The work of memory and forgiveness: An approach to Colombian reality from the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to develop the thesis that, if forgiveness exists, it always involves the work of memory. To fulfill this purpose and to reflect on the possibilities of forgiveness in the Colombian reality, we will take as a basis for our reflection the approaches of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur about memory, forgiveness, identity, oneself and narration. Based on Ricoeur's approaches, we can affirm that in the testimony of the victims is the horizon of the relationship between memory and forgiveness, because the reconstruction of past events through narration opens a dialectic between what has marked the identity in the past and the variations and projections of this identity. Additionally, the narration is a way of recovering the capacity for action, which was affected because of the damage that the victim has received. However, the testimony has minimum conditions: that the victim can tell their story, that someone willing to listen to the victim and that the truth of the facts can be recovered through justice and reparation processes. Based on these minimum conditions, we can analyze if is feasible to speak of forgiveness in the context of the Colombian armed conflict with the help of some victims' testimonies. At the end of the text we conclude that forgiveness implies processes of reparation and justice and that it only emerges apart from these when the victim decides to resignify the painful past past following an ethical ideal of happiness that puts personal fulfillment first and not the offense received.