Law’s self-justified punishment replicates the lawlessness it punishes

Evidence

For Adorno, ‘Anaximander’s curse’ points to aspects of ‘archaic legal vindictiveness’ which were mythologically legitimated: ‘The law that defined itself as punishment for lawlessness comes to resemble it and itself becomes lawlessness, a order for destruction: that, however, is the nature of myth as it is echoed in pre-Socratic thought’. At the same time, this saying describes the dynamic which blindly reproduces ‘the same pattern over and over again’, perpetuating it into the present. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1452

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what Adorno means by ‘Anaximander’s curse’ as archaic legal vindictiveness that becomes lawlessness itself.
• XREF: Connects to the Dialectic of Enlightenment thesis of myth collapsing into enlightenment — law’s self-overcoming mirrors the myth/ratio dialectic. — connects to: Criminal punishment patterns lack deterrence or retributive logic — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 710; Refusing the inheritance punishes nothing beyond the criminal law’s own terms — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 1921