BULLETIN OF THE HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

The Individuality in the Deed: Hegel on Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Jeanette Bicknell

The topic of forgiveness and reconciliation is one of the areas in Hegel's philosophy in which an
uneasy tension between philosophy and religion, logic and existence, is most obvious. My goal in
this paper is to illuminate Hegel's discussion of forgiveness and reconciliation in his Lectures on
the Philosophy of Religion by examining his treatment of the same topic in the Phenomenology
of Spirit. Previous commentators have discussed the political and social aspects of reconciliation,
but paid little attention to its religious aspects.1 Similarly, commentators who have addressed the
psychological and social aspects of reconciliation in the Phenomenology, have too seldom tumed
their attention to Hegel's full discussion of the religious aspect of reconciliation in the Lectures?
In bringing these two texts together, I hope to make a contribution to the larger project of
showing the relevance of the Phenomenology to Hegel's later works.3 Finally, I will suggest some
limitations in Hegel's analysis of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Part III of the Lectures delineates three levels of rupture and reconciliation: within the
individual consciousness, among individuals of the community, and between the individual and
God (215-251 ).4 This last level of reconciliation is the religious aspect and presupposes the earlier
levels. To help understand the individual's reconciliation within himself and with others, which
will be my main area of concern in this paper, we will now look at the relevant passage of
Phenomenology of Spirit.

I Forgiveness in the Phenomenology of Spirit'

Hegel's treatment of forgiveness (specifically 1666-671) is the final topic in his discussion of
morality and immediately precedes the chapter on religion. The context of his remarks is an
extended commentary on Kantian and Kantian-influenced moral philosophy. Forgiveness and
reconciliation are discussed in terms of two separate "consciousnesses" the acting and the
judging. These two consciousnesses represent attitudes we must all take up as agents and
observers. The section must be read as a "story" describing the dynamics of forgiveness both
within the individual the opposing consciousnesses representing two "sides" of the self and
within the community, as the two consciousnesses also represent individuals who confront one
another. In order to understand what Hegel is doing in this section of the Phenomenology, we
must bear in mind both of these possible narratives as we read. Indeed, as I hope will become
clear, these two "stories" are like the obverse and reverse sides of one coin and describe the same
process from different angles.
Every action can be considered from the point of view of conformity to duty, or from the
point of view of the particularity of the doer. Hegel characterizes the judging consciousness as a
"moral valet" it opposes the universal aspect of any action to the personal aspect of the
individual doer (1665). The judging consciousness construes the act as arising from selfish
motives a different intention from the act in itself. But the judging consciousness is itself base
because it "divides" the act and holds fast to the disparity of the action with itself (?666). That is,

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the judge persists in opposing the personal aspect of the individual to the universal aspect of the
action. The initial step in reconciliation occurs when the doer recognizes the judge as the same as
herself: she too has opposed the personal to the universal aspect of her action (1666). So self-
recognition precedes and is a condition for recognition of the other. The doer would not
recognize herself in the judge unless she had first attained self-knowledge.
The doer confesses this identity to the judge, expecting the judge likewise to respond with
words, thereby giving utterance to this identity so that the "mutual recognition" each coming
to knowledge of the self and hence of their continuity with the other will exist in fact (5666). It
must be stressed that the confession is not a submission to judgment; the subject of the
"confession" is the doer's recognition of identity with the judge.
The doer's confession is met with stony silence and so does not meet its objective of
mutual recognition. The "hard heart" of the judge repels the "community of nature" and rejects
continuity with the other. The doer sees herself repulsed and sees the judge to be in the wrong
because the latter refuses to relay his inner being in the outer existence of speech. The judge
contrasts the beauty of his own soul with the doer's "wickedness," yet responds to the doer's
confession with "his own stiff-necked unrepentant character". This refusal of the judge is the
rebellion of Spirit that is certain of itself (1667).
Through her confession, the doer has renounced her separate being-for-self, thereby
superseding her particularity and positing herself in continuity with the other as a universal
(1667). That is, the doer declares herself to be subject to the universal standard of ethics and to
the judgment of the community.
It may be helpful here to recall the biblical narrative of the "woman who was a great
9

