In the first volume of his extraordinary analysis of death penalty discourse, Jacques Derrida began a journey toward an ambitious end: the first truly philosophical argument against the death penalty. Exploring an impressive breadth of thought, he unveiled a deeply entrenched logic throughout the whole of Western philosophy that has justified the state’s right to take a life. He also unveiled literature as a crucial place where this logic has been most effectively challenged. In this second and final volume, Derrida picks up where he left off, more deeply exploring key texts in order to elucidate the first volume’s nascent ideas and arrive at a definitive argument that shows just how profoundly unjust the death penalty is. Of central importance to Derrida in this second volume is Kant’s explicit justification of the death penalty in the Metaphysics of Morals. Thoroughly deconstructing Kant’s position—which holds the death
