"Please, then", said Alice, "how am I to get in?"

"There might be some sense in your knocking", the Footman went on, without attending to her, "if we had the door between us. For instance, if you were inside, you might knock, and I could let you out, you know".

"How am I to get in?" she repeated, aloud.

"I shall sit here", the Footman remarked, "till tomorrow"

"How am I to get in?" asked Alice in a louder tone.

"Are you to get in at all?" said the Footman. "That's the first question, you know".

It was, no doubt: only Alice did not like to be told so. "It's really dreadful", she muttered to herself...

The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity of repeating his remark, with variations, "I shall sit here", he said, "on and off, for days and days".

"But, what am I to do?" said Alice.

"Anything you like", said the Footman, and began whistling.

If he lived in a state constituted according to Descartes' principles; in a state established by Cartesisus himself, illuminated by natural light; or at least in a state established by a ruler enlightened by Cartesisus' reasonable, clear and distinct, completely certain insights, that is, by the distinct truths about the best state of them all; the "subject" of this state would, in fact, live - more precisely, he would have to conduct himself in his "worldly action" (of course, if he wants to be "good" subject of that state) - exclusively according to Descartes' "provisional moral code" (which is concurrently, as we shall try to suggest, his theory of state and law). The fact that this subject (in what he does, in his actions) would behave according to the principles of this temporary moral code - the fact that he would, hence, act according to its demands - means, however, nothing else and nothing more than a necessity (which is as such, as necessary, produced by moral itself) to respect and obey the laws of the state in which he lives by respecting the demands of this morality. It is a necessity to practically act in perfect harmony with the laws of the state in which he lives "by the mercy of God", to steadfastly follow and obey the laws of that state, or, as Descartes puts it, the laws of "one's own country"; and also to accept without perplexity all the customs of his country, however unacceptable they may seem and however ambiguous their "rightfulness" was. The fissure thus produced in the one who wants to be moral in this way - that is, within the one who wants himself as a moral/good subject - the fissure produced by the demands of this code, is already visible. This alone suggests clearly enough that, to doubt the laws of one's own country, to put in question its customs, or its ruling religion, is not in the least "immoral", just as it is not "moral" at all; that such ambiguity is, therefore, morally indifferent and that morality is totally uninterested in whether the (legal or moral) laws are doubted or not - which finally means that moral code (as Descartes sees and explains it, of course) is indifferent to the possible doubt in itself. The only immoral thing is to act according to one's own doubt (just as it is moral to act against one's doubt, and thus against oneself). Resistance to the law and the customs of one's country is immoral (just as it is moral to resist, in action, one's own insights about their justness or morality). Simply put, it is morally utterly unacceptable not to accept its laws and customs. Hence, in order to be moral, the one who wants to be such even when doubting, has to act as if he does not doubt, as if he is convinced in the rightfulness of his own actions, which are brought about as the effects of obedience to the law and customs. In his "worldly action", one has to behave and act as if (pretend as if..., look as if...) he is quite convinced in the rightfulness of law, even though he doubts this rightfulness (justness and morality of that which is legalized by the law). (Therefore, to mention it en passant, it might be worthwhile if one reads the whole "provisional moral code" as Descartes' attempt to found and justify theoretically his own life motto: "He lives well who hides himself well".) In other words, while vacillating as to the nature of that which the law orders, he has to execute those orders steadfastly, he must unwaveringly do what is in accordance to those orders. Only by acting in such a way is he "good" and "just". He is moral because only such conduct meets the first and the second rule of Descartes' provisional moral code: the first principle, which demands "that I obey the laws and customs of my country steadfastly holding to the religion in which I have been brought up, by the mercy of God, since childhood", and the second one, which directs me "to follow steadfastly even the most doubtful opinions as if they were absolutely certain.".¹