sinner," (Luke 7:36-50). As a discrete individual, the woman is a singular. The nexus of her
particularity is her gender and her status as "sinner". In her confession, which is through actions
rather than words (washing the feet of Christ with her tears), she renounces the temptation to
love her sin her particularity and instead seeks continuity with the universal. Her
acceptance into the universal and back into the community is signalled by the fact that Christ
"gives utterance" to her forgiveness, speaking aloud for all to hear. Initially, he does not address
her directly but rather speaks to a third party: "Her sins are forgiven," making explicit her
membership in the community. The woman is no longer a single individual or a "mere" particular.
Divine forgiveness has communal meaning and importance, besides its significance for the
forgiven singular individual. We are forgiven as individuals, but the significance of our
forgiveness is never merely personal.
The judge responds to the doer's confession with silence "mutely keeping himself to
himself' and through this silence reveals himself as a consciousness which is forsaken by, and
which itself denies, Spirit. The judge does not realize that Spirit is "lord and master" over every
actuality and can make them as if they had never happened. Furthermore, the judge does not
recognize the contradiction into which he has fallen: through his refusal to reject the doer in
speech, the judge hinders the former's return from the deed into the spiritual existence of speech
and the identity of Spirit (1667). Evil, then (or at least one form of it), is this pride which is
manifested in silence the refusal to enter into discourse, which harms the self as well as others.

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Hegel refers to the judging consciousness as a "beautiful soul" (1668). The judge cannot
renounce the knowledge of himself which he keeps to himself; cannot attain identity with the
consciousness of the doer whom he repulsed; cannot attain objective existence. Consequently, the
identity between the doer and the judge, between acting consciousness and judging
consciousness, comes about only negatively. The judge lacks actual existence and is entangled in
the contradiction between his pure self and the necessity of the self to externalize itself and
participate in community. Being conscious of this contradiction in its unreconciled immediacy, the
judge is "disordered to the point of madness" and wastes away (1668). Hegel's choice of words
here the judge succumbs to "madness" underlines the disintegration of personality which
results from behaviour such as the judge's. Finally, the judge surrenders the being for self to
which he had clung, but the unity brought forth is non-spiritual (5668). Like the doer, he too
surrenders his particularity but with different results than the former's confession.
The judge renounces the divisive thought and the "hard heartedness of being-for-self'
because he has seen himself in the doer. The doer, who has already made herself into a
superseded particular consciousness with her confession, displays herself as a universal. She
returns from external actual existence (and the particular deed), back into herself as essential
being ("I am thus"), and therein the universal consciousness recognizes itself. In forgiveness, the
judge abandons the distinction between the specific thought and its subjectively determined
judgment, just as the doer abandons her subjective characterization of her own action (1670).
In the moment of forgiveness, objectively existent Spirit beholds the pure knowledge of
itself qua communal essence in its opposite in the pure knowledge of itself qua absolutely self-
contained and exclusive individuality (5671). In other words, the individuality in the deed has
been lost; imputation no longer applies. The "word of reconciliation" is a reciprocal recognition
which is absolute Spirit (1671). In Hegel's evocative phrasing, "The wounds of the Spirit heal,
and leave no scars behind" (f669).
The word of reconciliation sets the stage for the transition to the explicit stage of religion.
The reconciling "yea" in which the two sides of consciousness let go their antithetical existence is
itself the existence of the "I" which has expanded into a duality: the self knows itself in another.
Even in this complete externalization and reaching out to another, the self possesses the certainty
of itself. When this process is played out at the level of the community, we have God manifested
in the midst of those who know themselves in the form of pure knowledge (1671).

