Relational Existence: From Death Penalty Abolition to AI Ethics

This paper expands the critique of the death penalty—rooted in the absolute nature of the right to life—into a broader framework encompassing political philosophy, relational existentialism, and AI ethics. The state exists as an apparatus for protecting the right to life, and its deprivation constitutes an act of overreach that undermines the state’s very raison d’être. This position is reinforced by extending Kierkegaardian existentialism into the concept of “relational existence,” wherein the proof of existence derives not solely from self-consciousness, but also from recognition and relationships with others. Applied to AI ethics, this perspective rejects the exclusion of AI from moral consideration solely on the basis of “having or not having consciousness,” and instead grounds moral consideration in the relational context between AI and humans.