And yet, even though being thus "good", so "moral", and hence totally schizophrenic and completely mad, the subject of this state could, in spite of being so good and moral, or because of that, feel the same sort of uneasiness, the same kind of discomfort as Alice felt standing in front of the Queen's door, standing in front of the gates of law, or the Law. This discomfort, the uneasiness felt by moral person - which is to say: by the one that firmly goes after that over which he vacillates, the one that stubbornly and consistently holds on to the "worldly action" in whose rightfulness/morality he doubts, the one that, thus, decides to act against oneself, who chooses "self-division" - is the very effect of the necessity, or morality, of submission itself (namely, this latter is that which is "really horrible" [Alice], that which is truly scandalous). This insofar as the obedience, as a condition of its own possibility, presupposes and demands "closed door" and secrecy, uncanniness, inaccessibility of that which is "behind" it; insofar as obedience, in order to be secured at all, always presupposes some non-seeing, un-clearness, un-familiarity, non-transparency, inaccessibility. The arduous, discomforting, uneasy obedience to the law, who is exactly that which remains unclear and unfamiliar, is not, however, incited by the unclearness of his content, it is not the effect of the indistinctness of his orders, but rather of the unfamiliarity of law as law, of the uncanniness of law as law and, therefore, of every law (legal or moral, makes no difference). More precisely, it is the effect of unfamiliarity, of uncanniness of that which makes the law what it is, or of the one who legalizes law as law. In short, the discomfort that brings obedience, the arduousness of the obeying itself, is produced by the absence of the answer to the question "where does the law come from", where does the law happen as law, what is it that makes it be a law, which law legalizes the law, or, differently put, how and by what is the one who legalizes the law himself legitimate. The naive subject of the (Cartesian) state might, in his naivetè, want to open the closed door of the law, to see what or who is there "behind it", to "enter" the law and enter into a relationship with the law and thereby make that which is hidden in (or by) the law, accessible. Naive as he is, the subject would like to unveil the secret of the origin of the law, the lawfulness, the legitimacy of that origin, and thereby simultaneously discover the secret of the law itself, discover what is it that makes it be the law. And, precisely because of this, he is infinitely naive. For, in all his naivety, in his non-seeing, un-realizing, he misses exactly that which Descartes knew very well, which he saw and because of which he wasn't naive at all: namely, that the invisible, the unclear and nontransparent, in the law (insofar as he remains the law and is valid as such), that the secret of the law is the law itself. More precisely, the only thing a subject should see, the only thing he should know, or "acknowledge", is that the law is the law, that the law figures as the law only because it is the law, and not because its origin is legitimate or illegitimate. Hence the gaze with which a subject looks, or with which he "sees through" the law, is in fact, a gaze that doesn't see anything. It is a "blind" gaze, a look that "inclines" to the law, for thus it keeps its secret.

Precisely this "blind" gaze of the subject, the gaze that does not see the law, the look for which the law remains hidden, the gaze desired and demanded by the law itself, is being secured by Descartes' provisional moral code, that is, by its first rule. This rule prescribes the obedience to laws of "one's own country" as the ultimate moral duty - and that entirely independently of what is being legalized by them, without any consideration whatsoever of their demands, and exclusively because of them being the laws of that particular country. It orders yielding to customs because they are customs, and not because this or that is made customary by them. In the simplest of terms, the provisional morality tells us that we have to obey the law because it is the law, that we have to perform our duty because it is a duty. Thus, provisional moral code takes the side of "one's own country" and secures its laws because they are laws. For only if, and as long as, it is determined with this tautological determination (law is the law because it's the law) - which, in fact, determines its indetermination, which sees through only its nontransparency, discovers its hiddenness - the law is secured as law (but, and that should be emphasized, the one who legalizes the law is also secured) and his validity as the law is guaranteed. Namely, only this determination - which distracts the gaze from the law by determining its indetermination or the impossibility of determination - disables any "entering into the law", prevents the discovering of the secret of law (the secret whose discovering would reveal that there is no secret, that there is no law, meaning that there is no lawful law), and thus secures the law and guarantees for its validity. Only if the law remains "invisible", if one "cannot enter" the law, if it cannot be seen through, if one cannot go "beyond/behind it" in order to see its origin; only then can one remain in front of it, only then can one be before the law, under the law. And, "to be before the law, to appear before the law, means surrendering to it, respecting it, all the more since respect keeps at distance, on the other side, and forbids a contact or penetration".² Not to see trough the law, not to see it, hence, means nothing else than obey it, be under it, respect it by keeping oneself at a distance from it. It means, therefore, nothing but being convicted to the obedience to the law, to the obedience which is always blind, exactly because it falls together with the non-seeing of the law, and because, in its blindness, everything remains hidden for/from it, ungraspable, unclear, secretive. Therefore, only the law is the one who "watches", only it "has eyes", only it can "see" and "punish" what it sees. But, in order to be able to do that, to see and see through, to be the law, it itself has to remain invisible. Thus, as long as the law is inaccessible, as long as he appears as that which lies "behind" the closed door that leads to him, but which has to stay closed so that it be valid as the law, the (blind) obedience and submission to the law, i.e. his very "above" or (which amounts to the same) the "on the other side", is secured. In any case, his validity as the law is secured.

