Abstract

In his seminars on the death penalty, Derrida argues that Kant’s defense of that punishment is the most rigorous and systematically philosophical. For that same reason, he says, the arguments are especially vulnerable to deconstruction. I argue, in detail, that Derrida’s deconstruction fails if Kant’s distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal is respected, which Derrida’s arguments do not specifically challenge. I close with some considerations for philosophical opponents of the death penalty. Derrida seeks a condemnation of capital punishment that is, in its way, a priori, disassembling its justification at the conceptual level. I suggest that contingent and empirical condemnations of capital punishment may be sufficient.