In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt describes a progression towards man's emancipation from the predicaments of life. Whereas humanity is able to destroy what it fabricates as well as what arises in nature, "men never have been and never will be able to undo or even control reliably any of the processes they start through action" (232-33). Remarkably, the remedy of this new predicament does not arise from a higher faculty outside this realm; the remedy is found within it (236). The antidote for irreversibility, Arendt tells us, is forgiveness.
Inspired by Arendt's understanding of forgiveness as "the possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility," I offer a close reading of this highly creative capacity and elucidating the limited creative force of both reactions and interruptions offered by vengeance and punishment in order to further illuminate the truly revelatory power of forgiveness. Following that, I analyze Arendt's own response to Adolf Eichmann, who organized the mass deportation and extermination of the Jews (237). With Arendt's definition of forgiveness in mind, I expose the difficulties of both punishment and forgiveness in the Eichmann trial. Finally, I propose a moral psychology of forgiveness that emphasizes the forgiver's role in this creative act in order to explore and critique the grounds on which Arendt is able to justify the unforgivability of Eichmann. Granting this interpretation, the creative force of forgiveness might go beyond what Arendt thinks is the limit of forgiveness: namely the non-person.