Forgiveness and the Dead

One of Patočka’s central examples in “The phenomenology of afterlife” is how to understand one’s relation to one’s dead father. Since relations of fathers and sons are not seldom difficult, also after the father’s death, a need for forgiveness might arise here, the need for the son to forgive and be forgiven by his father. This would be an interesting instance of the problems brought about by the loss of reciprocity that is a central theme of Patočka’s text. Pointing to the need to forgive and be forgiven is one way of showing why Patočka is right when he writes: “[I]t is only in relation to another […] that we become what we are, and yet other and otherwise than we were before.” This then raises the question whether the son’s relationship to his dead father will remain forever as difficult as it was at the time of the father’s death, whether its possible transformation is the result of a move on the son’s side only, or whether some form of reciprocity is still possible.