Segreto come eccezione: sul confine tra diritto e non-diritto

The article examines the link between secret and the rule of law, wondering if the secret constitutes an exception, a rule or a paradox. Mainly by adopting the disenchanted perspective of so-called philosophies of difference – and, in particular, that of systems theory – it deconstructs the idea of Enlightenment publicity as a principle of legal order, demonstrating how it is only apparently antithetical to secrecy: secret, in fact, is the original and constitutive core of the modern rule of law, a necessary tool for concealing its paradoxes. It is the portrait of a figure who lies on the border between law and non-law, in a relation of circularity with neighboring figures between an inside and an outside, such as violence and the state of exception.