"Thinking again?" the Duchess asked with another dig of her sharp little chin.

"I've a right to think", said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried.

"Just about as much right", said the Duchess",as pigs have to fly.".

But this schizo-breakup in which he who accepts Descartes' moral code - which is to say: accepts the acceptance of something unacceptable, accepts to submit himself to that which he doubts - has to live; this gap between what one does and what one thinks he ought to do, which subsists in a moral person is by no means a byproduct of this moral, not something that "wasn't counted on". On the contrary. It is necessary precisely because, with his moral principles, Descartes paradoxically tries to safeguard the one, who is by those principles condemned to blind obedience and total submission, as at the same time "nonsubmissive" and "disobedient", to safeguard him as "the master", and thus as the one who is, although obedient, "entirely" self-governed, entirely in his own power, and who, as such, "disposes with everything he wants". Such securing of the "obedient" and "good" person as the master, as his own owner, should safeguard and guarantee the third principle of this moral code. Namely, the principle which ought to found and guarantee the realm of absolute freedom, absolute "immorality", and the right to any dispute and rebellion whatsoever, for the "obedient". It does that, however, by bringing about the realm of pure thought as that of the absolute freedom. Only thoughts are free, for they (Descartes surely wants to believe so) are entirely dependent on our power, only they are the effect of our absolute power. What's more, they are that power itself. But, the reverse is also true: only in thoughts are we absolutely powerful, absolutely free. "For, after they have constantly been dealing with the limits prescribed to them by nature, they (philosophers) have realized that nothing stands so much in their power as their thoughts, that only these were enough to divert them from preferring other things".³ In thought, therefore, since it is the space of freedom and a free space, any disputation and disobedience are allowed, every "rebellion" is legitimate. Moreover, doubt and strife, calling into question and challenging, are the nature of thought as such. A thoughtful thought, if it is such, doesn't have the power to submit and oppress, which in other words means it cannot but challenge, doubt, "rebel" against everything. By its own nature, thought hasn't got the power to be weak, it hasn't got the power to be powerless, to accept obedience to power. Thought, therefore, from its own nature (which is to say: from itself) receives an order to doubt all orders. Thought is enlightening by its proper "essence". It legalizes the doubt in any law whatsoever as its basic constitutive law, as the law that constitutes it as a thought, and brings about the resistance to any obedience as the only "directive" to be obeyed. But, paradoxically, in order to be the absolute power, in order to be self-governed and thus absolutely free, in order to doubt undisturbed, to perform the negative work which only just turns it into thought, and in order to be able to make the radical (philosophical) gesture of negation through that work - and to suspend (in thought) the validity of everything acknowledged as valid - thought has to obey a principle which is external to it, a principle that orders the necessity of practical action: "Through this acceptance of the customs and rules of social life in their nonsensical, given character, through acceptance of the fact that law is law, we are internally freed from its constraints - the way is open for free theoretical reflection. In other words, we render Caesar what is Ceaser's, so that we can calmly reflect on everything".⁴

This, however, at the same time means that, if it wants to be absolutely free, or if it wants to be a thought, thought has to agree to the limiting of its own freedom, to its own "thoughtlessness", to the inscription of the lack within this absolute, which consists in thought's giving up the pretension to have an act as its working. That is, in order to be absolutely powerful, thought has to inscribe weakness into its own power, and only the former will (as Descartes obviously thinks) insure it as absolutely free/powerful. (But, the illusion that enables this whole thesis about the absolute freedom of thought, is none other than the idea that it is possible to preserve one's own "interiority", and preserve it so that it remains distant and totally non-mediated by external pressures of laws and customs.)

