Quotable Arendt: Toward a Properly Arendtian Account of Forgiveness

This article supplements the description of forgiveness in Hannah Arendt's Human Condition with an applied interpretation of love and respect, truth and opinion, and the importance of spectators or moral bystanders, as described in Between Past and Future, On Revolution, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Men in Dark Times, and The Life of the Mind. Many who discuss her account of forgiveness fail to adequately consider the distinctions and assertions that Arendt makes in her political theory. This article thus challenges a propensity in critical literature on forgiveness to render Arendt's account of the action applicable to ethical systems and outlooks to which it is, in fact, diametrically opposed.