ABSTRACT
The citizen who refuses the death penalty, who, like Shakespeare's Barnardine, is not willing to be killed, breaks off the bond of recognition with the State by denying it the legitimacy which until that moment it had been rendered. The position of a modern Barnardine is unmoving on rights insofar as they are owed to everyone. It may be true that at the origin of modern political philosophy is the idea of survival and obedience as its guarantee, but Barnardine immediately casts light on the paradox of sovereignty: guarantee of survival and threat of death, at the same time. The slave is freed under the pressure of the anguish of death that the master can always inflict: 'It is not sufficient to be afraid, nor even to be afraid while realizing that one fears death.
