Part 3. Power and Order
(Social and Political Philosophy)
3.1. Epstein and the Silence of the Elites

Hack: February 2026, Washington, Department of Justice

Thousands of pages of documents uploaded to the website of the United States Department of Justice do not explode the information space — they iron it. Slowly, methodically, inexorably. Journalists, human rights advocates, and the merely curious dig into millions of lines, seeking what truly matters. And they find it.
Among endless reports, memoranda, transcripts of telephone conversations, and passenger lists of private aircraft, a document is discovered that makes even the most cynical analysts' hands grow cold. An order for delivery to Little St. James Island — that very island which had already become a symbol of impunity — of 1,249 litres of concentrated sulphuric acid.
An island without industry. An island without chemical laboratories. An island where, for decades, presidents and princes, billionaires and Nobel laureates, screen stars and pillars of science flew. An island where, according to survivor testimony, girls were raped.
Why the acid?
The world freezes, imagining the worst. Destruction of evidence. Dissolution of bodies. Complete, absolute, irreversible annihilation of anything that might betray the secret.
But that is not even the main thing. The main thing is the silence.
Bill Clinton, who flew on the "Lolita Express" dozens of times — according to the documents, dozens of times — is silent. His press office fobs off with platitudes. Prince Andrew, stripped of his titles and royal patronage, hides behind the walls of his estate. Elon Musk, whose fortunes sharply improved after meetings with Epstein, offers excuses on Twitter, deletes old photos, blocks journalists. Donald Trump, who promised to "open all the files," opens them piecemeal, and finds himself on the list — on the list of those who flew, who were there, who knew.
The US Department of Justice publishes millions of pages, but the key names are redacted. Black rectangles cover the pages where the names of those who rule the world should stand.
1,249 litres of sulphuric acid. And the silence of the elites.

The Production of Impunity as a Systemic Process

The story of Jeffrey Epstein, examined from a socio-philosophical perspective, represents not a criminal chronicle but a case study of the systemic production of exceptions to the legal order.
The factual outline of events is known. Epstein, who began as a mathematics teacher and later became a financier with a fortune that allowed him to move in global elite circles, organised a network of sexual exploitation of minors for decades. In 2008, with an evidentiary basis that seemed clear, he received a minimal sentence under a plea deal arranged with the participation of federal prosecutor Alexander Acosta. In 2019, after a new arrest, he was found dead in his cell under circumstances that preclude unambiguous interpretation. In 2024–2026, a wave of declassified documents followed, from which key names were redacted.
For philosophical analysis, what is essential is not the details of Epstein's biography nor the moral evaluation of his actions, but the structural characteristics of what occurred.
First, duration. The system operated for decades. This is not an isolated failure, not a "rotten apple," but a stable regime of existence, reproduced across changes of administrations, presidents, prosecutors.
Second, the scale of involvement. The list of persons in any way connected with Epstein includes representatives of all branches of the elite: political (Clinton, Trump), financial (numerous investors), scientific (Minsky, Dershowitz), cultural (show business stars), aristocratic (Prince Andrew). We are not speaking of an isolated group but of a cross-section of the elite as such.
Third, impunity. None of the high-ranking persons whose names surfaced in the documents has faced legal responsibility. The names are redacted, investigations are not conducted, testimony is not given.
Fourth, the symbolic component. 1,249 litres of sulphuric acid is not merely a quantity of reagent. It is a symbolic marker of a limit: the existence of such an order in the context of an island frequented by the elite means that the system anticipated the possibility of the complete, irreversible destruction of traces.
These characteristics allow Epstein's case to be regarded not as a criminal curiosity but as an empirical exposure of the structure of power usually hidden behind the façade of formal institutions.

