The Ethical State and the Poietic State

This article addresses the internal division within the Democratic Rechtsstaat by analyzing the opposition between the Ethical State, grounded in the rational legitimation of power by its origin, legality, and finality, and the Poietic State, defined by the technocratic instrumentalization of politics in the name of economics. Within the framework of the contemporary State, popular sovereignty is displaced by a bureau-technocratic apparatus that holds political decision-making without democratic legitimacy. Through a legal-philosophical inquiry grounded in the dialectic between freedom and power, the article reflects on how the Mediated Ethical State has been subdued by poietic rationality, which privileges the system of needs already identified by Hegel. The central argument demonstrates that the loss of the ethical dimension of power and its subjugation by the logic of economic production generate an illegitimate, alienated, and potentially autocratic form of power. From this perspective, the text seeks to denounce the emptying of the democratic principle of political participation and, consequently, the erosion of the Democratic Rechtsstaat as an order of objectified freedoms. In conclusion, while technique is necessary, it cannot usurp the sovereign exercise of political power, which must be guided by the universality of the common good or, more precisely, by ethics.