PRAGMATISM AND THE FORGIVENESS OF THE PAST

 Leslie A. Muray/ Curry College

I. Introduction.

The countries that have been experiencing cataclysmic changes over the last decade, from the nations of the former Eastern bloc to South Africa to the countries of Latin America with long standing military dictatorships, have all had to deal with the traumatic events of their recent history. To a large extent, this has involved the issue of bringing to light the identity and the calling into account of the perpetrators of brutality and atrocity; to a lesser extent, it has involved the “unmasking” of informers, and even the “purging” of the personnel of “l’ancien regime.” Recognition and acceptance of varying degrees of responsibility for the past has been seen as a precondition for national reconciliation. To me, these are integral to the dynamics of what I like to call “the forgiveness of the past.”

There is, however, much more involved in the adjudication of culpability, as important as that is, involved in the forgiveness of the past. The past is being rewritten, statues are being torn down and new ones raised up, streets have been renamed. While, to be sure, such reinterpretations of the past involve winners and losers, and do exhibit some degree of arbitrariness, nevertheless they also involve very basic, fundamental values and ways of looking at the world. And there can be no authentic and effective national reconciliation and forgiveness of the past until there is an honest telling of the story(ies), until there is an honest facing of the past and people’s responsibility(ies), in 
varying degrees, for that past in the very telling of the story.

In this paper, I use the example of reburials, the dynamics of which resemble those of the renaming of streets and the tearing down/ building up of statues, in Hungary and other countries of the former Eastern bloc as illustrative of the struggle over fundamental orientations and values in the reinterpretation of the past. I examine the potential contribution of American pragmatism to contribute to this process of the forgiveness of the past. This contribution I see in two places. One is in the fundamental tenet of pragmatism that ideas have consequences. In the context of the topic this paper, this means that the very notion of “the forgiveness of the past,” let alone interpretations of it, have enormous practical consequences. The second is in pragmatism’s view of temporal passage, which is virtually identical with that of process thought. In both pragmatism and process thought, the past, all of the past, is constitutive of the present. 

The present is internally related to the past—all of it. The point is that we are free in the present as to how we choose to let the past enter into the present, as to what we do with the past—whether we deal with it in ways that are transformative and forgiving of that past. In this regard, I shall examine the thought of Marjorie Suchocki, who makes use of both process thought and pragmatism in her illuminative treatment of the forgiveness of the past.

II. The Sins of the Past.

In her Pulitzer Prize winning The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism, Tina Rosenberg has perceptively written that much more than a rewriting of the past is occurring in Central Europe: “The struggle to define the past is one of the most important ways eastern Europeans compete for control of the present.”[1] She claims that “nations, like individuals, need to face up to and understand traumatic past events before they can put them aside and move on to normal life.”[2] This is equally true for victims and collaborators alike, and vital for the building of democracy.[3] Thus, there are fundamental values and life orientations, and differences between them, at stake in the reinterpretation of the past.

I shall focus on the symbolization and ritualization of the reinterpretation of the past involved in the reburials, the dynamics of which resemble those of the tearing down and building up of statues and the renaming of streets. Katherine Verdery has maintained that the reburials that were so symbolic of the Great Transformation of 1989-90 were in fact a ritual reconstruction of the meaningful universe.[4] This reordering of the meaningful universe occurred in many ways at different levels: the “cosmic” questions of the meaning of life and death; the mystery surrounding dead bodies; the sacralization of politics and authority in new ways; the reconstitution of the moral order; the reconfiguration of space and time; and the reconstruction of national identity and of social relations.[5] And perhaps most importantly, the radical transformation of the meaningful universe has to do with the proper relationship between the living members of the human community and ancestors, expressed most vividly in death rituals. To a considerable extent, this is a phenomenon evident in a variety of ways in all of the countries of the former Eastern bloc, ranging from the debate in Russia about what to do with Lenin’s body to the removal of Dimitrov’s remains from his mausoleum in Sofia, Bulgaria by his family to protect it from would be desecrators to the reburials that, while occurring throughout the entire region, have been most frequent and most intense in Hungary.[6]

