In "Justice during the Enlightenment and the Guillotine: a Philosophical Problem", Luigi Delia reconsiders the dispute over capital punishment in the France of the Ancien Regime, and especially Guillotin's proposed reform, linking the maintenance of the death penalty to the idea that the use of a mechanical device for its implementation works in favour of a more democratic, secular and humane penal system. Without attempting to establish a direct connection between the Enlightenment and the guillotine in an instrumental relationship of cause and effect, Luigi Delia raises the question of how the two phenomena are interrelated: in what way is the guillotine dependent on the legal culture of the Philosophers? Devised both as a judicial machine to cause death without suffering and a political machine with the power to intimidate the people, the guillotine was one of the first manifestations of the dialectic of the Enlightenment, between utilitarian rationalism and hopes of equality, secularism and humanity.
