Il fardello condiviso e l’abisso incolmabile Riconciliazione e perdono in Hannah Arendt

This article analyses Hannah Arendt’s notion of reconciliation, its relationship with forgiveness and the limits of both. Whilst in her early Denktagebuch she develops her understanding of reconciliation by distinguishing it from forgiveness, in other works, such as The Human Condition, the distance between them seems to vanish. Moreover, both reconciliation and forgiveness are not absolute, because Auschwitz represents something that “ought not to have happened”. These limits are shown in Arendt’s reading of Eichmann trial.