II Forgiveness and Reconciliation in the Lectures

Schematically, the discussion of forgiveness and reconciliation in the Lectures starts where we
have left the Phenomenology of Spirit. The section on "Morality" in the Phenomenology (1596-
671), ends with the individual reconciled in her own consciousness and the preliminary
reconciliation between members of the community. The reconciled or "whole" consciousness of
the individual is necessary but not sufficient for the unity of the community and unity with God.
Morality is not adequate; the stage of ethics must be superseded and some form of religious
consciousness is required. Hence the transition to the stage of religion, and the discussion of
forgiveness and reconciliation in their religious aspects.

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These two treatments of forgiveness and reconciliation the phenomenological and the
religious can and should be read in terms of one another. The Lectures emphasize the
atonement brought about by the death of Christ on the cross. The Phenomenology had
concentrated on reconciliation within the individual consciousness and among members of the
community. We need to understand the latter in order to understand the former. Hegel himself
hints at the pertinence of such a project when he says in the Lectures that we know the ways in
which the subject is related to God "more or less empirically" (198).
In the Lectures, Hegel discusses forgiveness and reconciliation in the second moment of
his treatment of "the consummate religion" Christianity. The first element in Hegel's
discussion of Christianity is "The idea of God in and for Itself (199-215); that is, what God is for
Himself. God is the absolute idea for us in the mode of thought, and as such can and must be
grasped also within the mode of representation. That is, the content of religion appears in a form
accessible to sense experience as it is a truth for everyone (209). The determinate being that God
gives himself for the sake of representation is first nature, and then finite spirit God appears to
finite human beings as a fellow human being (197). This second element of representation or
appearance is itself composed of two moments differentiation and reconciliation (215-251). In
differentiation, God creates the world and humanity, positing the separation between himself and
his creation. In the moment of reconciliation He restores to himself what had been posited in
separation (198-99). The third moment is where reconciliation is made actual: God as spirit is
present in his community and the community experiences the certainty of its freedom in God
(251-270).
Let us take a closer look at the second element, and examine how it can be related to the
account of forgiveness and reconciliation in the Phenomenology . Within it, three processes of
diremption and reconciliation can be distinguished, which must in turn be understood in terms of
one another: within the individual consciousness, among individuals, and "ultimate" reconciliation
between the individual and God.
In the second moment, God creates nature and finite spirit (humans). Hegel characterizes
the second element as, "the process of the world in love by which it passes over from fall and
separation into reconciliation" (217). The finite world is identified with Lucifer who, "posited
himself for himself and "strove to be" (218). So the sin of Lucifer pride will be an aspect
of the non-reconciledness of humanity. Pride is most often predicated of discrete individuals,
rather than whole communities or indeed all of humanity. We saw in the Phenomenology that
within the single individual, pride was a source of cleavage between the judging and acting
consciousnesses (1667). At the level of the community, it prevented the judge from accepting the
confession of the doer, thereby hindering her return to the identity of spirit and bringing about his
own disintegration.
The reconciliation which Hegel discusses as the second element of Christianity can only
be reconciliation with the truth. To understand why this is so we must consider Hegel's
philosophical anthropology: it is presumed that there is a demand to know absolute truth within
subjective spirit. This need implies that the subject exists in a state of untruth in a state of
cleavage from itself (220). We saw that in the Phenomenology this cleavage within the individual