By far the symbolically most significant of these reburials was that of Imre Nagy, the Prime Minister during the Revolution of 1956; Pál Maléter, tank commander, colonel, Defense Minister at the end of the Revolution; Miklós Gimes, a journalist who had been among Nagy’s intimates; Jozsef Szilágyi, Nagy’s secretary during the uprising who, unlike the other three who were executed together, was hanged earlier; and the empty coffin of “the unknown freedom fighter” on June 16, 1989. The symbolic significance of the reburials cannot be minimized. For thirty three years, the official propaganda had maintained that the revolution had been a counterrevolution, the very “raison d’ętre” for “the Kádár regime” (1956-1988) coming to power, for its very legitimacy. Although Hungary had been the most “liberal” economic and political policies and had the reputation of being “the happiest barrack in the block,” memories of János Kádár coming to power in a Soviet tank and consolidating his power as “the butcher of Budapest” remained, in spite of the attempts to suppress them, to cultivate official and unofficial amnesia. As recently as 1988, people who tried to commemorate the Revolution and/or honor the victims of the post-’56 reprisals were beaten and scattered by truncheon wielding horseback police. The graves were unmarked, covered with weeds, the bodies of the victims buried, without coffins, face down ( as was discovered when the remains were unearthed for reburials).Executed by hanging, for Hungarians it symbolized, as it was meant to, a humiliating and ignominious end.[7]

When the remains of Nagy, Maléter, Gimes, Szilágyi, and “the unknown freedom fighter” were ceremoniously reburied, with 250,000 people attending the public ceremonies, with some of the pallbearers, representing the Party, having been involved in the decisions that led to the victims’ executions (the blood of the victims had truly, in a metaphorical sense, caked on their hands), the visible reordering and reversal of the meaningful universe was nothing short of completely astonishing to Hungarians living in and outside of Hungary. One of the invited guests of honor, Béla Király, Professor of History at Columbia University and Commander of the “Honvédség,” the “defenders of the country,” the military, second only to Maléter, in the waning days of the revolution, found out upon his arrival that there was still an outstanding death sentence awaiting him! 

Apocryphal rumors circulated that Kádár spent the day of the reburial and the period immediately following staring in front of himself and repeating the name of Imre Nagy. Many Hungarians thought that it was no coincidence or accident that Kádár died the very day, three weeks later, on which the courts had rehabilitated Nagy and his colleagues! The reburials, the point could hardly be missed, were also the symbolic burial of an entire period and the ritualization of the promise of some form of personal and communal resurrection.

The reburials had occurred as roundtable discussions concerning free elections were taking place, two weeks before the historic Polish elections. The symbolic power of the reburials and the participation they evoked made the snowball of reform into an irreversible avalanche!  

 The reburials had also served to unite Hungary’s disparate fledgling political parties and groupings, much as the revolution itself had done thirty-three years before. Minimally, there was some sense of what they were against, the lack of freedom, and a loose sense of what they were for, some sort of symbolic representation of freedom.

The reburials provided an avenue, however adequately or not, to come to grips symbolically with the past; to assign culpability, however faintly and the vaguest of ways; to mourn the dead who officially had not been allowed to be mourned before; and, in the most general terms, to confess  a collective complicity (not the same as the equality of guilt) in the sins of the past. The reburials were a vehicle for wrestling openly with the past and for transcending that past.This unity was not to last. The fundamental values at stake in the reburials, the renaming of streets, the tearing down/building up of statues became evident in the verbal sparring between different political and “freedom fighter” groups, in the manner in which events were remembered and celebrated, and whose statues were to be erected as “authentically” representative of the Revolution.[8]

Hungarians have a saying,” We bury well!” Numerous reburials would follow those of 1989: Cardinal Mindszenty, symbol of anti-communism, less well known in the West for his anti-Nazi sentiments, conservative yet with Christian socialist sympathies and a sense of  “noblesse oblige;” Oszkár Jászi, Minister of Nationalities in the short lived post-Habsburg Károlyi government, long time professor at Oberlin College, one of the great “democrats” of Hungarian history who had been adopted by Hungarian “democrats” of various stripes as one of their own; Anna Kéthly, one of the longtime leaders of the anti-Communist faction of the Social Democratic Party, imprisoned by both the fascists and Stalinists, Foreign Minister of the last cabinet of Imre Nagy, who spent all of the post-’56 period up to her death in Belgium. All of these reburials were symbolic “homecomings” of once  “prodigal daughters and sons” into a new, “resurrected,” democratic Hungary. Each of these reburials occurred in 1991. 

