How to Live: Anti-Utopian Perspective

I don't have any blueprint and I can not have. I may have certain immidiate purposes to achieve but it has nothing to do with the ultimate end. In fact, there cannot be any pre-decided end. Many times I tried to follow a routine to succeed, each time I failed miserably. Those failures are close to my heart. It is only failures which make me realise that life is not a manifesto to be proclaimed. Life is situational, temporal, here and now. It doesn't mean that I don't have any problem, or I am living with eternal bliss. In fact, I'm full of problems which make me engaged to solve it. Many problems are solved and many more come in between. But I don't think that these problems are itself the problem. Only this conflict deserves to be named as life. I cannot dream a heaven on earth. I cannot imagine a fairytale to come true. Life is what it is obvious to my senses. I witness it, feel it, what else is life. Here is bliss, ceaseless coiling, full of waves, ups and downs. If I follow a routine, something will die in me. If I follow a situation like solving a puzzle, I may grow, I may find some new adventures and with it some new problems. I may dream endlessly but at the end I can't be there. Instead I am here, right now with what is perceptible around me. One of the modern rationalists Karl Popper writes, "Our moral enthusiasm is often misguided, because we fail to realize that our moral principles, which are sure to be over-simple, are often difficult to apply to the complex human and political situations to which we feel bound to apply them". I cannot agree more than what he has to say. It is manifesto which doctors my life. It is prophecy of the end of history which makes me numb. I do not have the ultimate desire. I do not know how to live. I am alive!

Comments

Meeting Justice Rohinton Nariman in a Sunday Morning

Aristotle once wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics that there are four significant virtues for human beings, namely Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage. There are a few judges who have courage and sense of justice, both. Hon'ble Mr. Justice Rohinton Nariman has been truly an exemplar judge and erudite historian, theologian and philologist, a great scholar of music as well as a courageous and meticulous jurist of our country. He did his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1980-81 and taught by one of the finest jurists of the last century, Roberto Unger. He became Senior Advocate in 1993 in the age of 37 and also served as Solicitor General of India in 2011 before he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2014. He delivered many landmark judgments, including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. There are a few people with whom time moves too fast, but to count that experience takes ages. Justice Rohinton Nariman is one of those great jurists with whom a meet...

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 ...

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 f...

BEING AND BECOMING

Search This Blog