摘要：The death penalty is so deeply rooted in the history of humanity that it will not be possible to abolish it any time soon, together with its ancestral models, such as lynching, stoning and torture. There is little use in appealing to absolute ethical values or to juridical principles held to be universal. A realistic approach suggests a careful consideration of the function the death penalty performed – and still performs – in the structures of political power and in the hierarchical and repressive logic of religions, be they transcendent or nontranscendent. The struggle against the death penalty cannot but coincide with a wide-ranging political and cultural battle against the philosophies and ideologies that venerate “temporal idols” and demand an absolute faith tirelessly decreeing absolute punishments. The supreme punishment has always been a “religious penalty.” The supreme and definitive punishment is founded on a supreme and definitive certainty. The dogmatic certainty of the supreme judge knows no compassion – knows not the feeling of humanity’s common suffering and unhappiness; such certainty makes no provision for the misery, fragility and vulnerability of the human condition. Capital judgment upsets the only indisputable human solidarity – our solidarity against death.
