Forgiveness proposes a question distinct from the question motivating to the representation of the past on the plane of memory, history, and forgetting. The trajectory of forgiveness has its origin in the disproportion between the poles of fault and forgiveness: below, the avowal of fault; above, the hymn to forgiveness. The first brings to the language an experience of the same order as those ‘givens of experience’ and as those ‘boundary situations’, upon which reflective thinking is grafted. Here, agents bind themselves to their action and recognize themselves as accountable. The second can be heard in the sapiential poetry that celebrates love and joy. This voice says that there is forgiveness. Ricoeur takes note of a remarkable relation which places the request for forgiveness and the offering of forgiveness on a plane of equality and reciprocity, as if there existed a relation of exchange between these two speech acts. The exploration of this track is encouraged by the kinship found in numerous languages between forgiving and giving. In the thesis of Ricoeur, a significant asymmetry exists between being able to forgive and being able to promise. Thus, at the heart of selfhood and at the core of imputability, the paradox of forgiveness is laid bare by the dialectic of repentance in the Abrahamic tradition. There remains the attempt to recapitulate the entire course traveled in Memory, History, Forgetting in light of the spirit of forgiveness, with the eschatological projection, formulated in the optative mood.