A criminalidade à luz da obra de Eric Voegelin

Um olhar para além dos três paradigmas criminológicos

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the issue of criminality from the perspective of philosopher and political scientist Eric Voegelin. Criminological approaches tend to revolve around two paradigms: the first approach focuses primarily on the author of a particular criminal act, inquiring into the reasons or conditions that led to such behavior, and the second approach shifts its focus to society and its control instances. A third criminological approach, seeking to juxtapose the previous two, has been termed the ‘social interrelations paradigm’. However, in the wake of Voegelin's thought, it is possible to discern a yet different approach, which involves a renewed perspective that does not focus on the individual, the collective, or control instances, but instead follows the Platonic concept of metaxy, considering criminality as a matter related to culture and civilization, or more precisely, to the lack of adequate symbolization by a civilization of the transcendent values that structure it. It is suggested that it is possible to analyze the problem of criminality from a field historically neglected by criminological studies, from Lombroso to the so-called Critical Criminology: the investigation of the presence or absence, in any given society, of a symbolic structure referenced to transcendence.