The paper offers an international and interdisciplinary analysis of the evolution of a new political institution which appeared and was popularized in international politics after World War II: declarations of repentance and forgiveness in politics. These declarations were one of the most important institutions, shaping, among others, European identity for decades after the second world war. They have also been an indispensable supplement to politics of transitional justice and thus the paper would bring an interesting focus to the workshop.
The paper begins with a description of the evolution of the institution of political forgiveness. It appeared firstly in a stable configuration of European politics, that lasted nearly half a century and was delineated by the year 1945, Yalta, Potsdam and the Cold War. In this context, work on European remembrance culture was associated primarily with the western side of the Iron Curtain. Consequently, memory – as well as the first declarations – centered primarily around the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, a country called sometimes the heart of the twentieth century history (Diner, 1999) and associated with the name of the largest death camp – Auschwitz (considered a symbol of the most ferocious event of the twentieth century: the Shoah) (Meier 2006, Spiewak 1991).
The paper describes then a process of proliferation of declarations of political declarations of remorse and forgiveness both in Europe and in the other parts of the world. It also presents an insight into contemporary declarations of repentance and forgiveness as deeply problematic. Although essentially a public and political phenomenon, these declarations employ concepts usually considered to be foundations of individual, and not political, ethics: guilt, apology, remorse, atonement, forgiveness, and other concepts. Furthermore, the political institution of public repentance and forgiveness assumes that a given community bears collective responsibility for the evil of its past. Such a premise, in turn, implies both the continuity of community over time and generations and the continuity of the moral representation inherited and exercised by politicians. These three premises are hardly acceptable in a liberal state (Ash 1997), yet, surprisingly, that is precisely where we observe their greatest popularity in the last decades.
