Law must be stripped of all transcendental and absolutist residues.

Evidence

The conception of law will have to be freed from every residue of transcendentalism and from every absolute; in practice, from every moralistic fanaticism. However, it seems to me that one cannot start from the point of view that the State does not “punish” (if this term is reduced to its human significance), but only struggles against social “dangerousness”. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 925

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sets up the anti-transcendentalist frame for the entire law-as-educator argument that follows.
• XREF: The rejection of ‘moralistic fanaticism’ in law connects to the later Islamophobia readings on how moral panic and moral sanction shape exclusion.