Derrida, Arendt and 'care for the world' : forgiveness and cosmopolitanism reconsidered

Abstract

This thesis explores the themes of forgiveness and cosmopolitanism through the prism of ‘care’ – a term which is used here in reference to Hannah Arendt’s notion of ‘care for the world’. It presents both a theory of a ‘caring forgiveness’ and a ‘caring cosmopolitanism,’ two world-centric theories of political action conceptualized from a reconsideration of Jacques Derrida’s and Arendt’s respective bodies of thought. Additionally, this thesis illustrates how a caring forgiveness and cosmopolitanism are practices that introduce new beginnings into the public realm of the political, effectively allowing people(s) to negotiate the temporal gap between past and future by facilitating their nonviolent and non-instrumental transition through time. Although there is a tendency in (global) politics to react violently as a means of re-establishing hierarchical dynamics of power in the (international) political arena, a caring forgiveness and cosmopolitanism are two forms of praxis which cultivate new action instead of perpetuating – in an automatic manner – pernicious cycles of violence. Accordingly, forgiveness and cosmopolitanism are worldly practices that can be said to care for the doing of political action in a manner that does not merely react to past occurrences of (violent) wrongdoing. This thesis consequently demonstrates how forgiveness and cosmopolitanism ‘care for the world’ by ensuring that political actors continue to possess the capacity to initiate new action(s) and to develop freely new plot lines in the ever unfolding meta-narrative of human history.