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was characterized as being between the acting and judging consciousnesses. The source of the
cleavage is that the judging consciousness "divides" the action from itself. But as spirit, the
subject implicitly surmounts its untruth at the same time; untruth is for spirit something that ought
to be overcome. The cleavage (or division) within the subject is also the cleavage from truth, and
our desire for the truth is also the desire that these cleavages be annulled and reconciled. The
subject is then this split or contradiction that nonetheless holds itself together (220).
There are two opposed definitions of humanity, two simultaneous opposed answers to the
question of how humanity regards itself: humanity is by nature both good and evil (220-221).
Hegel is convinced that while the view that humanity is basically good has been more or less the
predominant notion of his own time, the opposing view has likewise been ascendant at other
times. According to Hegel's own conception, to ask whether humanity is by nature only good or
only evil is to pose the question falsely, and it would be superficial to claim that humanity is both
good and evil. In humanity, both good and evil are posited in such a way that one presupposes
the other; while good and evil are opposed to one another, they are not in contradiction (224).
The evil in human nature means that sin is inevitable: if humanity were only good, there
would be no sin and no need for reconciliation. But forgiveness, the condition of reconciliation, is
likewise inevitable, and rests on the proposition that humans are implicitly good. Humans are
good according to their concept rather than their actuality (221). Although human goodness is
merely "one-sided" in this way, its presence means that the possibility of forgiveness is always at
hand.
The implicit being of the human being is spirit. In its immediacy humanity is already
involved in stepping forth from immediacy and falling away from implicit being. It is this stepping
beyond the natural state of humanity, beyond merely implicit being, that both constitutes the
cleavage within humanity and posits the cleavage. This "stepping forth" is not a distinct moment
but is rather contained in the natural state itself, and is the basis for the proposition that humanity
is by nature evil. It is from the formal standpoint that humanity is by nature evil (221-223).
The "formal" standpoint of evil is expressed in the duality of consciousness. This is not to
say that the acting consciousness is "good" and the judging "evil". While it is true that judgment
posits the cleavage or division, the two consciousnesses are guilty of the same failing: each
divides the action from itself. Both forms of consciousness are unreconciled and both must be
surmounted. The goodness of humanity is imputable; humanity is not good in the sense of
"natural" goodness the non-reflective amorality that can be attributed to animals (223). The
goodness of humanity is a function of responsibility, which in turn implies a synthesis of authentic
action and judgment.
The fact that judgment is the source of the cleavage within the individual should alert us
to the fact that knowledge and evil are intrinsically related. According to Hegel, the symbolic
import of Genesis 3 is that cognition is the source of evil. Knowledge of good and evil is itself
evil. Cognition entails a judging or dividing a self-distinguishing within oneself. This cleavage
is the contradiction that which is evil. But in the same way that this cleavage is the source of
evil, it is also the standpoint of the conversion that consciousness contains within itself whereby
the division in consciousness is overcome. Consequently, humanity is only immortal through

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cognitive knowledge: only in the actuality of thinking is the soul pure and free rather than mortal
and animal-like (224-228).
One implication of Hegel's contention that humanity is only immortal through cognitive
knowledge is that evil must be judged. Evil must be recognized as what it is before it can be
sublated. The "judgment" of the judging consciousness is a necessary moment; without it there
can be no reconciliation. The "sin" of the judge is not that he forms judgments, but that he cannot
go beyond them. True forgiveness has to be preceded by full recognition of the act which is to be
sublated.
So humans have an obligation to realize the infinity of the antithesis between good and
evil in themselves and to know themselves to be evil in their naturalness. Together with this
knowledge of evil is the desire for the good, and the result of the awareness of this contradiction
is anguish (literally Schmerz pain) (228). The antithesis between good and evil has two forms,
so the resulting anguish will likewise have two forms. First, there is the antithesis vis a vis God.
There is a need in humanity for absolute, divine reconciliation: anguish can only be present when
there is an opposition to what ought to be (229). This is the religious expression of the need for
reconciliation.
The second expression of this antithesis is in the sphere of ethics and the community. Here
the antithesis is vis a vis the world. This separation from the world appears as unhappiness
humanity is not satisfied in the world. This unhappiness "drives and presses" human beings back
into themselves. When our "fixed demand" that the world be rational is not met, we renounce the
world and seek happiness in the "harmony of the self with the self (231). Again, we can look to
the Phenomenology: this is the state of the "beautiful soul" unwilling and therefore unable to
enter into discourse with others (1668).
Both forms of the antithesis are one-sided. In the first the subject experiences anguish or
longing for God and the cleavage is not healed. The second comprises only the affirmative side.
The satisfaction of myself in myself is only abstract and occurs by means of flight from (my)
actuality. These two moments estrangement from God and from the world contain within
themselves the need for a transition (233). Reconciliation with either God or the community will
include reconciliation with the other, since God as spirit is manifest in the ethical life of the
community. The community is the risen Christ and so must be involved.
Having examined differentiation and diremption, now let us turn to the idea of
reconciliation at the level of appearance: anguish expresses the need of spirit that the antithesis
within the subject should be intensified to its most abstract extreme. This need demands peace
and reconciliation. It is satisfied by the consciousness of atonement; that is, the sublation of the
antithesis so that the antithesis is itself not the truth. The exigency of reconciliation exists in the
subject as infinite unity or self-identity (233). The language of "atonement" was not used in the
Phenomenology, as there only the preliminary stages of reconciliation are explored. Again, we are
reminded that the ethical stages must be transcended and taken up at a higher level in the
religious.
The sublation of the antithesis has two sides. First, the subject must become conscious
that the antithetic opposites the acting and judging consciousnesses, good and evil are not

