: “no

action is possible without mutual forgiveness, what is called reconciliation in politics [das in

der Politik Versöhnung heisst]” (Arendt 1953: 303). Kateb has argued that Arendt’s

forgiveness is one of two moral qualities that concern itself with the frailty of action, but that
 37

outside this limited function it “does not figure very much in her political theory” (2000: 142).

This suggests that forgiveness as the spontaneous and mutual release from unintended

consequences is an important capacity for human acting, but for this reason can only be of

limited value in the political activity of building a common world (Berkowitz 2011). Once

transgressions are inserted into the public realm and demand a response, forgiveness becomes

politically impotent. Similarly, while faced with a crime, reconciliation makes politics

possible by forging a new and common world (Berkowitz 2011).

Arendt’s third reflection on the failures of human action and thought, in which she seeks an

appropriate response, is her confrontation of the issue in the epilogue of Eichmann in

Jerusalem (Lavi 2010: 232). Here she argues that: “there is an abyss between the actuality of

what you did and the potentiality of what others might have done. We are concerned here only

with what you did” (Arendt 1964: 278). Written under the impression of the trial, these lines

resonate with her earlier notes in the Denktagebuch, where she stated that: “Reconciliation

reconciles itself with an actuality [Wirklichkeit] independent of all possibility [Möglichkeit]”

(Arendt 1950: 6). Berkowitz argues that the question Arendt poses in her judgment on

Eichmann is therefore one of reconciliation: should one reconcile with him and his wrongs, or

declare them irreconcilable and reject the world in which they took place? (2011). Arendt

ends her book by condemning Eichmann to be banished from this world, as no member of the

human race can be seriously expected to want to share the earth with him (1964: 279). For

Berkowitz, this is an important act of non-reconciliation, and constitutes a spontaneous and

unexpected break (2011). This is because, unlike a legal judgment that is grounded in

precedent, the decision for reconciliation or non-reconciliation has the quality of a new

beginning, making the claim to either reaffirm a common world, or to reimaging or re-form

the world so that it might remain a world we can share (Berkowitz 2011).
 38

4.2 Améry's settlement and the unreconciled past

In her reflections on Eichmann, Arendt argues for non-reconciliation when faced with such a

perpetrator, as a world that would include him and his deeds could not properly be shared or

held in common. Nevertheless, while Eichmann was a central executioner for the genocide of

the European Jewry, he could not have organized the Holocaust without what Améry called

“an entire inverted pyramid of SS-men, SS-helpers, officials, Kapos and medal-bedecked

generals” (1999: 71). For Améry, the problem is therefore social and persistent, and entails

investigating the notions of reconciliation or non-reconciliation in relation to the thousands of

perpetrators and bystanders who were directly or indirectly involved in making sure that the

trains made their way to the death camps. Before he turns to this encounter between the victim

and wider society, Améry provides what Brudholm calls the “ethical explanation” (2008: 130)

for his unwillingness to rid himself of his resentment:

Man has the right and the privilege to declare himself in disagreement with every
natural occurrence, including the biological healing that time brings about. What
happened, happened. This sentence is as true as it is hostile to morals and intellects.
The moral power to resist contains the protest, the revolt against reality, which is
rational only as long as it is moral. The moral person demands the annulment of time
(1999: 72)

This moral reasoning behind the preservation of resentment resonates with Murphy's

argument that "resentment stands as an emotional testimony that we care about ourselves and

our rights" (2003: 19). Furthermore, Améry's refusal to abandon his resentment is related to

the desire to be released from the pain of abandonment, which he considers to be the

"personal protest against the anti-moral natural process of healing that time brings about"

(1999: 77). What Améry protests against is not the inexorability of time as such, but the

failure of fellow human beings- past bystanders and judging community- to revolt against

such an inexorable process in light of the massive atrocities (Walker 2006: 141). This notion
 39

is central to conditioning his acute sense of abandonment and loneliness. Therefore, his

demand for an "annulment of time" implies the hope for a moralization of his contemporaries'

sense of time, which would render impossible their appeal to allow time to do the healing

(Brudholm 2008: 131). This shows that Améry in his unwillingness rather than inability to get

rid of his resentment cultivates a specific kind of victim's resentment "as a deliberate and

focused moral-emotional attitude" (Brudholm 2008: 132).