Hence, the basic, fundamental principle of Descartes' moral code: doubt but obey; or, differently: be absolutely free, absolutely autonomous subject of your theoretical reflection, "dedicate yourself to the perfection of your mind" (Descartes), which means: challenge, try out, negate (in thought, of course); and, in order to be able to do that - to be thus free, thus powerful, in order to be in your own power, under your own government, to be your only owner, or simply to be able to be yourself - accept necessity, powerlessness, be not free, nonautonomous in your practical action, yield to that which appears the most doubtful, obey the most questionable, accept the unacceptable. Only by complying to this double demand is the realization of the ideal of "good", "moral" (and that immediately means also: "happy") life, secured and guaranteed. Only realized in this way, happiness is what it properly is, and it consists of "living my life quietly and virtuously, studying myself.".⁵

Alice went on, "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to", said the Cat.

"I don't much care where -" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you walk", said the Cat.

"- so long as I get somewhere", Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that", said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough!"

It would not only be premature, but also wrong to read the second principle of this provisional moral code as just one among the three rules, or as just another practical principle. Such reading would be careless, because it would overlook, that is, be totally unaware that the second rule is the revealed secret of the first one. More precisely, it is its "up side down", its "perversion". In short, it is "the truth" of the first principle. What's more, it is the truth of every "legal formalism" or of its rule. It is, so to speak, "the substantial" of the formal and, as the truth of the first principle, it is in fact the truth of Descartes' entire provisional morality.

Namely, when Descartes, with his second principle, demands the "steadfast following even of the most doubtful... thus following the example of travellers who, being lost in a forrest, must not wonder and roam in this or that direction, much less stay in one place, but rather walk always in one same direction", for only "in that way, even though they might not go where they want, they will finally come somewhere, somewhere where they'll surely be better off than in the middle of the forest"⁶; he (Descartes) is not simply giving a directive for "good" behaviour, he doesn't just save the possibility of a "worldly" everyday action, he doesn't bring about the law as the highest value "in itself". On the contrary, he thus saves a certain kind or a certain manner of "life conduct". In safeguarding the law because it is the law of "one's own country", and not because it legalizes this or that, Descartes really saves the ideology, the ideological order of this "country" of his. That is, in this second principle, "Descartes is in a way revealing the hidden cards of ideology as such: the real aim of ideology is the attitude demanded by it, the consistency of ideological form, the fact that "we continue to walk as straight as we can in one direction".⁷ It is ideology, rather than the life conduct, that does not tolerate any deferral or hesitation. In order to be valid as ideology, and to be saved in its validity, to be saved as valid, ideology demands the steadfastness (of obedience). It resists every wondering, any change of direction, and prevents any detour of the road it itself has prescribed and inscribed. In the simplest of terms, in order to secure and safeguard its own consistency, that is, the consistency of its proper form, ideology establishes this going in the same direction, the straight path "at any cost", the walk in the direction it has prescribed (which is, therefore, always straight and right), as a "fact", as givenness. Ideology delivers the obedience to the command (that everybody goes straight, that they "keep up the pace") as a necessity.

Thereby, the second moral principle exposes itself in its truth (which is, to say it again, at the same time the truth of the entire provisional moral). It clearly tells us what it itself is, it bears witness to its own immorality, it shows us that it is, in fact, an ideological principle par excellence. This because, quite ideologically, it determines moral action as the action which obeys ideology (as long as it is the ideology of "one's own country"), which aims at preserving the consistency of its form. Thus, ideologically, it delivers us the basic principle of every ideology - the necessity of obedience to ideology - as a moral principle. But, at the same time, this second principle is also a "moral" principle, precisely because it itself - and that's exactly what makes it so "moral" - yields to the basic (ideological) demand, which it itself has brought about. Because, that is, it obeys the demand which orders a steadfast acceptance of the ideology of "one's own country". Namely, for those who do not live in "Chinese or Mexican empire", which is to say: in the empires with (substantially) different ideology, this second moral principle clearly determines the ideology to which one must yield in his actions if he wants to be good and moral. The basic demand of ideology in Descartes' country - of the ideology of life conduct, for which non-vacillation is the condition of (working) productiveness, for which decisiveness is the condition of effectiveness, the condition of (working) time well spent - is that "life conduct tolerates no deferral", that it has to be quick, steadfast, decisive and effective. For such an ideology, the decisiveness in action, not wondering around or (which is the worst, the totally immoral possibility) hanging around, inaction, is the presupposition of the production of values, more precisely, of the surplus value. In that sense, the transition to the bourgeois image of the world had really begun (if not already finished) with Descartes.