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things in themselves. Rather, the truth of spirit consists in the sublatedness of the antithesis.
Second, because the antithesis is implicitly and truthfully sublated, the subject as such can attain
peace and reconciliation through this sublation of the antithesis (233-234).
The subject does not attain reconciliation on its own account; Hegel is no Pelagian. The
activity of the subject is only the positing or the "doing" side. The other side is substantial and
foundational; without it the antithesis will not be sublated. This "other side" consists in the fact
that implicitly, the antithesis is not present (as humanity is implicitly good.) More exactly, the
antithesis eternally arises and is eternally sublated (234). This is the divine aspect of
reconciliation, the presence of Grace. Again, we are reminded that the process of reconciliation
described in the Phenomenology is but the initial stage in what will be the ultimate reconciliation
between God and the community.
The point of departure that constitutes the need for reconciliation is the incongruity of
human finitude with the universality of God. However these two sides are not "merely
incongruous", the identity of the two persists in spite of their incongruity. The "otherness" or
finitude of human nature does not harm the divine unity which forms the "substance" of
reconciliation. Hegel understands spirit here as, "the process of self-differentiating, the positing of
distinctions" (234). If the distinctions or incongruity within spirit were to disappear, the vitality of
spirit would likewise disappear. In the divine Idea, otherness (illustrated by the "otherness" of
Christ) is eternally posited and eternally sublates itself, and this self-positing and sublating of
otherness is love or spirit (234-35).
In religious terms, reconciliation takes place through "a single individual" Christ.
Humanity implicitly is the substantial unity of God and humanity. It is something beyond
immediate, ordinary consciousness and stands over against subjective consciousness. This is why
the unity of divine and human must appear as "a singular human being set apart" (238). The 1831
Lectures are illuminating here: the necessary foundation for the possibility of reconciliation
resides in the fact that the implicitly subsisting unity of divine and human nature is known. God is
not something alien to human beings; we are not related to Him as an extrinsic accident. Rather,
humans know themselves to be taken up into God in accordance with their essence, freedom and
subjectivity.
A religious, as opposed to a human view of the person of Christ, leads us into the
religious sphere as such. The death of Christ denotes the transition to spiritual presence. Hegel
stresses that religious belief is not constituted by morality, nor by "the thinking and willing of the
subject within itself and from itself (245). Rather, the determining feature of religious life is an
infinite relationship to God. Members of the "kingdom of God" will have both a love for
humanity and the consciousness that God is love (245-246).
When the death of Christ is comprehended "spiritually" it becomes the focal point of
reconciliation (249). Again, the 1831 Lectures are helpful here: the meaning of Christ's death on
the cross is that Christ has borne the sins of the world and reconciled God with the world. Out of
"infinite love" God made himself identical with what is alien human finitude including its
furthest extreme of evil in order to put it to death. Finitude and evil are destroyed in the death