Brudholm, however, strives to unpick the extent to which this personal resentment can really

play a constructive role in relation to the larger social realm, and in how far could it be an

effective instrument to facilitate reconciliation between the survivors and the German people?

(2008: 151). Heyd argued in this context that: “Améry does not believe that the moral, which

in this case is purely personal, can be transformed into the political order” (2004: 196).

Nevertheless, Améry was clear that what weighed on him was not primarily one or another

particular wrongdoer, such as Eichmann or SS-man Wajs, but the "entire inverted pyramid"

(1999:71), the participation and passivity of the German society and state at the time.

Therefore, he states that:

I hope that that my resentment- which is my personal protest against the antimoral
natural process of healing that time brings about, and by which I make the genuinely
humane and absurd demand that time be turned back- will also perform a historical
function. Were it to fulfill the task that I set it, it could historically represent, as a stage
of the world’s dynamics of progress, the German revolution that did not take place.
This demand is no less absurd and no less moral than the individual demand that
irreversible processes be reversible (Améry 1999: 77)

That demand is still absurd, but Améry says that it could “represent” a revolution. This

suggest that if the Germans would come to share the victim’s desire that what happened had

not happened, it would be as if a German revolution had happened (Brudholm 2008: 152).

The common concern and therefore the political nature of the enterprise, becomes clear when

Améry emphasizes the need for an externalization and actualization of the unresolved
 40

conflict. Indeed, he considers this necessary if both “the overpowered and those who

overpowered them are to succeed in mastering the past, a past that, despite its extreme

oppositeness, they still have in common” (Améry 1999: 77). He emphasizes that such

externalization and actualization cannot consist in the carrying out of revenge in proportion to

what was suffered, this would be a “morally impossible thought” anyhow (Améry 1999: 77).

Rather, Améry is concerned with an active acceptance of historical and collective

responsibility, through which he links a change in attitude to a change in historical practice:

an overcoming of the repression and hushing up of the Nazi past (Brudholm 2008: 152). This

would entail Germans remaining sensitive to the fact that they cannot allow a piece of their

history to be neutralized by time, and instead, integrating and accepting it as an indelible part

of their “past, present and future” (Améry 1999: 78). For Améry, this would entail:

On the field of history there would occur what I hypothetically described earlier for
the limited, individual circle: two groups of people, the overpowered and those who
overpowered them, would be joined in the desire that time be turned back and, with it,
that history become moral. If this demand were raised by the German people, who as a
matter of fact have been victorious and already rehabilitated by time, it would have
tremendous weight, enough so that by this alone it would already be fulfilled. The
German revolution would be made good, Hitler disowned. And in the end Germans
would really achieve what the people once did not have the might or the will to do,
and what later in the political power game, no longer appeared to be a vital necessity:
the eradication of the ignominy (1999: 78).

Consequently, for Améry, if the German people were to reject everything that was carried out

in those twelve years and claim it as their own negative possession, it would be “the negation

of the negation: a highly positive, a redeeming act” and “only through it would our resentment

be subjectively pacified and have become objectively unnecessary” (1999: 79). This is

Améry’s settlement in the field of historical practice, the externalization and actualization

necessary for those responsible for the crimes to “negate themselves and in the negation

coordinate with me” (1999: 69).

 41

It is, as Brudholm argues, a surprising and interesting model of the restoration of coexistence

(2008: 153). On the social level, Améry’s vision of the change in Germany's relationship to

the past corresponds clearly with the earlier account of the transformation of SS-man Wajs.

Again, resentment appears to be the key instrument to transforming the anti-man into the

fellow man (Brudholm 2008: 153). The perpetrators and bystanders who bear the guilt or

responsibility, this time the Germans as a group, are imagined to join the victims as their

fellow human beings through sharing their demand for a moral turning back of the clock

(Brudholm 2008: 153). In this context, resentment is not brandished as something that in

principle never ought to be set aside. Nor, however, is it held forward as a prime obstacle to

the promotion of coexistence. Instead, it is put forward as a necessary part of a positive

transformation (Brudholm 2008: 153). Here, Chaumont emphasizes the Hegelian vocabulary

of negation and overcoming, as well as a phenomenology of the victim condition in Améry's

essay (1990: 36). This phenomenology acknowledges that, in order to exist as an autonomous

subject, the individual needs both the existence of a world and of others. Consequently, the

individual strives for a restoration of the "we" without which there can be no individual "I"

(Chaumont 1990: 36). Nevertheless, the figurative interpretation of the absurd demand, the

vision of an honest reconciliation between groups, is for Améry an outcome of being "joined

in the desire that time be turned back” (1999:78). Thus, the absurd demand that what

happened had not happened- the notion of a shared unreconciled past- continues to be an

important part of his vision for proper reconciliation between fellow human beings.

