Just as the only tool to protect against unpredictability is some ability to make and keep promises, so Arendt says only one tool exists to ameliorate the irreversibility of our actions. That is ‘the faculty of forgiving’. These two things necessarily go together – the ability to bind together through promises and the ability to stay bound through forgiveness. Of the latter Arendt writes: Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victim
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Hannah Arendt on forgiveness.
