Pereat mundus

the death wish in the gospel of Luigi Ferrajoli

Abstract

This article examines the general spirit of Luigi Ferrajoli’s work Law and Reason, the main theoretical articulation of the so-called “Garantismo Penal” (penal rule of law). Contrary to the preface of Norberto Bobbio, this article presents the work as a contemporary manifestation of the spirit of German Romanticism from the late 19th century and its “narcissistic dogmatics” (Carl Schmitt’s second expression) and how these are made of collages from different mystical and gnostic sources. The logical inconsistency of its alleged foundation, the presumption of innocence, allows one to speculate that another foundation occupies its place. The people’s sovereignty, apparently suppressed, would be the true but repressed foundation. Its return becomes violent in the figure of the double God of the gnostic religions. His apotheosis appears in the resurrection of the allegory of Cain’s redemption from the Gospel of Marcion. Penal rule of law thus reveals itself in its profound truth as an irresponsible ideology, which in the name of justice does not care if the world perishes.