4.3 "Fugitive reconciliation" and the risk of politics

Both Arendt's judgment of reconciliation and non-reconciliation, as well as Améry's politics

of coexistence, seem to have a common objective- the restoration or reaffirmation of a shared

sense of plurality and a common world. More recently, debates concerning the notions of
 42

forgiveness and reconciliation have been led by the field of "transitional justice" and its

attention to the means and issues involved in reconstituting shared sense of belonging through

such paradigmatic examples as legal tribunals and truth commissions (Hirsch 2011: 167).

Other theorists, however, have observed that these measures are often heavily contested, and

in many cases fail to achieve the standard of reconciliation they have set for themselves

(Schaap 2005). In some cases, transition might be equated with the exigency to "move on",

where the dominance of the slogan "forgive and forget" would suggest a conception of

reconciliation as assimilation (Hirsch 2011: 167). Therefore, Hirsch argues that part of the

misgivings of the transitional justice regime derives from a theoretical problem, namely the

"impetus to resolve what all too often remains irresolvable, to repair what turns out to be

irreparable" (2011: 167).

In response to these perceived shortcomings in transitional thought, some scholars have

turned to agonistic theories of radical democracy in order to foreground alternative modes of

reconciliation (Hirsch 2011: 168). This is interesting, as many debates and conflicts between

deliberative and agonistic democratic theory share similarities with the ambivalences of

reconciliation discussed. Indeed, while democratic deliberation is oriented towards creating

consensus, agonistic democrats draw attention to and affirm instead the centrality of conflict

within democratic politics (Schaap 2006: 257). In comparison to deliberation, characterized

by the effort to disavow animosity in the name of settlement, agonistic theories are understood

to be constituted by the will to dissensus, seeing friction, divisiveness and rupture as endemic

to political life (Hirsch 2011: 168). In this context, Schaap has emphasized that agonistic

democrats aim to understand democracy in terms of an ethos that affirms the contingency and

openness of political life, and to investigate in how far commonality is a "difficult, fragile and

contingent achievement of political action" (2006: 258). For him, the agonistic conception of

democracy is important because it provides a critical perspective to investigate the politics of

 43

reconciliation (Schaap 2006: 258). One of the most significant overlaps between agonistic

theories is here the irreducible contestation they take to be vital for democratic politics.

Unlike deliberative democrats such as Habermas, Benhabib or Gutmann, who underscore

rational and consensual agreement as the objective of politics, agonists such as Connolly or

Mouffe insist that "politics is about resisting the urge to defuse the hostility of opposition"

(Hirsch 2011: 170).

Schaap has argued that a political conception of reconciliation cannot take for granted a moral

community that can be restored, but must rather recognize the community it seeks as a

contingent, historical possibility (2005: 15). In Political Reconciliation, he develops on the

basis of Schmitt's concept of the political a notion of the "risk of politics", on which a

politically adequate conception of reconciliation would be conditioned (Schaap 2005: 21).

The awareness of such risk would entail the possibility that the struggle for reconciliation can

also easily divide, in other words, that "community is not inevitable and that conflict may turn

out to be irreconcilable" (Schaap 2005: 21). However, another essential feature of agonistic

thought in relation to reconciliation is that of 'agonistic respect'. For Schaap, political

reconciliation not only consist of resisting the proclivity for conflict suppression, but also of

figuring out how to transform a relation of total abhorrence between antagonists into one of

"civic enmity" (in Hirsch 2011: 172), or, as Mouffe puts it, how to "transform antagonism into

agonism" (in Schaap 2006: 268).

