Calculus

Reading Derrida’s 1999-2000 Death Penalty Seminar, this paper presents a very brief discussion (with long quotations) of how Derrida juxtaposes Kant’s defense of the death penalty with Victor Hugo’s vote for the pure, simple and definite abolition of the death penalty. If one wants to ask what is the death penalty, one has to reconstitute the history of sovereignty as the hyphen in the expression “theologico-political”, and try to think the theologico-political in its possibility beginning from the death penalty. Deconstruction is thus perhaps, perhaps insists Derrida in this seminar, the deconstruction of the death penalty. Published in Human Rights, Rule of Law and the Contemporary Social Challenges in Complex Societies: Proceedings of the XXVI World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy of the Internationale Vereinigunf für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophieas. Marcelo Galuppo, Mônica Sette Lopes, Lucas de Alvarenga Gontijo, Karine Salgado and Thomas Bustamante (eds.). Belo Horizonte/MG: Initia Via, 2015 (E-book), pp. 1013-1029.

This is the second and final volume of Jacques Derrida's seminar on the death penalty, given at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris) from December 2000-March 2001. (The first volume of the seminar, covering the previous year's lectures, was published in both French and English (and reviewed in this journal). In this second volume, Derrida argues that justifications for retributive justice and the death penalty (DP) are indissociable and that this poses a particular problem for death penalty abolition. If retributivism and DP are indissociable, then abolition of DP would necessarily involve a radical re-assessment of the value and meaning of retribution. Insofar as this has not occurred—even where we have seen de jure abolition—we should, Derrida suggests, be suspicious of progressivist interpretations of global trends towards abolition. Before turning to its main claims, some context for this seminar. Derrida's two-year research project on the death penalty was his penultimate seminar; it was followed by the Beast and the Sovereign (2001-2003) and preceded by Perjury and Pardon (1997-1999). Broadly speaking, in these seminars Derrida is concerned with traditional attributes of sovereign power: the right to take life—to let live or let die—to pardon, to penalize, and punish. The constellation of questions around sovereignty connects Derrida's late research to Michel Foucault's work on disciplinary and bio-power, and Agamben's work on sovereignty, political theology and, more specifically, homo sacer. Though Derrida does little to bring the results of his research in conversation with these other philosophers, these seminars provide rich material for scholars interested in making these connections explicit. This volume will be of particular interest to those interested in how Derrida's work on sovereignty intersects with Continental philosophers such as Foucault and Agamben, and to Derrida scholars interested in this last phase of his thought. It should also be of interest to at least two other groups: 1) those concerned with philosophical justifications for retributive justice and 2) scholars working in the area of political theology interested in tracing what Derrida refers to as the " filiation " between philosophical, theological and political ideas about power and punishment. **** Philosophical accounts of retribution distinguish between legitimate forms of retribution—legally administered punishment based on the principle of jus talionis—and illegitimate forms of retribution—based on desire for revenge, or blood-lust. In terms of jus talionis, Derrida writes, the death penalty (DP) is " the legal phenomenon, distinct from simple murder in principle, intention, and spirit, distinct from vengeance and sacrifice, inscribed in a law applied by a state " (40). As this definition makes explicit, the principle of retributive justice is rigorously distinguished from vengeance or sacrifice. Jus talionis, like for like or " eye for an eye " demands penalties unstintingly proportioned to guilt.

