Pena e sacrifício: uma análise do exercício intelectual de legitimação do castigo à luz do rito sacrificial penal moderno

• Ano de defesa: 2026
• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Isaac Messias Guedes dos
• Outros Autores: [e-mail]
• Orientador(a): Béze, Patrícia Mothé Glioche
• Banca de defesa: Martins, Antônio José Teixeira , Ferraz, Hamilton Gonçalves
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Direito
• Departamento: Centro de Ciências Sociais::Faculdade de Direito
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: Direito penal; Sacrifício; René Girard; Teoria da pena; Criminologia crítica; Racionalidade penal
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS::DIREITO
• Link de acesso: http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/handle/1/25860

This research investigates the crisis of legitimacy regarding the foundational theories of public punishment and the persistence of a structural sacrificial logic within the contemporary criminal justice system. The study draws upon René Girard’s fundamental anthropology to analyze how mimetic desire and rivalry generate social crises historically resolved through the scapegoat mechanism. Girard's thought is nuanced with contributions from Alejandro Alagia and Rodrigo Codino, unveiling the myth of the indispensability of punishment while maintaining the description of the sacrificial structure previously analyzed. This enables a demonstration that the transition to legal modernity did not extinguish the sacrificial rite but rather sophisticated it through the "confiscation of conflict" and the "transcendence of violence," wherein the Judiciary assumes the monopoly of vengeance under the cloak of legality and justice. The investigation articulates the confluence between Girardian thought and Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni’s critical criminology, exploring the construction of the figure of the enemy (hostis) as the re-actualization of the sacrificial victim marked by victimizing signs of vulnerability. The work demonstrates that violence is not the antithesis of reason, but its shadow: a metaphysical rationality seeking absolute stability through the annihilation of alterity and the reification of the other as an object of control. It concludes that the penal system operates through devious and ideological reasons, exemplified by the Brazilian Supreme Court’s (STF) solution to the unconstitutional situation within the prison system regarding punitive compensation. Such solutions disrupt the normative "ought-to-be" from the materiality of suffering, perpetuating the sacrificial rite under the mask of justifying theories of punishment that boast metaphysical relevance. Finally, the study proposes the deconstruction of penal justificationism and the adoption of a critical and agnostic penology. It concludes with the necessity of a negative penal dogmatics which, by recognizing the violent and irrational nature of punishment, assumes the political purpose of limiting punitive power and protecting alterity against the genocidal drive of control agencies.