Hegel’s philosophical project is often described as a theodicy, or a vigorous and persuasive attempt to justify God and the inherent value of existence despite thousands of years of human suffering. One lumbering giant of 19th-century philosophy, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, is considered by many to have been one of the leaders of Enlightenment thinking.

Much of 19th-century philosophy either built upon the work of the Enlightenment philosophers or sought to tear it down along with systematic and rationalistic philosophical systems. Yet, these ideals and our means of achieving them remain the civic oxygen that animates our discourse. Many philosophers and psychologists argue that we are not. For a sea anemone thousands of leagues deep, water simply is, and for humans, the worthiness of Enlightenment ideals remains evident, whether or not we succeed in living up to them. Our understanding of these concepts is similar to the way that even the most intelligent of sea creatures never recognizes that there exists a mode of being other than a life underwater. The Enlightenment produced revolutionary ideals we take for granted today: appeals to liberty, equality, and progress. In particular, reason held ultimate authority. The 18th-century movement is variously perceived as a special period for scientific, philosophical, cultural, and political history and as a time wherein the ideals of reason, logic, skepticism, naturalism, and progress held great authority. “The Enlightenment” is a loosely defined term. Why would the greatest advocates for reason support the most unreasonable of punishments? Why might reason's critics argue for a more reasonable course of action? And paradoxically, it was post-modern philosophers such as Foucault and Bataille, who rejected the Enlightenment’s strict adherence to rationality, that most persuasively opposed capital punishment. Yet, Hegel, Kant and other proponents of the Enlightenment may have supported this most controversial of punishments from a rationalistic perspective. The chief purpose of it, commonly understood, is to satiate a bloodlust for vengeance on the part of the wronged. It is more expensive than keeping them alive. All possibilities for redemption are foreclosed upon. He or she may have been wrongly convicted. The criminal is already locked up for life. Cesare Beccaria once wrote of capital punishment: “The murder that is depicted as a horrible crime is repeated in cold blood, remorselessly.” Indeed, the death penalty does not solve any problems for society in a tangible or rational way.

Foucault crime and punishment