"Forgiveness, if there is such a thing, must and can only forgive the unforgivable, the irremissible - and thus make the impossible possible. [...]. We should ask ourselves if the irreparable means the unforgivable. I do not believe it, just as the "unwritten", a legal concept, does not belong to the class of forgiveness and does not mean the unforgivable."
Jacques Derrida

This book publishes the lecture given by Jacques Derrida at the French Institute of Athens (December 18, 1997), which deals with the concept of forgiveness and its relationship with ethics, law, and politics. From this correlation, the French philosopher will address issues that concern more generally the relationship of his own thought, deconstruction, with the ethical-legal-political order.
The dignity of forgiveness is unconditional, that is, super-ethical, without rules, and is granted without conditions, without the prior request for forgiveness being necessary. That is why it only forgives the unforgivable, what we cannot forgive, even if we want to. On the other hand, conditional forgiveness - relative and ethical - is granted on the condition that the wrongdoer has previously sought forgiveness from his victim.
In unconditional forgiveness, because it is foreign, heterogeneous to the order of law and politics, it is impossible to support law and politics. However, conditional forgiveness appears in this order with other related names and in many forms. That is why Derrida deals with the problems raised by amnesty, prescription, the unwritten, Auschwitz (the Shoah), the innovative concept of crime against humanity, the sovereign right to grant mercy, the global spectacle of the request for forgiveness by heads of state and by the Church (for crimes committed against other states or ethnic groups), apartheid (the resort to forgiveness in the form of amnesty in view of national reconciliation).