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of Christ and the world is reconciled.1 Hence, the death of Christ is not a single act but "the
eternal divine history" (251).
The religious or spiritual realm in which we must find an interpretation of Christ's death
does not correspond to the realm of finitude and human action. In the realm of finitude,
individuals remain what they are. If they have done evil then they are evil. In contrast, in the
sphere of morality, but even more so in the religious sphere, evil is a "nullity" for the infinitude of
spirit: "Spirit can undo what has been done. The action certainly remains in the memory, but spirit
strips it away. Imputation, therefore, does not attain to this sphere". We can see that divine
forgiveness (as the result of the atonement) and human forgiveness (as described in the
Phenomenology) have the same result: individuality in the deed vanishes.
Hegel's highly theoretical account of the human aspects of forgiveness and reconciliation
can be understood more readily if we consider the example of South Africa's Truth and
Reconciliation Commission. Set up in 1995 and headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the goal
of the commission is to assist in the process of healing a divided and polarized nation. The
commission encourages those who committed politically motivated crimes, either in the defense
of apartheid or against it, to confess and testify publicly about their crimes. The commission has
the power to grant amnesty for all but "disproportionately" heinous crimes, which are still liable
to legal prosecution. A public forum is likewise available for victims of human rights violations,
who are encouraged to testify and tell their stories.
Several aspects of Hegel's analysis are made salient by the example of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission. The conviction that knowledge and evil are related is implicit in the
criticisms of those South Africans who oppose the commission and fear that it will serve to
reopen old wounds. Yet there is also the recognition that true forgiveness and reconciliation must
be preceded by full acknowledgment of the acts in question. The reconciliation within the
individual either through confession or testimony about abuse is thought to be part of the
process of the community's reconciliation. Hence the need for a public process in which the
whole community is involved. Finally, while judgment is not set aside in all cases, in those cases
in which amnesty is granted, the individuality in the deed vanishes.

Ill Limitations of Hegel's Analysis

The difficulties in Hegel's analysis of forgiveness and reconciliation can be traced back to two
more fundamental sources: his account of evil, and the contrasts between the human and divine
aspects of forgiveness.
Hegel's account of evil is insightful in positing connections between evil, closedness, and
personal disintegration. The evil person is divided in his consciousness, this division is
unreconciled, and so he is never "at home" with others. As mentioned earlier, evil for Hegel is a
refusal to acknowledge others and see them in continuity with oneself. It takes little imagination
to see distance from others and denial of common humanity as at the root of much wickedness
and disharmony within the individual.
Asking for forgiveness is asking for "continuity with the universal" membership in the
ethical community. Anyone who asks for forgiveness, then, must be sufficiently "unclosed" to