This paper, an Evaluation of Jacques Derrida's position on Death Penalty; A case against the Abolitionist, is aimed at raising logical arguments against the abolitionist by providing basis for the justification of Death penalty, while exposing the merits and demerits of the argument of Jacque Derrida in support of the abolition of capital punishment. Responding to Derrida Death penalty Seminar of 1999/2000 which took an abolitionist stance against the practice of death penalty, this paper argued that, Derrida's de construction of theologico-Political concept of the sovereign right over life and death in view of abolishing capital punishment, should be understood in terms of the unconditional renunciation of sovereignty as called for in Derrida's later political writing, Rogues in particular. This paper thus, adopted the overlapping philosophical method of historical, critical and hermeneutical analysis, evaluation and prescription to web together its arguments in support of Capital Punishment while giving special attention to the positions of Jacque Derrida with regards to the idea of death penalty. The work made a case against the Abolitionist by providing basis for the justification of Death penalty. It is the opinion of this paper that, even the capital punishment is not enough to right a wrong or engender justice. Rather restitution should also be made on the side of the offender in other forms while also giving his life as a punishment. It is often perceived that the lextalions is principle is the apogee of punishment when applied to serious crimes, especially culpable homicide. This work sets up yet a higher bar anchored on the perspective of critical cogitation and replaces this prescription of " tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye " with some teeth for teeth and the eyes for an eye " advancing arguments to move the frontiers of debate on capital punishment forward

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2012

This paper attempts to establish that capital punishment is not rational and cannot be rationalized without suicidally destroying the very ground on which lawful and rational punishment bases itself. It argues that in capital punishment, just as in any lawful punishment, the criminal is both held (humanly) rational and therefore culpable. But, unlike other forms of punishment, in capital punishment, the condemned is at the same time, held as irrational and irredeemable, beyond reform, and therein outside the ambit of rationality and humanity. In this sense a fundamental aporia is reached in rationalizing capital punishment because of the contradiction between the basis of punishment (the human as rational) and its operational logic (the condemned person as beyond reform therein irrational). Expressed another way, the judge proclaims a form of infallibility in their reasoning where the incorrigibility of the judgment is horrifically demonstrated and ironically reflected (and projected) in the incorrigibility of the condemned. This broad argument is pursued in two parts; one part interprets canonical texts such as Hobbes, Hegel and Foucault, while the second part interprets the Supreme Court of India's jurisprudence around the death penalty. While these are very different discourses it will be shown that they share much common ground in their expressing-and negotiating-the fundamental problem as described above.

While in the early-modern times public execution was a rather common and undisputable form of punishment, it began to excite controversy in the advent of new liberal democracy. As a consequence of public debate on capital punishment, the late-modern era has witnessed a steady decline in imposing the death penalty. Yet, the rise of humanitarian sentiments was not sufficient to abolish the sanction everywhere in the demo-Christian world. More importantly, in the jurisdictions retaining the sanction the death sentences enjoy considerable public support. Take the contemporary U.S. as an example, there seems to be no apparent contradiction between upholding capital punishment and the values America has been built on. How, then, can one rationally condemn depriving an individual of life in the act of murder but support taking another life in the course of execution? Answering the question in The Death Penalty, Vol.1, Derrida notes that in Western culture murder and the death penalty are construed as each other’s opposites: though both include killing, there is no affinity between them. He exposes the Western rationalization of the ongoing use of capital punishment: murder is a crime committed by an inhumane individual for his/her private gain, whereas execution is a lawful humane act of punishment that must be imposed in the name of public good. This paper seeks to retrace Derrida’s argument juxtaposing his work with Garland’s Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition.

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2012

The Undecidable Unconscious, 2017

Revista Científica de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales y Políticas — Universidad Nacional del Nordeste, 2022

This short reflection attempts to meditate on the premise around which both proponents-of and those-opposed-to the death penalty hinge their arguments. And it makes the case that in-lieu of their premise being antonymous, or at least antagonistic — as might be expected — it is exactly the same: that even though they might come to diametrically opposite conclusions, both sides rely on the notion that life is sacred. By doing so, they are conceiving of it in the abstract, as abstractions; and thus, ignoring — or, at least, temporarily set aside — the fact that each life, and each living, including one’s own, is irreducibly singular and should be considered in its concrete materiality, situation, and context. More importantly, in order to decide in the abstract, what is actually done is to decide — a priori — what counts as a life. This piece, thus, opens the potentially disconcerting possibility that — by acknowledging lives in their immanence, and attempting to respond to them as such — one’s very responsibility lies in the fact that every moment of living is an act of choosing who, and what, one kills.