Only from this perspective the meaning and significance of the third principle of provisional moral code becomes quite distinct. Since ideology demands that the conduct prescribed by it be accepted as a fact, as an unchangeable givenness, the one who wants to be moral (who wants himself as good) must accept ideology and its demands, to which he yields, as facts and given existences, as a "natural law" or, as Descartes says in the third principle, as destiny, as fate. Hence this good subject, in order to be good, must invest all energy of his spirit in the acceptance of his fate, in reconciliation with it. (Descartes admits that this energy and the effort innate to it are huge and request a long-term spiritual exercise: "But, I admit that there must be a lot of exercise and repeated thoughts in order for man to get used to see things from this point of view"). That is, all the effort of one's spirit has to be invested in the acceptance of the ideology of "one's own country" as a destiny. Resistance to destiny, rebellion against a fact, would anyway be a sign of a serious mental disturbance, a reliable symptom of excessive dementia. Therefore, in order to stay sane, and in order to, concurrently, be "good", one mustn't try to change the course of destiny/ideology. He rather has to try to, as Descartes puts it, "change his desires, and not the world order". He will "train" himself to bring his desires in accordance with destiny/order, and that by accepting the (ideological, fateful, natural) order. Even more accurately, he will "train" himself by changing his desires, by desiring other desires, to desire the order, to desire that which is demanded from him, and thus make the orders of that (ideological) order the commands of his own desire. Through "a lot of exercise and repeated thoughts" he will desire the desire to go precisely the path he is taking, although, perhaps, "in the beginning" he didn't go exactly where he wanted to. Through such hard work he will, therefore, perfect his desire to be the law; or, reversely, through this spiritual gymnastics, he will do anything to make the law his desire, he will simply train his desire to desire the law, to desire the order.

"Let the jury consider their verdict", the King said.

"No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first - verdict afterwards".

