Right of Death and Power Over Life by Michel Foucault

The right to decide life and death was one of the characteristic privileges of sovereign power. It was derived from the right of the father in roman family to take the lives of his children and his slaves. Later on, this was formulated in a less diminished form in the sense that the right was not absolute and unconditional, it was only to be exercised when the sovereign’s existence was at stake. The indirect power was to expose the lives of subjects in the face of war and the direct right to take the life was to exercised when the law was transgressed. By Hobbesian principle this was an extension of the right to save your own life extended to the prince or it could be perceived as a new juridical righty of the sovereign. In either case this right I dissymmetrical one. The sovereign exercises his right of life by exercising the right to kill. It was really the right to take life and let live, with its symbol being the sword. In ancient times power was a right to seizure culminating in the right to take the life. The West has undergone massive changes and deduction is no longer the major form of power. The right of death manifested as simply the reverse of the right of the social body to ensure, maintain or develop its life. However, the wars since the 19th century have been the bloodiest. This cynicism exerts a positive influence on life, this power endeavors to administer, optimize and multiply it by subjecting it to precise controls and regulations. The state has the power to expose a whole population to death as the underside of the power to guarantee an individual’s continued existence. The biological existence is at stake now that people think you have to go on killing to go on living.