Report of the Conference about the Mediterranean held at the University of Salerno in September 2017, involving scholars of several disciplines.

The article analyses the concept of forgiveness, in the context of the contemporary debate, especially in French philosophy. The study concerns four main points: we will consider the notion of forgiveness as the main gift, on the basis of the proposal of Jankélévitch and Gabriel Marcel; the strict relationship between the notion of forgiveness and the one of mystery, with regard to the work of Gabriel Marcel on this theme; the difference between the act of forgiving and the one of excusing, and the extension of the concept of forgiveness, on the basis of the Catholic interpretation of it.

This contribution intends to explore the theme of forgiveness starting from the role it plays in Hegelian philosophy - especially as it appears in the early text The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate and in the Phenomenology of Spirit - with the aim of emphasizing the specifically philosophical meaning of forgiveness. In the 1798-1799 text, in fact, forgiveness gains importance in relation to the comparison between the spirit of Judaism and that of Christianity. Starting from here, one can appreciate how, based on this theological background, the discussion that appears in the last section of the sixth chapter of the Phenomenology considers the experience of forgiveness as the paradigm of experience as such. In this sense, the moment of forgiveness is central insofar as it is a constitutively intersubjective experience.

The question of forgiveness arose for Paul Ricoeur from the first moment of his phenomenology of the will. Isolating consciousness in order to describe its structure, especially that of its willing dimension (freedom), presupposes a distancing from the world, but also a distancing from evil. The precondition of this distancing is forgiveness. Forgiveness appears when consciousness is ready to reject the finitude that, of necessity, opposes itself to freedom: this ‘face’ of freedom, distinguished from the articulation of phenomenology and hermeneutics, is the admiration carried by Stoic and Orphic myths. Freedom appears next when the suffering endured at the hands of another challenges one’s freedom: this essay will develop what Ricoeur could only sketch regarding the idea of “Franciscan” hope. Forgiveness appears, finally, when Ricoeur explores it in connection with guilt. In conclusion, we will seek to find the unity shared between these three ‘faces’ of forgiveness.

The city of Haifa, in the northern part of Israel, has been the theatre of harsh clashes between Jews and Muslims for many years. Haifa was heavy involved in the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 and during the 1948 the Palestinian population, about 80.000 people, was evacuated by the Jewish militias. After the establishment of the State of Israel, several terror attacks took place in the city. Today, several religious groups live in Haifa, with non easy relations. Nevertheless, each year the city celebrates the Holyday of Holydays, an interfaith festival. The city presents significant traits that may help us test Tönnies’s idea of a dichotomy between community (Gemeinschaft) and society (Gesellschaft). In different moments of city life, we find features typical of community and, in certain others, characteristics typical of society

Islam could provide an essential tool to the world to overcome the inequality: the Islamic finance, based on the ethical principles of Quran and Sunnah. According to these principles, indeed, the Islamic bank should aim to reduce poverty by easing the access to the credit system to the most disadvantaged people. In that way the development of people and countries would not pass through the satisfaction of material needs, which today are more and more growing, but through simplicity, solidarity and ethics.