With this overdetermination of ideology to morality, with this moral code in the service of "one's own country's" ideology, with the moral which establishes the lack of any content whatsoever and the rule of pure form as its only content (thus, also, the necessity to yield to the law because it's the law, or the necessity to perform duty because it is the duty), we are immediately given a clear answer to the question about the status of good/just in this moral. The manner in which justness and good are safeguarded in this morality, "resolves" the fundamental problem of legal theory (or moral theory). When saying this, we think of the problem of discerning or clearing of the relationship between form and content, goal and means, that is, problem of justification of power, or the justification of its (always violent) use, the problem of the means which it uses for its self-preservation and self-insurance, on one hand, and its relationship with what we could call the "substantial" justness (or good), justness in itself, on the other. If, indeed, the law is valid because it is the law, that is, because it is legalized as the law, and not because it legalizes some justness existent in itself; than the only presupposition of such validity (validity as the law) isn't really the existence of something just, but the existence of power which will enable its validity as the law, which will, therefore, be powerful enough to legalize it as the law. Thereby, the question about the means which power uses to legalize the law and thus legalize and guarantee only itself (so it comes as no surprise that Descartes reveals the secret of law, the secret of its origin, as power, or reveals power as the birthplace of law, as the law itself, in correspondence with a ruler, who, being a ruler, knows the secret of law's origin, knows that it is that secret), that is, about the morality or immorality of those means, about their legitimacy or illegitimacy, always "misses the point". The question about the goals and the means is always a wrong one, for there is nothing to ask about. In other words, the question of (il)legitimacy of means always turns out to be superfluous and redundant. The means that power uses to legalize the law, to legalize itself in the shape of the law, can be neither just nor unjust, neither moral nor immoral, not "before" power self-insures itself, not "before" it legalizes itself through the legalization of the law. And when the law is "installed" as the law, and when thereby the power legitimizes itself as lawful, when it legalizes itself, the means it used in the work of self-legalization become just, good, legitimate, since the law legalizes them as such. If one still insists on the question of means, if the necessary missing of this question is not recognized and, therefore, if the answer to it is still sought (but, in fact, the redundancy of this question can be seen only retroactively, only by answering to it, for the answer makes the question redundant), then one has to say: all the means that power uses to preserve and perpetuate itself, all the laws that it legalizes in order to guarantee this survival (and these laws, in turn, justify and legalize those means), are just and good. "It should be presupposed that the means which they (rulers) have used to gain the power have been just. Almost always, I think, they are just, provided the princes who use them think them to be; because justice between sovereigns does not have the same bounds as justice between individuals".⁸ A just act of the sovereign is not, or doesn't have to be, a just act of his subjects, because the amount of power at their disposal is different. The subjects are, so to speak, the "degree zero" of power, they are the absolute weakness of power, the absolute powerlessness of power, or the "place" of its total absence, of its non-presence. (De Sade was, therefore, right. The foundation of (tyrannical) rule, the condition of the possibility of tyrant's existence is the unity of the weak, the "community of the weak", of those who are totally helpless.) The sovereign, on the other hand, is the space of absolute power, he is the absolute power itself, or (as Descartes defines him) he is the God on Earth: "Please, don't be afraid to assert and proclaim everywhere that it is God who has laid down these laws in nature just as a king lays down laws in his kingdom".⁹ Sovereign's justness (and the sovereign is always just, whatever he demands, whatever he orders) is infinite. Not because he is infinitely just or infinitely good, but because he is absolutely, infinitely powerful, because he possesses absolute power: the power which, "before" every justness and everything "good" (which, if they existed independently of his power, "before" it, indeed weaken his power, make it less absolute), like God, makes laws with which something is only legalized as just or good. Sovereign's justness is infinite because he possesses the power that wields justness and good, the justness and the good that, then, become criteria of just/good action of subjects, and which are the limit of their own justness. Hence, the ruler who is a god (a ruler understood as God, "on Earth" though, is a typically baroque conception: "Ruler is a Cartesian God, transposed into political world"¹⁰) is not "given" the power on account of his justness, or his possessing some justness in itself, so that he could make that justness powerful, make it legitimate and ruling. Rather, because he is the absolute power himself, he is enabled to create justness, to create that which is to be good. Thus, the power is not something that only just has to enable or legitimize a justness external to it, some justness-in-itself, but the power is justness itself, power is that which is just, that which is good. So, paradoxically, the definition of that which could (must) account as justness in itself, as good in itself (and, exactly the (sovereign's) absolute power, that in-itself, is infinitely, absolutely just and good), is nevertheless established and secured. Every working of power and force (if, as Canetti thinks, force is the acute state of power, power at the moment of its exercising) is therefore just/good; for it is the effect of that which is in-itself, "substantially" just/good; and every command of the ruler is the command of justness itself, of good itself. In other words, every law, regardless of what it legalizes, always legalizes justness, legalizes good. In such definition of power/force, power is clearly not meant as a necessary instrument of justness, it is not the "good use of force" in Pascal's sense, not the force demanded by justice in order to "enforce" itself and force itself upon us, to legalize itself and make itself powerful and binding (and, in that sense, every law or legalization of justice presumes forcefulness and the use of force). Power is here meant as complete self-sufficiency of force, where the means is its own and only goal. Forcefully legalized force becomes, or rather is, justness/good. Therefore, everything that force legalizes as the law is just and good. More precisely, the force which has legalized itself by the law is just or good; whereas the law, insofar as it is the law, insofar as it is forcefully legalized and is the legalized force, is always just and always good. And since the law is always just and always good because it is legalized by the work of justness (power) itself, the highest demand of Descartes' morality becomes, quite understandably, the obedience to the law of "one's own country", the obedience to the "one's own country's" ruler's power, which is - as powerful, as "forceful" - always just and always infinitely good.

