[Andrzej_Wiercinski_(ed ... - WordPress.com

small article on “Le pardon ou comment revenir au monde ordinaire,” 28 I protest againsta way of pushing forgiveness too far, outside the world, into an impossible extraordinary,and attempt to come back from a sublime and inaccessible forgiveness to one that is lessdramatic. The eskhaton, in fact, is not the end of the world, just the opposite. It iselsewhere also the main argument of Ricoeur against a deconstruction that wants to betotal: it is not necessary to construct a metaphysics of the original and the metaphoricalon the duality of the figurative sense and the literal sense, because the latter means onlycurrent, usual. 29 And if ordinary language is likewise entirely metaphorical, how do weget out of it, how do we not trust these normal anomalies of language that are ourmetaphors, all not-yet-lexicalized usage? 30I wrote above that if forgiveness appeared as this detotalization, a return to thebeginning, one did not begin again the same way. If it was necessary to begin again, Iwould begin with Kant’s emphasis, in The Critique of Judgment, on the questions ofreceptiveness. This is not only the feeling that beauty speaks, but that we do not knowwhat it says (this is no doubt hope). This is not only that in the absence of a third we canmake room in ourselves for the possibility of another point of view, in a sort of enlargingof the imagination. (p. 414) It is the fact that my judgments, my memory, even mytestimony, cannot be forced, obligated, ordered, nor imposed, and that their credibility andtheir very communicability rests, fragile, on the manner of which they are confided intheir receivers. But as with pleasure, joy, or love, if forgiveness cannot be imposed (p.471), is still works as something of a traversing of distrust and skepticism, not toward anassured and absolute confidence, but toward a confidence in the possibility of acting andspeaking, and the indubitable recognition that “this was.” (p. 429-430) This zigzag ofconfidence in one’s own testimony, which renders to the testimony of others theconfidence that is due, seems to me the beating heart the work that has been given us hereto discuss and reflect on together.Translated by Boyd Blundell282930Esprit (août-septembre 2000).See Ricoeur, La métaphore vive, 369.Ibid., 365-366.109