By analyzing the versions of the law, that is, its divisions and contradictions, this work refers to three protagonists of the law: Kant, Sade, and Kafka.

Kant introduces the concept of law as pure form and the concept of morality as a property of rational beings to act according to the laws. When Kant establishes the law, Kantian philosophy is not limited to the nature of ethics but to the universality of the law.

Sade enters with his work - this "antisurgical philosophy," as his peculiar literature is characterized - into the sphere of the law, introducing a fundamental contradiction: the law establishes the dissolution of the rules of Reason through the very regulatory Reason.

Kafka parodies the law with his work and highlights its versions: first in "The Trial," connecting, like Kant, the law with the form of desire, and then in his novella "In the Penal Colony," linking, like Sade, the law with pleasure.

Therefore, the versions of the law in modernity emerge in at least three cases:
- when the law is grounded in itself (Kantian formalism).
- when the law is subordinated to nature, which, attached to evil, defines a distorted human behavior (sadistic brutality).
- when the law is disassembled and the randomness of its assembly becomes evident (Kafkaesque irony).