The term "divine mercy" first appeared in texts in the 12th century, i.e. in around the final third of the Middle Ages, when mediaeval thought was dominated by religious influence, during a period in which there was no real distinction between philosophy and theology. Analysing the link between divine mercy and justice is an incitement either to consider divine justice and its paradigm, or to explore the manner in which the religious sphere is apparent in the programme of civil justice. The difficulty then consists of considering the type of justice to which divine mercy can genuinely contribute. In this article, we propose a phenomenological approach to divine mercy in order to explore its semantic space, with a view to gradually descending to the level of repentance as an ability to examine oneself from all angles, in order to state the alterations and the corrections that one is seeking to make to the foundations of one’s existence.