ABSTRACT
Niklas Luhmann and Jacques Derrida have made the same diagnosis of the sober world of lawyers and economists. Derrida and Luhmann are in agreement that arbitrariness, inconsistencies, antinomies, paradoxes, and even violence, lie at the bottom of the most refined constructs in economic and legal action. Reinterpreting Benjamin's famous essay on law and violence, he distinguishes between a mythical foundational violence which establishes the positivity of the state and the law only through blood shed, and a divine foundational violence establishing a different justice which is destructive and even annihilating but which is life-supporting without blood shed. It is at this stage that Derrida formulates the most provocative paradox: the distinction between positivity and justice is itself indecipherable; there are no criteria which might distinguish between mythical and divine violence, not only before the decision but also after the decision.
