Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy is a favourite book to which I often return. In it, De Botton contemplates philosophy as an allegorical figure that can give one a steer in navigating life’s tribulations.
I have been thinking a lot recently about where we can draw comfort in our divided world, more so this week as geopolitics becomes a less abstract construct here in the UK. The poison of ethnic, religious and national division is seeping into every interaction and threatens the safety of us all.
Today, October 7, is the second anniversary of the most deadly chapter in the Israel-Hamas war, and I hope it will be the last. I do not often wade into the Israel-Palestine issue, but it has gone too far on all sides. For once I agree with Donald Trump: there must be a ceasefire now.
On October 2 the terrorist Jihad Al-Shamie drove a car into pedestrians before stabbing worshippers at a Manchester synagogue. This was soon followed by a suspected arson attack on a mosque in an English seaside town that is now being investigated by police as a hate crime.
In response, the government has given the metropolitan police powers to restrict repeated protests in support of Palestine Action, in which hundreds of people are now arrested weekly.
Meanwhile, also this past week, 3,500km away, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) carrying 500 parliamentarians, lawyers and activists, including Greta Thunberg, leading to global protests.
As I write this, ceasefire negotiations are due to begin in Egypt, with Trump urging parties to move fast to come to an agreement. But when the guns finally fall silent on this seemingly intractable conflict, then what?
The work to achieve lasting peace and reconciliation does not stop when a negotiated settlement is reached, as we South Africans know all too well. Both Israelis and Palestinians will have been profoundly damaged by the hatred and ill-feeling this conflict has sparked and it will echo through generations.
At some point, to truly move forward you have to sit across the table from your enemies and find a workable path. That will require compromise, and probably a willingness to forgive — as the French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida explores in his essay On Forgiveness.
The essay, a consolation of philosophy to which I often return, provides tools to understand how we can relate to and forgive those who have harmed us. In it he considers moral failures such as apartheid and the Shoah (Holocaust), and asks how we might forgive in a way that is not performative or perfunctory, that which is “unforgivable”.
But what is to be done when Israelis feel the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7 2023 is in the category of the “unforgivable” and Palestinians feel the same about the Israeli response? In this context, this Abrahamic tradition of forgiveness, though ultimately imperfect for moral dilemmas and failures, seems apt.
Derrida wrote: “As enigmatic as the concept of forgiveness remains, it is the case that the scene, the figure, the language one tries to adapt to it belong to a religious heritage (let’s call it Abrahamic, in order to bring together Judaism, the Christianities and the Islams). From which comes the aporia … forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable. One cannot, or should not, forgive; there is only forgiveness, if there is any, where there is the unforgivable. That is to say that forgiveness must announce itself as impossibility itself.”
Forgiveness is therefore an extraordinary event, one framework with which to tackle the inexpiable. When the guns fall silent the work of forgiveness is adjacent to the work of reconciliation, reconstruction and healing, which at some point must begin.
• Dr Masie is a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics’ Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa.
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