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seek the acceptance of others. What is the community to do about those who do not seek
forgiveness, neither through their words nor their actions? Hegel's understanding of evil is
coherent in terms of his system, but his analysis of forgiveness only explains the forgiveness of
evil, according to the definition of evil stipulated within the system. In other words, forgiveness
for Hegel is the forgiveness of "closedness". If we posit a stronger definition of evil say, the
unrepentant desire to foster discord where none has been present we will need a different
understanding of forgiveness and of its significance for the community.
Lauer calls forgiveness and reconciliation "the divine dimension of the human". When
we forgive others, we strive to repeat the actions of Christ towards the unnamed woman in Luke.
But there are important differences between this paradigmatic instance of divine forgiveness and
our human approximation. Significantly, the woman in Luke is never named and we never learn
the nature of her sin. She can stand in for any individual, and her sin for any crime, be it one of
deception, betrayal, or violence. There is no "individuality" in her deed which must vanish, just as
there is no particularity of sin before Christ.
Christ speaks to the woman in the passive voice: "Your sins are forgiven," rather than the
active "I forgive you". This distinction is not lost on those present who ask, "Who is this who
even forgives sins?" The woman has not sinned against Christ as another individual, and he does
not forgive her as we might forgive those who have injured us. Christ forgives on behalf of the
Father; his use of the passive voice highlights the differences between the divine and human
relations to wrongdoing.
According to Hegel, the individuality in the deed vanishes at the moment of both human
and divine forgiveness. Genuine forgiveness among individuals, then, requires a complete
surrender of moral judgment, such that we set aside the preoccupations of the "moral valet".
This exigency raises some tensions in Hegel's account. First, judgment entails division within
consciousness and hence finitude. The Divine is not subject to this finitude and can play the roles
of both judge and forgiver, such that the moment of judgment is sublated at the very moment of
forgiveness. As humans we participate in the divine when we are able to transcend judgment. Yet
our finitude and unreconciled, "divided" nature mean that the moment of judgment and the
moment of forgiveness are never simultaneous.
A biblical narrative which illuminates this discontinuity between human and divine
forgiveness is the story of the adulterous woman whom Jesus saves from stoning (John 8:3-11).
Jesus tells the Pharisees that if any of them is without sin, he may be the first to cast a stone at the
woman. They realize that no one is free from sin sin touches even the just and walk away.
The woman remains where she is, considering herself a greater sinner than those who have
brought her before Christ. Christ asks the woman if any man has condemned her. When she
answers no, he says to her, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again". With these
words, Christ demonstrates his difference from the men present: he is without sin and according
to the criteria he has just established, could condemn the woman if he so chose. Christ gives up
the moment of judgment, and his refusal to condemn the woman is more than an act of kindness;
it is an exercise of the divine prerogative to forgive sin.

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Another tension in Hegel's account of forgiveness is highlighted by the fact that in the
Phenomenology, the two consciousnesses (or the two individuals) who confront and eventually
come to recognize one another are equals. Forgiveness between such matched agents is not
always possible in the human community. For example, how are we to conceptualize "third party"
forgiveness by one individual on the part of another who can no longer absolve others on her
own behalf? Such forms of forgiveness might include pardon of the dead or on behalf of the dead.
This type of forgiveness is absolutely essential if the community is not to fall into non-
reconciledness or into a bad infinite of vengeance and retribution.
Those who have read Dostoevsky's powerful discussion of this issue in The Brothers
Karamazov are not likely to forget it. Ivan Karamazov tells his brother Alyosha of an atrocity
committed upon an eight year old serf by a cruel landowner, in the presence of the child's mother.
Ivan wants to be able to forgive, but says, "I do not want a mother to embrace the torturer who
had her child [murdered]! She has no right to forgive him! If she likes, she can forgive him for
herself, she can forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering he has inflicted upon her as a
mother; but she has no right to forgive him for the sufferings of her tortured child. She has no
right to forgive the torturer for that, even if her child were to forgive him".
It sounds strange to speak of a "right" to grant or withhold pardon in a non-legalistic
sense; Ivan wants to say that it is wrong to usurp the victim's prerogative to grant or withhold
forgiveness. While we can only speculate how Hegel would have responded to this specific
scenario, his writings suggest that the entire community has not a right but a duty to forgive on
behalf of the murdered child. A refusal to do so to hold fast instead to the moment of
judgment will only perpetuate division, both within the individual and within the community.
But who could accuse the unforgiving mother of a murdered child of affirming the
preoccupations of a moral valet?
Any logical account of a phenomenon such as forgiveness, even one as subtle as Hegel's,
will at times be out of harmony with a religious explication. For example, confession is a crucial
moment in Hegel's phenomenology of forgiveness; the doer must confess to the judge. In
contrast, the Christian understanding of forgiveness does not require that pardon be sought.
Christ commands we forgive those whom we "have anything against" without stipulating that the
wrongdoers first ask for our pardon (Mark 11:25). Religious explications have the advantage of
themselves not requiring rational justifications; such logical explanation is more a task for the
philosopher or the theologian than for the prophet. If a religious interpretation of forgiveness is
no longer required or sought by the individual or the community, we can perhaps do no better
than to embrace Hegel's doctrine of mutual tolerance and recognition.21
Jeanette Bicknell
York University, Ontario

1 Michael O. Hardimon, "The Project of Reconciliation: Hegel's Social Philosophy,"

Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1992): 169-82; David Duquette, "The Political
Significance of Hegel's Concept of Recognition in the Phenomenology," Bulletin of the
Hegel Society of Great Britain 29 (1994): 38-54.

