Sacrednessand cruelty in natural right according to Hobbesand Agamben

Abstract

The present text seeks to discuss the sense of sacredness and cruelty in natural right and in the political scene of Hobbes and Agamben. It relates Hobbes’ concept of state of nature to the figures in ancient Roman right of homo lupus (wolf man) and homo sacer (sacred man) in its dual process of inclusion/exclusion of naked life (zoé) in the political life (bíos). It goes into the limits of human nature and condition in order to understand the fluctuations of meaning involved in the situation of abandonment that brings a malefactor or band close to the community, with its exposure to death or social disappearance outside the forms sanctioned by the law. It stresses the permanent border between animal and human, a paradoxical and insurmountable limit situated between politeness and nakedness, cruelty and sacredness, good and evil.