Wolin draws here attention to the Arendtian moment of the political, which he understands as

an "expression of the idea that a free society composed of diversities can nonetheless enjoy

moments of commonality when, through public deliberations, collective power is used to

promote or protect the well-being of the collectivity" (in Schaap 2006: 271). For him, this

means that: "Politics is continuous, ceaseless and endless. In contrast, the political is episodic,
 44

rare" (Wolin 1996: 31). The concept of the political is therefore understood as a potentiality

within politics where commonality emerges out of difference, as a dynamic inherent within

action through which plurality is articulated (Schaap 2006: 271). However, the political refers

not merely to an intensification of friend-enemy distinctions, but also to the possibility of

solidarity emerging spontaneously among humans beings who are engaged in political action

(Schaap 2006: 271). Indeed, for Wolin it becomes clear that:

Democracy needs to be reconceived as something other than a form of government: as a mode

of being that is conditioned by bitter experience, doomed to succeed only temporarily, but is a
recurrent possibility as long as the memory of the political survives [...] Democracy is a
political moment, perhaps the political moment, when the political is remembered and re-
created (1996: 43).

Here, Wolin intimates a theory of memory that resonates with Améry's ethics of anger and

therefore creates a conception of temporal disjuncture that Hirsch calls "fugitive

reconciliation" (2011: 178). He suggests that this fugitive politics sketches a notion of time in

which the moment of the political would represent an "epiphanic flash" (Hirsch 2011: 181).

Reconciliation, understood as an experimental temporal struggle, would not be conceived as

something that is about to come, but as something which actually takes place, bursting on the

scenes, new and unexpectedly, and vanishing the moment it is forced into institutionalized

forms (Hirsch 2011: 181). In this context, resentment would retrieve the victim from its past

in order to call him into the present condition of his suffering- as would Wolin's democratic

memory- in order to actively engage his former perpetrator (Hirsch 2011: 182). Améry makes

repeatedly clear that he does not live in the "bloody illusion" that revenge could compensate

for his suffering, or release him from his twisted-time sense (1999: 69). Rather, Améry

establishes resentment as the "ground upon which responsibility and responsiveness is

founded for a politics of reconciliation" (Hirsch 2011: 183). This conception of reconciliation

should prove attractive for theorists of agonistic democracy, since it suggest that the political
 45

values of contestation and heteronomy may replace here those of intimacy and similitude as

the hallmarks of a theory of responsibility (Hirsch 2011: 183).

In conclusion, one can argue that the notions of reconciliation and coexistence are more

appropriate than forgiveness for dealing with the problem of evil in the political realms of the

modern world. While Arendt emphasizes forgiveness in The Human Condition within the

language and theoretical context of acting, she nonetheless turns to the judgment of

(non)reconciliation when confronted with Eichmann's banality of evil its political

implications. This emphasis on (non)reconciliation rather than on forgiveness also plays a

central role in Améry's settlement in the field of historical practice. Indeed, Améry

conceptualizes a unique model of the restoration of coexistence between antagonistic groups,

based on a shared moral relationship to the unreconciled past. Furthermore, the very

ambivalences of reconciliation proved helpful for establishing the relevance of Arendt's and

Améry's conceptualizations for more contemporary accounts of transitional justice and

agonistic democracy. In particular, Schaap's notion of the risk of politics and Wolin's fugitive

democracy bring together the Arendtian moment of the political and Améry's resentment as a

forceful aspect of political memory, establishing alternative politics of reconciliation in a

world that continues to come to terms with the role of politics after the reign of terror and

catastrophe.
 46

5. Conclusion

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the hypothesis that Améry’s examination

and justification of “being-in-resentment” challenges the theoretical underpinnings of

forgiveness as it was conceptualized by Arendt in The Human Condition. In addition, this

work aimed to show that Améry’s victim resentment can help to understand more clearly the

important qualifications and limitations Arendt places on political forgiveness. Consequently,

this chapter aims to underline how the critical investigations on resentment and forgiveness

contributed towards illuminating important tensions at the heart of Arendt’s writings, from the

Denktagebuch and The Human Condition towards Eichmann in Jerusalem. Moreover, it also

reiterates how the analysis of Améry’s and Arendt’s theoretical work may help to

conceptualize alternative modes of reconciliation, and makes it possible to critically assess

more contemporary accounts in the field of transitional justice.

In his essays Resentment, Améry conceptualizes a unique notion of resentment that marks a

departure, in many essential aspects, from Nietzsche’s loathsome “man of ressentiment”.

