The term homo sacer, literally „sacred man“, originates in Roman law. It referred to a person who could be killed by anyone without it being considered murder, yet could not be used as a religious sacrifice. At first glance, it seems an obscure legal curiosity, but the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben transformed it into a powerful lens for understanding modern politics. In his 1995 book Homo Sacer: Sovereing Power and Bare Life, Agamben argues that the logic that once applied to a marginalized figure in Roman law now permeates contemporary states, revealing the fragility of political rights and the dark structures of sovereignty. For Agamben, the homo sacer exemplifies „bare life“ (vita nuda), human existence stripped of political protection. Unlike ordinary citizens, whose lives are recognized and safeguarded by the law, the homo sacer occupies a paradoxical space: legally included in the state yet excluded from its protections. In this condition, life can be subjected to violence, control or neglect without transgressing legal norms. Agamben traces this figure across history, showing how forms of exclusion and exception have persisted from ancient Rome to modern democracies.
The modern relevance of homo sacer becomes clear in extreme cases. Refugees, stateless people, detainees in camps or those trapped in states of emergency can all be seen as contemporary homines sacri. They exist under the law but often without the protections it promises. The Holocaust, for Agamben, is a paradigmatic example: Victims were legally recognized in many ways yet politically stripped of rights, reduced to bare life by the machinery of the state. Similarly, Agamben critiques how emergency powers and exceptional laws in contemporary democracies can render certain populations vulnerable to arbitrary control. Agamben’s argument rests on a paradox of sovereignty, building on the German legal theorist Carl Schmitt, who defined the sovereign as suspended. While these zones are often justified as temporary measures. Agamben warns that they reveal a structural feature of political life: the ability of the state to decide whose life counts and whose life can be exposed to violence. In other words, exclusion is not an anomaly but embedded in the architecture of modern governance.
The concept is controversial because it challenges the foundations of liberal democracy. If some lives can always be reduced to bare life, can any political system truly guarantee equality and justice? Agamben’s work forces us to confront uncomfortable questions: Are modern states capable od ethical governance if the potential for exclusion is always present? And can the notion of human rights survive when law itself creates zones of unprotected existence? Yet, beyond its dark implications, homo sacer also provides a critical tool for resistance. By identifying the mechanisms that reduce people to bare life, it illuminates paths for advocacy, humanitarian intervention and legal reform. Understanding who is excluded and why, is the first step towards reclaiming political and ethical responsibility.
In Europe and beyond, the concept resonates in debates over immigrationm detention centers, stateless populations and emergency powers. It challenges citizens and policamakers to ask: how do we protect life not only in principle, but in practice? Agamben’s homo sacer thus remains a provocative and urgent framework for thinking about power, vulnerability and human dignity in the modenr world.