Survival and the Law: Human Life as the Presupposition of Practical Agency

The aim of this essay is to demonstrate that human life, biologically understood what I call the human bios embodies a moral criterion, a reason for action, having a minimum natural content. This criterion is based on the end-value of survival, that is, the need to live biologically and ensure the continuation of the human species. The argument that I put forward implies a rediscovery of the exceptional legal value of survival: a non-instrumental value, related to the forms of living that human beings decide to put into practice. In agreement with Hart, law is practicable if and only if a minimum content of natural law is respected: law is concerned with social arrangements, not with suicide club; no law is given that is, no legal order, relations or intersubjectivity when the rules are designed to bring about death rather than the assurance of living.