Violence of Law and Ethics of Care

The worldliness of world is constituted by care (Martin Heidegger). Only in our concernfull dealing with the things around, the existence of being may be understood. In our everydayness of care and concern the world appears to our consciousness. Care is the language, a nomos of our existence, yet it is hardly perceptible in a world of law, which was rightly defined by Hans Kelsen and Max Weber as “legitimate use of violence”. The monopoly of political state over the violent nature of law makes it the most elevated institutions in relation to various social orders co-existing with the political state. Politics, once conceived as “an art of possibilities” by Harold Laski, is now becoming merely a language of allegations, counter-allegations, trickery and manipulation, in one statement, it symbolizes the archetypical character of violence whose expression is apparent in the existence of law. Violence has become our mode of existence in a sense that it speaks through us when the humanity finds pleasure in coercion. It is hardly noticed that one who is violent by deeds and thought is himself the victim of violence. He is the first victim whose victimhood radiates in victimization of the world. If we revise our jurisprudence of violence with care, what would be the consequence? If we identify in otherness of others our own quintessence, in sufferings of sufferers our own pain and miseries, in alienation of alienated ones  our own alienation, in violations of violated the violence to the self, what would be the language of law; violence or care? This question lives in our conscience but remains silent. As long as our language of blame and accusation and violence of punishment reign our political and legal system, ethics of care would be hidden under the surface of social ordering. As long as our society internalizes the language of power and subordination (vertical relationship), the friendliness of friends (horizontal relationship) would be invisible from our polity and jurisprudence, and every endeavour for police, prison, or judicial reform would be nothing but superficial meta-narratives.