Defending the Law [Part 3]
Law as Asana
This post continues a series begun here and continued here and here.
Let’s take a step back and ask about what I am defending—is it the Law, in the abstract, or something more specific, like Jewish law?
Kafka uses the term “the Law” in the more general, abstract sense, as does Paul. For example, in Kafka’s “Before the Law,” a man from the country seeks access to a Law that remains fundamentally closed to him. According to Gershom Scholem, Kafka’s Law possesses Geltung ohne Bedeutung, validity without significance. This is a fancy way of saying that Kafka maintains the form of the Law, but empties it of all content. The Law is as binding as it is impenetrable.
If one can’t defend the Law, generally, why bother defending a particular legal system? Thus, my opening arguments will focus less on Jewish law in its idiosyncrasy and more on the idea of the Law, generally. In this regard, my arguments might also align with those made by Islamic jurists and philosophers. Leo Strauss argues that Maimonides and the medievals are distinguished from modern philosophers in their respect for the idea of the Law.
Paul says, “If you hadn’t told me the Law, I wouldn’t hav known sin,” which means that the reception of a command generates an equal and opposite desire to violate it. Children disobey only once they’ve been told “no.” So the Law in its form creates transgression. At a Freudian level, this is arguably bad because it generates a whole guilt complex; a person becomes mired in a cycle of disobedience, and then remorse, followed by disobedience, again. All of that psychic energy is distracting at best. At worst, it leads to self-flagellation and self-sabotage. The command leads not to virtue but to a kind of narcissism, a self-absorption in either obsessively following or breaking the law.
I agree that the Law can create this holding pattern; I also agree that command generates rebellion. But that the Law starts this way doesn’t mean it must end this way. One could argue that the goal of study and practice is to arrive at a place where Law becomes a language for self-expression and self-realization. This isn’t to say the Law presents no friction, but that the friction is useful.
The study and practice of Law can be a form of meditative and contemplative life. Just as in meditation one notices—but does not judge—distracting thoughts, in the study and practice of Law, the Law becomes a yardstick by which one can take stock of one’s positioning.
Or if you prefer a different comparison, the Law is akin to the yogic asana. The goal of the asana is the discovery of one’s breath; likewise, in the practice of the Law, one finds a clearing through the vessel.
Or again, take the example of Heidegger’s jug, which reveals emptiness. The law can be a way of holding and pouring that which could not come into view without it.
We don’t need to prove that the Law is always interpreted or applied in this way; all we need to know is that the Law, at its best, has the potential to facilitate a mystical unity of the subject with existence.
As mentioned in previous posts, the power of the Law does not rise and fall only on the axis of enlightenment or personal virtue. Law is a social technology. Yet for those seeking enlightenment and virtue, the Law has much to offer here as well. Not only does the Law offer skillful means but it offers the promise of a new language for world-building.
In Zen, the form both matters and does not matter. One is not obliged to sit zazen to experience zazen; and yet, the practice is strict. In fact, in traditional Buddhism there is a kind of external law given as to the correct pose, the correct posture, the correct way to concentrate. But we know these things are not the point. So too, the form of the Law gives way to that which is post- or extra-legal.
“If form is emptiness and emptiness form,” as the Buddhists say, there is no way to judge traditional legal systems as being inferior on this basis. On the contrary, Jewish law can express this truth just as well as the one who sits in silence. The one who sits in silence learns that emptiness is form by experiencing emptiness; the one who practices Jewish law finds silence by experiencing form.
In the modern world, heteronomy, gets a bad wrap. In the next post I will write about why the notion of a Law that comes from without is very much needed to counter balance an over-emphasis on autonomy and auto-affection. The law has retreated because pop self-help has told us that we must do it all on our own; but the basic insight of law as command is that we are never alone; selfhood is always dynamic, formed in relationship. And besides, “it is not good for a person to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).
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