To a degree following the pattern, to a degree departing from it, was theceremonial reburial of Admiral Miklós Horthy, regent of Hungary from 1920 to 1944, in 1993. Unlike the other funerals, which served to unite various factions and movements, however temporarily, Horthy’s reburial was divisive and was used divisively by the political figures who were in attendance-- although not by the family. The ceremonies became a rallying point for ultra-nationalist politicians and cultural figures, particularly those who had recently been purged from the ruling coalition. Some of these figures had acquired international notoriety on account of their anti-Semitism. Horthy’s reburial, regardless of the family’s intentions, became a vehicle for illustrating just how divided Hungarian society had become—or perhaps to bring to the surface long buried fissures.[9]

In the years since 1993, the ceremonial reburials have stopped or slowed down. The society has gone though the cycle of facing extreme economic hardship, with unemployment close to 20%, an inflation rate over 30%, with over 30% living under the poverty line to economic recovery (at least according to the conventional wisdom), with inflation around 8%, unemployment hovering near 10%. These economic hardships exacerbated, helped create, and reinforced the tensions and divisions of Hungarian society. Nowhere was this more evident than in the public commemorations surrounding 1956, October 23, the day the Revolution broke out, now a national holiday, and June 16, the anniversary of the execution of Imre Nagy and his “martyred colleagues,” a national day of mourning. During the days of the Socialist (successor party to the reform wing of the Communists) and the Alliance of Free Democrats (liberal in the classical sense, consisting largely of former dissidents) coalition, members of the right of center opposition frequently boycotted the official observances, often setting up their own, claiming that the Revolution had been “hijacked” by the very people the freedom fighters had fought against. Some of the Socialists and the older Free Democrats pointed to their own post-’56 victimization and tried to claim that the Revolution belonged to all of the Hungarian people. After the current right of center coalition won the elections of 1998, its members, most vividly Prime Minister, now 37 years old, Viktor Orbán conspicuously shunned the “56-er generation’s”“social-liberals.” Perhaps the most powerful and saddest image was a picture of Orbán at the official ceremonies in contrast to the picture of a lonely President Árpád Göncz, who had spent six years in prison during the post-’56 reprisals, laying flowers on the graves of his executed colleagues! In addition to all of this polls indicated that much of the 50% of the Hungarian population born after 1956 were tired of the divisions expressed by the different historical memories of the Revolution; in fact, they were tired of the Revolution. 2000 is not 1956! 

And yet, for those Hungarians old enough to remember, from President Göncz to his right wing opponents (to myself), 1956 is a formative event. It, and the entire period it represents, lives on in the present. As László Lengyel has eloquently written, Hungary will be wrestling for a long time with the legacy of “homo kadaricus”—including the brilliant young leaders of the current coalition who are the offspring of “homo kadaricus!”[10]

 But this does not change the fact that there needs to occur a collective reconciliation and forgiveness. Perhaps there needs to take place a greater calling into accountability for the past—without vengeance or retribution, with the intent of forgiveness. And for this to be effective, for it take to take hold of the human psyche, it needs to be ritualized and to be expressed symbolically. It, to be sure, needs to find adequate expression in politico-economic-cultural institutions. And perhaps this search for an adequate symbolization of the collective forgiveness of the past and its political expression is a never ending task. At its best, this is what the reconstructions occurring in Central and Eastern are all about.

III. The Forgiveness of the Past

The American tradition of pragmatism has much to contribute to societies undergoing the kind of radical transformation we have seen in the former eastern bloc, South Africa, the Philippines, the countries of Latin America, etc. and their respective needs for the forgiveness of the past.  First, the typically pragmatic notion that ideas have consequences, meaning in terms of the theme of this paper that the very way in which the forgiveness of the past is conceived has consequences for how that forgiveness is exercised and realized.

