Forgiveness and the ethics of the discourse

Despite, differences  between  jewish  and  Christian  conceptions,  both express a basic moral problem. A crime, a sin, and, in general, an evil act in moral sense has the consequence to interrupt an interpersonal relationship among many people which forma community. Now, for both, judaism and Catholicism, the question  of  forgiveness  is not whether  or not  is possible  to restore  this relationship, but under what conditions the pardon is possible. In this latter case, the problem  is if there are universal conditions for forgiveness.  Even though, Habermas says that his theory does not intend to solve concrete moral problems, it is possible that his universalistic conception of morality can give some clues to the question of pardon.  In the rest of this paper I will explore the relationship between forgiveness and moral norms in the context of Discursive Ethics. For this purposes,  firstly, I will analyze in what manner the idea of forgiveness is related with the basic intuitions that the Discursive Ethics intends to describe.

Next, I will show the relation between forgiveness, moral feelings and moral norms. Finally, under the context of the Colombian case, I will try to show that the act of forgiveness can be seen as a duty of virtue to oneself and to others.