The remission of irreversibility and unpredictability of the action

Remarks on forgiveness and promise in Hannah Arendt

Abstract

The action, for Hannah Arendt, more than a human natural activity, requires certain courage to be carried on. This courage is necessary in order for man to assume the procedural character of the action, which means to admit the inability to undo what has been done or to foresee the consequences of his actions. The action is, thus, what allows the men to be free, and at the same time, what inhibits this freedom because of the processes unchained by the human relationships. However, in The human condition, the writer indicates that the redemptions of the irreversibility and the unpredictability of the action are, respectively, the forgiveness and the promise. The first faculty undoes the actions of the past and opens possibilities to the new beginnings. The second compels men to promise, suiting like islands of security in an ocean of uncertainties which is the future. The present paper develops the political importance of the action to Hannah Arendt and how the writer thinks of forgiveness and promise as tools to redeem the irreversibility and the unpredictability of the action and build the personal responsibility.