In this paper, I explore specifically the relationship between forgiveness and law, for the purposes of illuminating the significance and also the limitations of the culture and politics of liberalism, of rights-based agency and the political authority that bolsters it. This critical analysis of liberalism does not contain a proposal for a particular political regime or for an “ultimate” form of human community. Rather, what Hegel offers us is a new understanding of the relation between the individual and a social whole organized in terms of laws and common practices that could allow us to better shape the existing political communities in which we find ourselves.
