Perdón y vida pública: Hannah Arendt y la sungnome griega

In The Human Condition, Arendt claims “the discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the sphere of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth”. In what follows, we will revise the ancient use of the Greek verb sungignôskô which, in our opinion, fulfills the same role that Arendt finds in this alleged Christian novelty —the “mutual exoneration of what has been done”— not only to understand what would the actual discovery Arendt attributes to Jesus imply, but because we believe claiming the Greeks were unaware of the faculty of forgiveness is inaccurate.