The Body as Norm: Non-Classic Ontology of Law

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the reasoning of the norm of law. Traditionally norm of law was interpreted as the rule, which is fixed in legislation and guaranteed by the state coercion. The other variant of interpretation were reasonably grounded ideal rules of natural law. In the sociological doctrine law presents itself as the custom, exists implicitly in the social relations. But all the similar approaches leave without an answer the next question: in what way the ordinary people, who belong to the different legal cultures and traditions and even not imagine themselves the legal content of norms, are able to have the common and coinciding picture of law.
 In my opinion to explain the similar state affairs we have to reconsider norm of law in its ontological aspect. It means to grasp and to contemplate how the norm of law exists in the real world, not on the paper or in mind of theorists and legal philosophers. The similar ontological turn becomes possible due to the phenomenological philosophy. We are talking not only about the works of classic phenomenologists, as Edmund Husserl or Moris Merlo-Ponty, but also about the “third wave of phenomenology,” such as Marc Rishire or Gean Marion. The classical phenomenology is first of all, the doctrine of consciousness. In its turn, contemporary phenomenologist’s focal point shifts toward human body. The latter isn’t interpreted as material embodiment of active subject, but opposite as the passive, affected. The body in its case becomes the field of experience, describing of which is possible through the phenomenological method.
 In the legal aspect it means, that the genuine restriction of the human deeds is rooted in the living corporal presence of the other people and not in the positive legislation or natural law. The living corporal presence of the Other in the common Being becomes the measure of my deeds. The similar measure is the border, limit and modality of my deeds towards the Others. Thus, the body of human Being takes the place of a positive or natural norm of law and, in strictly sense, embodies the norms of permeated, ought or demanded behavior. At the same time human body contents in itself all the parts of legal norm – its disposition, sanction and hypothesis and then turns into the genuine modus of legal norm’s existence.