The Rhythm of Law: A Book Review

Book Cover of the Book

Law is the subject and object of curiosity since the ancient civilizations started its journey of contemplation about the order within the nature; its mysterious paths inspired the germination of metaphysics. Initially, human's mode of existence lived as instinctual life as per the call of nature. Instincts were primarily used as a medium for survival and to receive the call of wisdom from the “order of nature”. Humans are primarily one of the modes of expression of the nature, as Spinoza calls it attributes which express the essence of God and modes which are derived from the essence of God or nature (Spinoza, Ethics). The doorway of all the laws, as brooding presence of harmony, may be received if one is alert to recognize its call. Prof. Raman Mittal has penned a beautiful book titled “The Rhythm of Law”. The uniqueness of the book is its potentialities to express the inexpressible wisdom. Martin Heidegger in his Magnum Opus, Being and Time, expresses the skepticism of ‘logocentric system of thought” emanated since Greek scholarship. The logicality of law has, in fact, limited the horizons of understanding and expressing the law. The modern positivism elucidates the concept of law in terms of a rule laid down or posited by intelligent being for other intelligent beings and its understanding is demystified through logic of language and its clarifications. As Oliver Wendell Homes rightly expressed the skepticism that the “life of law has not been logic but experience”.  How far the rules posited or laid down by an intelligent being for other intelligent beings express the experience of  harmony or order within nature or experience from nature? The positivist paradigm of law overlooks this question, and in fact, conceals the question itself beneath the logical systems of command,  norm, rule, or right and duty. 

The true adventure for the legal scholarship may be to un-conceal the un-expressed experience of law not by propositional structure of logic, its presupposed surmises and already decided conclusions, but to indicate the silences hidden and concealed beneath the expressive cultures of prudentia-juris. This is one thing to express that one is interested in knowing the opinions too common to live an open life of present and future and another thing to explore the mystery of the rhythm of nature and its eternal path. Lao Tzo rightly expresses that the Dao which can be named is not an eternal Dao. Dao as nameless is the doorway to the mystery and understanding; mystery leads one towards understanding the wisdom of the eternal harmony of nature. Such wisdom can be expressed only through poetic insight. 

Prof. Raman Mittal has indicated the rhythmic vibrations of law through his soft melody of words, whose music cannot be articulated in a syllogistic propositions of logic, whose melody cannot be fathomed through overzealous and suspicious mind, which endeavors to dissect the harmony into pieces and atoms. Prof. Mittal has entered into the dark matter of law in a classical way. In poetic expressions, he has explored the voices of unconscious whose common wisdom can be taken as a signal to realize and express the highest wisdom of dashein (authentic being).

The Rhythm of Law is a great gift for those scholars who are interested in the truth of law and its righteous path. It transcends the tradition of Hobbes, Bentham, Austin, Hart, Ronald Dworkin, and Joshep Raz and expresses the symphony of nature by indicating the mystery of instinct, intellect, and intuition. In the modern world, instinct is relegated to animality, whose baseness is sublimated in civilizing process. Whose violence is purged to install the edifice of civility. In psycho-analytical tradition, Sigmund Freud conceptualized the world of instinct as “Id” (pleasure principle). The pleasure principle is either condemned as the animality, which is obstacle to reach the sphere of rationality, the “superego”, the “moral principle”. The modern world, especially utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham and  J. S. Mill, take pleasure as the reservoir of the law of nature and base their moral systems on natural inclination. Prof. Mittal indicates its significance in these poetic words: 

“For survival our animal past has created a pool,

It commands us to pull our hand from fire,

And to run when danger is dire,

There is no scope to reason,

Spontaneously, the body works with precision,

It captures the known,

And springs out truth from the infallible Zone”.

Intellect, on the contrary, is a medium to receive the spirit of logos, initially it was indicated as the law of nature, in Christian tradition, logos was used to indicate the commandment of the Christ. In a glorified world of discourse, the logos has taken as a law of the language, a nous of the speech. In such a world, intellect is used to justify every single act, righteous or unjust. In Weberian sociology, intellect or reason was indicated as a tool for rationalization. Reason, rightly cannot be blamed for its extra-signification or over-exhaustion. It is useful for knowledge but often conceals the sphere of harmony in the universe can be accessed through “inner light”. Reason is used to know the external world as fragmented pieces whose interactions are the puzzles of the modern mechanical and materialist science. The theories of relativity and quantum physics have endeavoured to break the mythical narratives propagated by the modern scientists, such as Galileo and Newton. In early Buddhist thought, which migrated to Tibet, it was advanced by Madhyamika school that reason cannot establish itself, reason cannot prove the reason. In fact, the use of reason brings “infinite regression” to the extent that every assertion is falsified and reduced to absurdity (Reductio ad absurdum). The author of this poetic collections outlines the significance of intellect, which is used through reason and logic. Its first process is scepticism to test the fundamental beliefs often untested on the anvil of reason. This method is peculiar in the development of the positivist conception of law and has culminated into many analytical systems of legal order. 

The third door to truth or the law of the universe is intuition. Its significance was outlined by Albert Einstein by claiming that intuition is the master and logic or reason is its servant. Kantian Transcendental Aesthetics and Dialectics have emphasised on intuition as a door to experience the knowledge. However, the modern civilization in awe of technological rationality has denigrated its importance. Most of the artistic or scientific works cannot be creative enough without allowing intuition to guide in a mysterious path of insight or foresight. As per the author, intuition is the “inner light” of wisdom. In realizing the harmony of the universe, one is required to have aesthetic sense and sensibilities (Rabindranath Tagore).

The beauty of the book is its potentiality of saying the unsaid, which surpasses the positivist jurisprudential endeavours by outlining the significance of law for justice and vice versa. The author expresses the limitations of legalism and outlines the importance of the dialectics of law to realize the eternal and temporal journey of the normative world established by human's social and cultural life.