SOLVED PAPER 2023 (CDS) (II) (English)

Passage I

What is truth? said Jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon man's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians, examineth matter and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure as with poets nor for advantage, as with the merchants; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell; this same truth, is a naked and open day-light, that doth not show the masks, mummeries and triumphs, of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any men doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition and unpleasing to themselves?

What is the writers' idea of 'truth' in the paragraph ?

Passage II

The 'law' is an enterprise that seeks to rule us all from cradle to the grave, whether as constitution confronting custom or as custom confronting constitution and often indeed as the diverse combinatory prowess of both. The very notion of enterprise suggests risk-taking i.e., risk as a site for both for regulation or felicitation of approved social conduct. At the same moment, this coupling of the constitutional and custom is at the outset designed to pluralise the notion of legal literacy, a message yet to be fully constructed and conveyed co-equally to those who govern us and those who would resist domination. As citizens, we are supposed to know the law made by the state, whether we intend to obey it or break it. As members of cultural and religious communities, we also need to know the norms that define our membership of these collectives. Often, our identity and obligations as members of a political society and of diverse memberships within cultural and religious communities constitute spheres of peaceful co-existence. Often, too these collide. To decide what obligations ought to have precedence, each one of us in collision situations has to know a great deal about the law of the state and that constituting community and identity other than the political. Literacy in state law is important but never enough for an understanding of multiple sources of obligations that constantly press upon us. This invites engagement with many difficult questions including what we may want to mean by literacy, law, domination and resistance. Further, the question always is: how far do resources of legal literacy endow us with resources of justice for all and care of self and care for others?