ABSTRACT
The "democratic" interpretation of Hegel's ethical life is an evident stretch of the Stuttgart philosopher's thought. The death penalty, according to Hegel, 'honours' the criminal. The 'substantial essence' of the State is not the unconditional protection and safeguarding of individuals' lives. While for Thomas Hobbes and his contract it is the State's task to protect the citizens' lives, this fictio falls down with Hegel and it clearly emerges, as said, that the condition of citizenship is exposure to death. The only way for the self and the other to continue to exist is to constitute the other as the object of evil and death. So, paradoxically, in this continual suspension of radical evil that endlessly postpones the act, destruction and creation co-exist. So, the death penalty is an including exclusion or an excluding inclusion: but only insofar as the rite of recognition is repeated in it.