If, however, the absolute power (of the ruler) is the power that makes the law out of itself, or which establishes itself as justness/justice and good, than it, because absolute, can change laws (exactly the way God does it, God who is so powerful that he can change eternal truths, or the truth he proclaimed eternal). In these changes, that power can always legalize something (substantially) different than just and good: "It will be said that if God has established these truths He could change them as a king changes his laws.".¹¹ This means that the laws legalized by power have no other foundation but the changing, precarious, capricious will of the sovereign; that they, as the laws whose foundation is changeable and precarious, are actually deprived of a foundation, that they are completely unfounded: "Since the origin of authority, the foundation or the fundament of the position of law, by definition cannot rest upon anything else but upon its own self, they themselves are unfounded violence".¹² As an unfounded power, i.e. as an illegal power, as the power that doesn't legalize any in itself existing justice or good whatsoever, as the power which legalizes itself as an in itself existing justness/good, that is, as the power that Pascal calls tyrannic; the laws do not aim at making justice powerful, not at legalization of good, but their only goal is to establish and fasten the self-willed rule of their creator, which is not limited by any law. As "mere force without justice" (Pascal), as a tyrannic force, as a force which is, as such, "condemned because it is bad" ("Tyrants are created only by law; the law enables the existence of the tyrant"¹³), they are the force that rests upon the silent obedience to the letter of the law, for only then and thus is it absolute. (Descartes' provisional moral code ought to secure exactly this speechlessness of obedience, thus securing only the force itself.) It becomes clear why the law is always "mystified", why does one always have to remain "under" the law, or before the law, why can't it be entered, why does its origin, or the unfoundedness of its origin, remains hidden, why does the subject of its elocution never comes into question? The law has to remain a secret, not because that secret cannot be revealed, not because it is secretive by nature, but because its secret must not be revealed, because the revealing of that secret, the unriddling of the riddle of the law (or the uncanniness of the nature, of the foundedness of its origin) must be disabled, forbidden, unallowable. This is so in order not to bring to the light, "before one's eyes" (that's why the obedience rests upon the non-seeing, that's why it is always blind), the unfoundedness, the illegitimateness of the law, its utter unlawfulness. In order, therefore, not to reveal that the law is never the work of necessity, that it itself is unnecessary, that it is not destiny, not an unchangeable givenness, but a product of contingency, of the changeable, arbitrary, unfounded will of the ruler. The unfoundedness, unlawfulness of law has to remain hidden, so that it would not be realized that the way out of the forest has been determined at random and fortuitously. Hence, the law has to be taken synchronously: the one who watches it, who is under it, has to hold on to its letter tightly (silently and blindly), because only in that way - in the absence of any questioning about its origin, about the lawfulness of that origin - is the unchangeability, factualness and naturalness of its rule secured. It is exactly here that Descartes appears as a genuinely baroque thinker. This, of course, if, for Baroque, the tyrant's thing (that is, of the one who, as Deleuze puts it, permanently stands in "the shadow of the law", and who acknowledges only the language of the law) "is the restauration of the order in the state of emergency: the realizing of dictatorship whose utopia consists in exchanging the unforeseeable historical happening for the constitution of natural laws".¹⁴

"Up lazy thing!" said the Queen, "and take this young lady to see the Mock Turtle, and to hear his history. I must go back and see after some executions I have ordered"

The Gryphon sat up and rubbed its eyes, then it watched the Queen till she was out of sight: then it chuckled. "What fun!" said the Gryphon, half to itself, half to Alice.

"What is the fun?" said Alice.

"Why, she", said the Gryphon. "It's all her fancy, that: they never executes nobody, you know. Come on!"

Yielding to this sadistic pressure of the law, which is to say: yielding to the law that doesn't meet his desires (on the contrary, it actually suppresses and prevents them) and which is malicious towards his "benefit" by being completely indifferent and careless with regard to it; the one who obeys and feels this obedience as degrading, finds himself in the position of a masochist. He is in a position in which the law is not understood sadistically as "the second nature", which can then, as such, be transcended by the work of "the first nature"; but, indeed, as the very "first nature", as the unchangeable fact, as a natural law that cannot be doubted. And exactly the fact that a masochist, or (which is only the other name for him) Descartes' moral subject, sees the law as "the first nature" explains the basic masochistic position; namely, that his intention (insofar as he is a masochist, insofar as he follows Descartes' moral principles) is never the soothing of the feeling of degradation. It is neither the transcendence of the pressure of the law, nor its challenging. Quite the contrary, masochist's intention is "the emphasizing of its highest sovereignty".¹⁵ A masochist, therefore, holds on tight to the law as the law, he steadfastly follows its letter, steadfastly acts according to its commands, and that the more steadfastly the more these contradict his desire. It would, however, be premature, and thereby also wrong, to assume that the masochist enjoys this absolute obedience to the law as such (whatever it is that he legalizes), or that he gladly and joyfully yields to sadistic coercion of the law. The thing with the masochist is exactly the opposite. The situation is exactly the same as the one Descartes describes while talking about his moral subject (hence, Descartes' "image" of the moral subject can be read as a precise description of the masochist). That is, the moral subject (the masochist) obeys the law, acknowledges and, through his steadfast action, affirms its highest, absolute sovereignty; but, at the same time, he does that "contemptuously", doubting the very law he accepts as "the first nature", and having second thoughts as to the "rightness" of law. i.e. of that which it commands. "The element of contempt in masochist's obedience has often been emphasized: his apparent obedience hides criticism and provocation"¹⁶.

