Roman law defined a person killable with impunity yet unusable for sacrifice.
Evidence
Agamben (1997) recalled the legal concept of the “homo sacer” coined in the archaic Roman Law: the concept of a human being who could be killed without punishment, but at the same time — being absolutely Other, alien, indeed inhuman - a kind of being that could not be used in ritualistic religious sacrifices and whose murder had no religious significance. “Homo Sacer” was totally “useless” - completely outside human society and exempt from all obligations and other considerations due to other humans on account of their humanity. Homo Sacer*s life was “nude” - that is, stripped of all social quality and political rights, and as such unprotected, made into a sitting target for every frustrated sadist or murderer, but also a recommended target for everyone seeking to conform and exercise their civic duty. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 457
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Explains the homo sacer concept: killable without penalty yet excluded from ritual sacrifice.
- SHARE: For someone into legal history or political philosophy — the homo sacer is a shockingly precise legal category that anticipates modern biopolitics.
Related
- Homo sacer named a life stripped of all political rights (similarity 0.88)
- Roman sacredness could make a person killable with impunity, not just inviolable (similarity 0.84)