The pragmatic meaning of the forgiveness of the past is inseparable from pragmatism’s understanding of temporal passage, which I understand to be virtually identical to that of process thought. The past flows into the present, is constitutive of the present. The present cannot help but take account of, take into its very self-constitution the past And that is all of the past – not just my own but of every actuality in the universe! Thus, all of the past cannot help but be part of my very becoming.

However, what the we do with past in the present, how we take the past into account, how we allow it to enter the present is up to us. We can choose to allow to the experiences of the past to dominate or we can accept them as having occurred, to see the past, in spite of the pain, as meaningful, and move, accept yet transcend the past as we respond to the novel possibilities of the future. 

Marjorie Suchocki, a process theologian influenced by pragmatism, is very helpful in her analysis of the forgiveness of the past. Suchocki, having examined the meaning of “original sin” as the “fall into violence,” explores the understandable difficulty victims of violence have in moving into forgiveness. For such victims, healing and reconciliation occurs when there is remembrance and a transcendence of that remembrance. There is a sense in which things are not set right until there is retribution or restitution.[11] However, to be overwhelmed by the desire for vengeance in seeking set things right is to get mired in the violence of the past.

Suchocki writes that “to be caught in the continuous repetition of violence within the psyche distorts memory, for it is a vivid making-present of the past as if it were not past, but still present.”[12] What is needed, in her view, is “transformative memory” in which the remembrance of the past is “…as past, opening one to the present.”[13] This does not mean “forgive and forget” nor “love the sinner, hate the sin,” neither of which in her estimation transforms the past. Rather, what is needed is the honest coming to grips with the fact that the violence of the past has indeed occurred,  yet one needs not be mired in the past; one can see the violator as violator but not just as violator. One sees the past for what it is yet transcend it and respond to the novel possibilities of the future by intending, instead of vengeance, the well-being of the perpetrator of violence.[14] She writes:” In the case of forgiveness, one remembers in order to transform; in the case of vengeance, one remembers in order to destroy.”[15] Moreover, “transformation involves a new hope for a future, whereas destruction perpetuates the violence of the past…” for “memory is involved in the mode of transcendence in the one case, and in the mode of imprisonment in the other.”[16] She claims further that “therefore while forgiveness cannot involve disregarding the violation, neither can it be entrapment in memory of violation.”[17] She concludes that “it is memory in the mode of self-transcendence, integrating the memory into whatever new futures are yet possible.”[18]

To Suchocki, all of this implies that we need to confess our own complicity, with varying degrees of guilt, in perpetuating the “fall into violence” and the institutions that embody it. And, of course, being the good process theologian that she is, all of the experiences of the past, the pain, the suffering, and grief, as well as happiness and joy, are experienced eminently, preserved everlastingly, and transformed, redeemed in an ultimate sense in the divine memory.[19]

Pragmatism, as I have interpreted it though the prism of process thought, using the work of Marjorie Suchocki, has much illuminative potential, much to contribute to the issue of the forgiveness of the past. It provides important philosophical underpinnings for understanding the forgiveness of the past—especially in the notion that ideas have consequences; that at least part of the measure of the truth of an idea are its consequences; and in pragmatism’s understanding of temporal passage.

It goes without saying that any potential contribution American pragmatism may make will need to be creatively synthesized with the efforts of the particular societies to find adequate symbolization and ritualization, as well as political and juridical expression, of the forgiveness of the past. 

IV. Conclusion.

In this paper, I have used the example of reburials in Hungary, but typical throughout the former Eastern bloc, as illustrative of the struggle over fundamental orientations and values in reinterpretations of the past, most especially pertaining to the forgiveness of the past. I then explored the potential contribution of American pragmatism to the issue of the forgiveness of in societies undergoing cataclysmic transformations.

A moving insight by Hannah Arendt pulls together the diverse elements of this paper: it is forgiveness that enables respect for the human person, for the affirmation of the dignity of human beings within the bonds of our communal existence.[20]