Our intelligentsia is deeply immersed in wishful thinking, which is certainly producing half naked half clothed intellectual with no sense of sensitivities towards reality. They're self-declared, self-contained prophets, anxiously anticipating life-lessons in abstraction, without having any awareness about the multiple colours of lives. The most liberating prophets of our age produced a series web of logics, disconnected from the things in the world. And many accepted them as the truth with slavish acceptance in totality. The danger, in fact, lurks against our civilization, not from innocence of heart and acceptance of darkness, but from the "dogma of knowledge". To know is not a final task, but a process, for one needs to be humble in the acceptance of ignorance (Karl Popper, Conjecture and Refutation). The only value which seems to be liberatory is the acceptance of limitation, which is the very basis of scientific attitude (Chomsky). Science cannot be, and never have been the final truth, but a means and a set of methods; to doubt (Descartes), to induct (Bacon) and deduct (Popper), to hypothesise, observe, and dissect, to criticize (Popper) and particularize. Science is the name of limitation. Without limitation, is there any possibility of creation and existence? We all are finite beings with unknown infinite possibilities. Logical atomist like Bertrand Russell rightly articulated, "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt" (Emphasis Supplied). Einstein in his lucid remark said, "Two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about Universe". Undoubtedly, a little modicum of doubt is life-saving upon which the Cartesian philosophy flourished in Continental Europe, which was accepted as the foundation of science. Skepticism was inherently foundational in Socratic dialogues and in Hellenistic age, particularly skepticism and cynicism emerged as the philosophy of limitation. We may learn from the history of ideas, that it's better to be skeptical in thought and bold in the practices of ideas. Since, the science of our age is still not so advanced, for philosophy is a good guide to keep the questions alive, for a better world to come. Because, the very method of science is still away from the moral questions. For philosophy requires thinking beings to immerse in discourses, and in its practices, without flowing in the undercurrent of conventionality.
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
Very true sir.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much Prashant!!
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