법과 용서

Law and Forgiveness - Focusing on Derrida s Theory of Forgiveness -

The idea of law is justice. The state builds stability and integration peace through legislation and law enforcement appropriate to this ideology. And the subjects and acts against them are treated according to the law by using the public power of the state. In modern society, only the state is the exclusive holder of this violence in accordance with the law. Exclusive violent acts of the state are exercised through law. The enforcement of this law consists of the aspect of legality and the aspect of ethics. In other words, the law and the law of the state must conform to justice. So what is the ethics required at this time? If we understand the opposite value of violence as love, we will be able to explore the ethics of the law. And through this, we will be able to explore the right law. The philosophical position of recognizing the combination of law and morality is traditionally a position of natural law. According to Finnis, the moral of natural law and the principle and purpose of all other moral norms is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Therefore, from the standpoint of natural law, which recognizes the combination of law and morality, the law must adhere to the morality of this natural law. So what is love in practice? According to Reinhold Niebuhr(1892-1971), the essential expression of love is forgiveness. Forgiveness is “the most difficult and impossible moral achievement.” For that reason, forgiveness is “impossible possibility.” In this article, we examine Derrida’s theory for the theoretical inquiry of forgiveness. Derrida is a scholar who pushed contemplation of forgiveness up to the deconstructive horizon of postmodernism. To be precise, we have explored theoretical inquiry to the limits of reason by deconstructing forgiveness. For this inquiry, I treated the issue of amnesty, a realistic legal issue. Therefore, it is considered to be an appropriate scholar to design the relationship between law and love. After examining Derrida s introductory theory on the theoretical level, I will examine how the law can practice forgiveness in practice. Through this work, we try to find the contact point between forgiveness as the embodiment of love and the legal system of reality.