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Forgiveness as a Civilizational Condition for Development: Transitional Justice, Memory, and Survival in Light of the South African and Chilean Experiences

Abstract (English) This article offers a comparative analysis of transitional justice in post-apartheid South Africa and post-Pinochet Chile, arguing that forgiveness—when institutionally embedded in truth-telling, accountability, and social justice—can function as a civilizational precondition for sustainable development in societies emerging from organized violence. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Arendt, Ricœur, and Girard, and engaging with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (with its emphasis on Ubuntu) and Chile’s gradual justice process (from the Rettig Report to the 2019 protests), the study demonstrates that forgiveness severed from truth slides into imposed amnesia; severed from accountability, it becomes impunity; and severed from social justice, it reduces reconciliation to a symbolic gesture that fails to translate into everyday life. South Africa’s experience shows that moral reconciliation, however necessary, cannot substitute for structural economic transformation. Chile’s trajectory reveals that neoliberal growth and institutional stability, achieved under authoritarian rule, cannot indefinitely compensate for unresolved historical memory and legitimacy deficits—as the 2019 uprising starkly illustrated. The article introduces the concept of soft collapse to describe the gradual erosion of social trust and shared futurity when post-violence societies fail to integrate justice, memory, and development. Ultimately, the paper contends that forgiveness, far from a private virtue or a state-managed ritual, is a demanding institutional and political practice that enables societies to acknowledge past suffering, hold power accountable, and build a collectively livable future—without reverting to vengeance or surrendering to oblivion. The South African and Chilean cases, each incomplete but instructive, confirm that sustainable development in the aftermath of violence requires a difficult synthesis of truth, responsibility, material reparation, and the restoration of human dignity as the very fabric of public life.

shayan tale masouleh • May 5, 2026 • 1 views
Forgiveness as a Civilizational Condition for Development: Transitional Justice, Memory, and Survival in Light of the South African and Chilean Experiences
Abstract (English) This article offers a comparative analysis of transitional justice in post-apartheid South Africa and post-Pinochet Chile, arguing that forgiveness—when institutionally embedded in truth-telling, accountability, and social justice—can function as a civilizational precondition for sustainable development in societies emerging from organized violence. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Arendt, Ricœur, and Girard, and engaging with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (with its emphasis on Ubuntu) and Chile’s gradual justice process (from the Rettig Report to the 2019 protests), the study demonstrates that forgiveness severed from truth slides into imposed amnesia; severed from accountability, it becomes impunity; and severed from social justice, it reduces reconciliation to a symbolic gesture that fails to translate into everyday life. South Africa’s experience shows that moral reconciliation, however necessary, cannot substitute for structural economic transformation. Chile’s trajectory reveals that neoliberal growth and institutional stability, achieved under authoritarian rule, cannot indefinitely compensate for unresolved historical memory and legitimacy deficits—as the 2019 uprising starkly illustrated. The article introduces the concept of soft collapse to describe the gradual erosion of social trust and shared futurity when post-violence societies fail to integrate justice, memory, and development. Ultimately, the paper contends that forgiveness, far from a private virtue or a state-managed ritual, is a demanding institutional and political practice that enables societies to acknowledge past suffering, hold power accountable, and build a collectively livable future—without reverting to vengeance or surrendering to oblivion. The South African and Chilean cases, each incomplete but instructive, confirm that sustainable development in the aftermath of violence requires a difficult synthesis of truth, responsibility, material reparation, and the restoration of human dignity as the very fabric of public life.
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