Conclusion
It is no doubt significant that on the sole occasion (to my knowledge) when Derrida provides a positive characterization of what forgiveness is or might be, it is by means of the interpretation of a joke: “Two Jews, long-time enemies, meet at the synagogue, on the Day of Atonement [le jour du Grand Pardon]. One says to the other [as a gesture, therefore, of forgiveness—J. D.]: ‘I wish for you what you wish for me.’ The other immediately retorts: ‘Already you’re starting again?’” In the mutual recognition between the two enemies that forgiveness is impossible, Derrida suggests a certain compassion, even perhaps forgiveness, passes between them. Under the sign of a perhaps, the imagined laughter between the two Jews is “the regime of a possible whose possibilization must prevail over the impossible.” On this basis I interpret Derrida’s forgiveness as a messianic promise, a forgiveness to come, whose temporality must be distinguished from Jean Améry’s “natural time-sense,” i.e., the foreseeable future of reconciliation and normalization founded on amnesia.