Between Formal Equality and Real Exception

Classical political philosophy, from Hobbes to Rawls, was constructed around the problem of legitimacy. Under what conditions does power have the right to demand obedience? What makes law law rather than mere coercion?
Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, held that legitimacy arises from the social contract: people transfer to the sovereign the right to govern in exchange for security (Hobbes, 1994). Law is legitimate because it is an expression of the will of those who have agreed to obey.
John Locke specified: legitimacy requires not merely consent, but consent given under conditions that exclude coercion, and presupposes that the sovereign himself is bound by law (Locke, 1988). The sovereign cannot be a judge in his own case.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau went further: only that power which expresses the general will, not private interests, is legitimate (Rousseau, 2000). Law must be the same for all; otherwise it is not law but an instrument of domination.
Immanuel Kant linked legitimacy to autonomy: law is legitimate if it could be adopted by rational beings as universal (Kant, 1998).
In the twentieth century, John Rawls developed this line in his theory of justice as fairness: social institutions are legitimate if they are arranged so that inequalities work to the benefit of the least advantaged (Rawls, 1971).
Jürgen Habermas added a procedural dimension: legitimacy arises from free and open discussion in the public sphere (Habermas, 1984).
Epstein's case problematises all these concepts not through theoretical critique but through empirical demonstration of their inoperability.
Hobbes: the contract for security presupposes that the sovereign is capable of providing security. But if the sovereign himself participates in creating zones where law does not operate, security becomes a privilege, not a common good.
Locke: the requirement that the sovereign be bound by law founders on the black rectangles where names should stand. The sovereign is not bound — his name can be redacted.
Rousseau: the general will turns out to be a fiction if real decisions are made not in public space but on an island accessible to no one except the initiated.
Kant: the universality of law is undermined by the existence of a caste for whom law is not written.
Rawls: inequalities do not work to the benefit of the least advantaged — they work to the benefit of those who can afford an island and sulphuric acid.
Habermas: the public sphere turns out to be a decoration hiding the esoteric space of decision-making.
Carl Schmitt, usually considered an opponent of the liberal tradition, here proves to be its most accurate diagnostician. His famous definition: "Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception" (Schmitt, 2005: 15). Epstein's case shows that the state of exception is not an exception but the norm. The sovereign is not he who declares the state of exception, but he whose name can be redacted. He for whom the law makes an exception.
Giorgio Agamben, developing the Schmittian intuition, introduced the concept of the "state of exception" — a zone where law is suspended but power is retained (Agamben, 1998). The paradigm of such a zone for Agamben is the concentration camp. Epstein's case offers a different but no less significant paradigm: the island as a zone of exception for the elite. Not for enemies, but for friends. Not for destruction, but for pleasure. But structurally it is the same: a space where law does not operate.

Intellectuals in the Production of Legitimacy

Of particular philosophical interest in Epstein's case is the participation of intellectuals. Epstein systematically surrounded himself with scientists, funded research, organised conferences, donated to universities. Professors, lawyers, Nobel laureates wrote letters of support for him, helped whitewash his reputation, called him a "great friend."
Michel Foucault, in his works of the 1970s, showed that power and knowledge do not oppose each other but mutually produce each other (Foucault, 1972). Power needs knowledge for legitimation, knowledge needs power for realisation. Epstein's case gives this thesis an empirical content of which Foucault could not even conceive.
Here knowledge functions in two ways.
The first function is the production of symbolic capital. Pierre Bourdieu introduced the concept of symbolic capital as a resource that not only allows one to possess power but to make it recognised, legitimate (Bourdieu, 1991). The participation of intellectuals supplied Epstein with this capital. Their presence said: this man is not merely a criminal, he is a patron, a thinker, a friend of science. They translated him from the criminal register into the cultural one.
The second function is the production of a discourse of justification. One of the published documents — a draft of a public apology prepared for Epstein by a crisis strategist. The text was philosophical — with quotations from William James about the "hour of dread." Philosophy, knowledge, intellectual tradition — all were deployed to launder the reputation of a man accused of crimes against children.
Hannah Arendt wrote that the most serious threat is not lies but indifference to truth (Arendt, 1973). The intellectuals who surrounded Epstein were not indifferent. They were active. They produced legitimacy.
Theodor Adorno warned of the danger of the "identity principle" — thought's drive to subordinate the non-identical to itself, to reduce it to the concept (Adorno, 2003). Here we see the reverse: thought voluntarily submits to power, becomes its instrument. Knowledge ceases to be a critical instance and turns into a service.

