A legitimidade da punição e os direitos humanos no Estado Democrático de Direito

Abstract

The objective of this study is to justify the legitimacy of punishment by the State, under the light of human rights, in the Democratic Law State. However the advances proportioned by the kind of social organization of modern age are undeniable, in the field of punishment there is a strong debate related to its legitimacy, caused by a historical incomprehension of the subject, and there is insufficient historical justification. For that, it will be necessary to promote a historical rescue of the fundaments of punishment since Aristotle until the Enlightenment. After that, it will be shown that starting in the liberal revolutions, the dogmatic of Criminal Law, based in the European Enlightenment and strongly affected by the proposes of reform of the punishment model, goes through absolutely distinct ways to try to answer the punishment legitimacy subject, producing contradictory discourses which go from the maximum legitimacy until its complete absence. From these contradictions it rises the necessity to rescue the Kantian thought about the idea of the State and Law. The high complexity of the contemporary society needs of a wider, legitimate and philosophical justification to punishment. The idea of State in the Kantian thought goes through the moral principle of freedom and not as asocial historical contract. The Law conceived by Kant imposes a moral obligation which restricts freedom, recognizing that in the collective living and freedom is limited by the other’s freedom. The function of the Law is to enable the coexistence of diverse will. Kant considers the crime as being an abuse of the individual freedom which give rise the legitimate punishment, because the criminal action against the other avoids the pacific coexistence of the moral autonomy.