Rhetoric of the Human Condition and the Paradox of the Criminal Sentence

A reflection on the limits of the construction of judicial decisions from the Edenic MythHaving as its central element the rhetorical analysis of the Edenic myth (Gen. 2 and 3), this dissertation addresses the strength that such narrative has had to forge, both in the West and in the East, a behavior of submission and passivity in the face of authorities that place themselves in the power. It sees, however, also present in the text, an invitation to abstain from the practice of judgments of moral behavior (ignoring good and evil), which is presented as a task of God and not of men. These, according to the author, when they set out to pronounce sentences in relation to their peers, end up expressing prejudices, which are established in society through mechanisms of symbolic violence. At the end, the author, faced with the practical and immediate impossibility of a way of social coexistence without the structures of power and control, among which the judiciary stands out, inviting us to adopt a humbler and fraternal posture when the moment of the decision, with the aim of mitigating the effects of the potential and actual brutality that the sentences tend to carry out.