From Individual Guilt to Structural Exception

Classical philosophy of law, from Aristotle to Kelsen, proceeded from the principle: law must be applied equally to all. Exceptions are possible, but they must be justified and rare.
Epstein's case demonstrates not an exception but a structure. The impunity of the elite is not a malfunction of the system but its immanent characteristic.
Henry Kissinger, whose name also surfaced in the context of Epstein, defended in his works on diplomacy the thesis that state interests are above morality (Kissinger, 1994). But here the issue is not state interests. Here the issue is private pleasures, financed from private pockets but protected by the state.
What allows the elite to remain unpunished? The philosophical answer lies in the structure of sovereignty itself.
Carl Schmitt showed that sovereignty is the capacity to make a decision that goes beyond positive law (Schmitt, 2005). The sovereign is not he who obeys the law but he who can suspend the law.
In the liberal tradition, it was believed that with the development of the rule of law, this capacity recedes into the past. The sovereign becomes a function, not a person. Law rules, not men.
Epstein's case shows the opposite: the sovereign has not disappeared. He has merely become invisible. His decisions are made not in parliaments or courts, but in private spaces to which neither law nor the public has access. The sovereign's name can be redacted, because the sovereign is not a name but a structure.
Jacques Derrida analysed the irresolvable tension between law (loi) and justice (justice) (Derrida, 1992). Law demands application, justice demands infinite consideration of singularity. Epstein's case adds a third element to this tension: impunity as the elite's capacity to escape both.

Acid as Ontological Boundary

1,249 litres of sulphuric acid require separate philosophical interpretation. Not as criminal evidence, but as a symbolic marker of a limit.
Acid delivered to an island frequented by the elite performs a function that Jean Baudrillard would call "third-order simulation" (Baudrillard, 1994). It is not merely the destruction of evidence. It is the production of the possibility of complete, absolute, irreversible disappearance.
In classical law, the principle holds: no corpse, no murder. Acid allows the elimination of the corpse itself. It eliminates not only life but also death as a legal fact. The person is not killed — he simply disappears. He is nowhere, not even as a dead person.
This possibility produces an ontological shift. The boundary between existence and non-existence ceases to be absolute. A third state appears — a state in which the person existed but left no traces. A state in which one can prove neither that he is alive nor that he is dead.
In this sense, acid performs the same function as the black rectangles where names should stand in the published documents. Both are technologies for the production of ontological uncertainty. We know that names existed. We know that people existed. But we cannot name them. Cannot prove. Cannot hold them accountable.
Slavoj Žižek, in his works on violence, distinguishes between subjective violence (visible, screaming) and objective violence (systemic, invisible) (Žižek, 2008). Acid here is the point of transition from one to the other. Subjective violence (murder) is committed, but its traces are destroyed, and it passes into objective violence — the violence of the very structure that makes impunity possible.
Carl Schmitt argued that all the key concepts of modern political theory are secularised theological concepts (Schmitt, 2005). The sovereign is a secularised God. The state of exception is a secularised miracle.
Epstein's case allows us to see the reverse movement: not theology secularised into politics, but politics becoming theology once more. But a theology of a particular kind — without God, without salvation, without hope.
The elite capable of redacting their names is not a secular power accountable to the people. It is a caste bound by common secrets and common crimes. Its unity lies not in common interests (interests may diverge) but in common compromising material. Mutual responsibility as a principle of organisation.
1,249 litres of sulphuric acid are not merely a chemical. They are a symbol of a new type of sovereignty: a sovereignty capable of dissolving not only bodies but also facts themselves. A sovereignty before which not only law but also truth is powerless.

Conflict as a Constitutive Condition of the Social

Epstein's case exposes the structure that is usually hidden in liberal political theory: the conflict between formal order and real exception as a constitutive condition of the social.
In this conflict, there is always tension. Tension between law, which proclaims the equality of all before it, and practice, which systematically undermines this equality. Tension between the public sphere, where common affairs are discussed, and private spaces, where real decisions are made. Tension between knowledge, which should serve truth, and knowledge, which serves power.
This tension is irresolvable. It cannot be "sublated" by a final decision — neither by total transparency (which would destroy privacy as such) nor by the cynical acceptance that "it has always been thus" (which would mean the abandonment of politics as such).
It can only be held — in a mode of constant renegotiation of boundaries, constant struggle for the expansion of publicity, constant resistance to exclusion.
1,249 litres of sulphuric acid — a reminder that the stakes in this conflict are higher than we are accustomed to think. It is not merely a matter of the distribution of resources or access to power. It is a matter of the very possibility of leaving a trace. Of being named. Of existing in a space where law still operates.