Indeed, for Améry a surviving victim’s resentment is concerned with the restoration of a

shared sense of plurality, with the reaffirmation of human community and a common world.

Nonetheless, this conception of resentment entails two dimensions of the victim condition

which, while essential, create problems for such an encounter: the notion of disordered

temporality and an acute sense of abandonment and loneliness that destroys the ability to feel

at home in the world. In particular, these dimensions pose conceptual problems for Arendt's

account of worldly and political forgiveness as an ontological basis for human action. While

Arendt is concerned with a release from the effects and implications of past events in order to

initiate new beginnings, Améry's twisted sense of time demands the undoing of the past deed.

Nevertheless, Arendt emphasized that this form of forgiveness applies to trespasses rather
 47

than crime or willed evil, and that political forgiveness is subject to important qualifications

and limitations. Thus, on the one hand, Arendt’s notion of forgiveness depends on the

existence of plurality and a shared common world, as well as a moral equality between

forgiver and recipient. On the other hand, for Améry, the sense of abandonment and

loneliness of the victim condition, caused by the experience of torture and persecution,

destroys the human condition of plurality and the relation between fellow human beings.

Crimes which trigger such resentments therefore belong to the category of radical evil. Thus,

Améry's examination of his resentment helps to understand more clearly Arendt's understated

engagement with the "unforgivable" in The Human Condition. This is because, while Arendt

alludes to the notion of radical evil as unpunishable and unforgivable, Améry’s analysis

clarifies the rationale for holding on to resentment in such cases.

Furthermore, the critical examination of the human faculty of forgiveness through Améry's

resentment helps to outline important tensions and developments at the core of Arendt's

writings. In particular, it reveals the progressive clarification of her conceptions of

reconciliation and forgiveness, as she is gradually confronted to the failures of human action.

Thus, while she first rejected forgiveness as the proper response to wrongdoings in her

Denktagebuch, she argued in later notes that no action is possible without mutual forgiveness,

which is called "reconciliation in politics" (Arendt 1953: 303). This is important because it

supports the argument that reconciliation might be more appropriate than forgiveness for

dealing with the problems of evil in politics. Indeed, eight years after her first notes, Arendt

emphasized the faculty of forgiveness in The Human Condition. Nevertheless, she did so in

her rather theoretical engagement with the notion of human action, before turning again to the

judgment of reconciliation or non-reconciliation while following Eichmann's trial in

Jerusalem.
 48

The realm of reconciliation and coexistence might then be the starting place for finding

common theoretical ground between Améry's and Arendt's accounts. In particular, both

Arendt's judgment of reconciliation or non-reconciliation, and Améry's politics of coexistence

through a shared moral relationship to the past, share an important objective: the restoration of

a common sense of plurality. With this in mind, the reading of forgiveness and resentment

stands to contribute to the discipline of political theory by calling for the critical examination

of the notion of "transitional justice" as the "most common appellation" by the field dealing

with reconciliatory measures for post-conflict societies (Hirsch 2011: 167). With regard to

perceived shortcomings in transitional thought, scholars such as Schaap and Wolin have

turned to agonistic theories of radical democracy. In this context, Arendt's and Améry's

writings are of important value for conceptualizing alternative modes of thinking about

reconciliation. Indeed, Wolin's notion of fugitive democracy has been shown to bring together

the Arendtian moment of the political and Améry's ethics of anger as political memory. This

serves to construct a notion of reconciliation that emphasizes the victim as an acting agent,

with resentment as a disorderly temporal rupture. Reading these concepts together therefore

might offer us a means of viewing reconciliation "that goes beyond now-well worn debates in

literary and psychoanalytic theory", and which orbits the question of how the "subject of loss

can best reconstitute itself and so figure a future untrammeled by infinite repetition" (Hirsch

2011: 183). If the core conflict at the heart of reconciliation concerns how best to overcome

the temporal impossibility of “moving on” while harboring morally justified resentment, the

solution may lie in recasting reconciliation as a political moment, rather than a form of

existence. Consequently, confronting Améry and Arendt’s analyses may shed light on how to

achieve this cathartic moment of reconciliation: one which is, at its very moment of creation

is prone to return to what Walter Benjamin called the "differentia of time", that instant in

which the sequential relation of past to present explodes (in Hirsch 2011: 183).
 49

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