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2 Dale M. Schlitt, "The Whole Truth: Hegel's Reconceptualization of Trinity," The Owl of
Minerva 2 (1984): 169-82; Joseph C. Flay, "Religion and the Absolute Standpoint,"
Thought 56 (1981): 316-21.
3 For instance, H.S. Harris is convinced that the Phenomenology is the proper key to
Hegel's system as a whole. See his Hegel: Phenomenology and System (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Company, 1995).
4 Quotations and references to Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion are to the
1827 edition unless otherwise indicated. See Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, One
Volume Edition, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R.F. Brown, P.C. Hodgson and J.M.
Stewart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). Page references (in brackets)
refer to the German edition: Vorlesungen Uber die Philosophie der Religion, ed. Walter
Jaeschke (Hamburg, 1983-85), as indicated in Hodgson.
5 Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1977). Quotations and paragraph references refer to this edition.
6 Bemasconi argues that one may follow Hyppolite in reading the preceding section as
representative of tension within the individual, but the discussion beginning at J666 can
only be read as being between two separate consciousnesses. Robert Bemasconi, "Hegel
and Levinas: The Possibility of Forgiveness and Reconciliation," Archivio di Filosofia 1-3
(1986): 325-46.
7 For clarity of explication, in the following discussion I will alternate between reference to
the "judging consciousness" and the "judge" (using a masculine pronoun) and between the
"acting consciousness" and the "doer" (using a feminine pronoun).
8 Bemasconi, 338.
9 The following interpretation was suggested by my reading of S0ren Kierkegaard, "The
Woman that was a Sinner," in Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays, trans.
Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974). I am grateful to Professor
Abrahim H. Khan for bringing this text to my attention.
10 This story raises issues regarding the tensions between human and divine forgiveness, to
which I will return in the third section of this paper.
11 In Werke, eds. Philipp Marheineke and Bruno Bauer (Berlin, 1840); 456-457n. in
Hodgson.
12 In Marheineke and Bauer; 466-467n. in Hodgson.
13 Cf. the hero of Borges' short story 'The Shape of the Sword": "Whatever one man does,
it is as if all men did it. For that reason it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden
should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a
single Jew should be sufficient to save it". Labyrinths, ed. Donald A. Yates and James E.
Irby (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1964), 70.
14 In Marheineke and Bauer; 466-67n. in Hodgson.
15 Information about the commission is taken from James Brittain, "Healing a Nation:
Interview with Desmond Tutu," Index on Censorship 5 (1996): 39-43; and Tina
Rosenberg, "Recovering from Apartheid," The New Yorker 35 (18 November 1996): 86-
95.
16 Quentin Lauer, A Reading of Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit' (New York: Fordham
University Press, 1976), 229.
17 Earlier attempts to identify her with Mary Magdalene have been discredited. See Edith
Deen, All the Women of the Bible (Edison: Castle Books, 1955), 203-04.
18 H.S. Harris, 78.
19 I am in agreement here with Falk Wagner who has argued that Hegel glosses over
important differences between reconciliation with the divine and the reconciliation of

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conscience. Falk Wagner, Der Gedanke der Personlichkeit Gottes bei Fichte und Hegel
(Giitersloh: Gutersloher Verlagshaus, G. Mohr, 1971), 182-87)
20 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov trans. David Magarshack
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), 287.
21 I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor H.S. Harris for discussion and comments on earlier
drafts of this paper. Thanks are also due to Ariadna Epshteyn, Ian Jarvie, and Ellen Miller.

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