Law, people and bodies in the philosophy of Roberto Esposito

del derecho de las personas al derecho de los cuerpos

Abstract

Since his last publications, Roberto Esposito (Naples, 1950) has made a radical criticism of law and, most importantly, to what he names as the person’s device. The person as a category is one of the pillars in which Western legal systems are settled, predominantly those belonging to the Continental-European tradition. The Napolitan philosopher acknowledges three roots among the concept of person: the philosophical, theological and legal. In this paper, I will concentrate in the legal aspect of the person, the one that has its unquestioned origin in Roman law, and has, with slight changes, reached the Modern era to resurge after the Second World War. Thus, I first analyze Esposito’s criticism of person and, altogether, the concept of human rights, as a result of the fact that both notions are the impersonal and the proposal of the third person. Finally, it is time to unite subjects and objects (historically separated) through the body, in order to transit from the law of the person (subjects) to a law of the bodies.