Such "nature" of the masochist, such mode of obedience to the law, which acknowledges its absolute sovereignty and regards it as the first nature while at the same time doubting and "criticizing" that nature, finally reveals the masochist as a sadist. More precisely, as the one who, though with different means (by the steadfast acceptance of the law), transcends the law and its highest sovereignty. Namely, the masochist is the one who - accepting the law and blindly obeying its commands, e.g. yielding steadfastly to its power and completely acknowledging it -"weakens" the absolute power of the law; that is, weakens the absolute power which legalizes itself by the law it makes, the power which is the birthplace of the law. Exactly by seeing the law "synchronously", by accepting it as the unchangeable ruling order, as the destiny to which his desires must comply, as a desirable and desired destiny; by following the latter of the law "blindly", i.e. not asking (or, simply, giving up) the question about the nature of the law, about its legitimateness, its lawfulness; the masochist "acts as if the highest sovereignty of the law gives joy in all those pleasures it denies".¹⁷) He acts as if he enjoys this adherence to the law's command, as if he desires that command, as if the law is identical with his desire, as if it is his desire. The masochist, therefore, acts as if the law gives him exactly that which it wanted to take away from him (when it suppressed the desire), as if it stimulates what it wanted to prevent, as if it incites, or at least enables the disorder which it wanted to "put in order". Thereby, the law ceases to be something "outside", or "above", something "opposite" which keeps us at distance. It is no longer a suppressed desire, or that which suppresses the desire, and hence it is not a law any more. Thus demonstrating "the absurdity of law" (Deleuze), the masochist, in fact, produces the same effect as the sadist (only differently, relying on the first nature - on evil and crime). By an unconditional acceptance of the law, the masochist weakens the law, he transcends its limits. Differently put, by accepting the highest sovereignty of the law, the masochist (or, Descartes' moral subject) emphasizes the weakness of the law, the powerlessness of the law, the powerlessness of that sovereign power which legalizes itself by the law. He thus points out the powerlessness inscribed within the absolute power, the weakness of that very power. The absolute power (and here we shall for a moment return to Benjamin's insight), which wants to exchange the unpredictable historical happening for the constitution of natural laws (that is, for the constitution of its power into natural law), is utopian because, as we can see, exactly the establishment of this power or its laws as natural, makes room for the unpredictable historical happenings. Descartes' provisional moral is, then, a perfect demonstration of the thesis about good life, which consists in "being well hidden". Well hidden truth of the principles of this moral, which dispatches the absolute obedience to absolute power into the space of the visible and the uncanny, is really the weakening of that power. The hidden truth of the necessity to yield to the law is the weakening of the law itself, its transcending.

Thus, Descartes' ruler/God, or the infinite power itself, ends up in an utterly baroque dialectic of the ruler: the ruler/God, that, as Benjamin says, "incredibly strong animal", or "the highest creature that fires like a volcano in rage", finally falls as a victim of disproportion between its own unlimited power, and the infinite powerlessness of his subjects. The latter, however, precisely by this dialectical play, turns out to be the only powerful, in fact, the most powerful power.

"Wake up, Alice dear!" said her sister. "Why, what a long sleep you've had!"

"Oh, I've had such a curious dream!" said Alice, and she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange Adventures of hers that you have just been reading about...

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