Paul Ricoeur’s theory of forgiveness and the problems of guilt, punishment and personal identity

Abstract

This paper contains a polemical analysis of the conception of forgiveness as presented by Paul Ricoeur in his book Memory, history, forgetting, where he defines forgiveness as a liberation of a person from his or her past deed. My main objection is that he mixes up philosophical and theological discourses, which makes his theory paradoxical and vague. I attempt to resolve antinomies of Ricoeur’s view and propose the conception that is based on entirely philosophical, rational argumentation. My principal purposes are, firstly, to present forgiveness as a merely human phenomenon that can be understood without referring to Transcendence and, secondly, to bring out the distinction between an act of forgiveness and a releasing from a punishment which belongs to the order of political institutions and law.