Descartes once said doubt everything to have the firm ground of knowledge. So I doubt the conception of Man; Here I am ignoring the concern of gender neutrality with respect to word. What is the essence of man, then? A biological entity evolved in the scale of history to have the capacity to think and also a capacity to think about thinking, and infinite progression or regression goes on. What is thinking, if I ask a question? Thinking is all about language, its structure, and image. What is language but the symbol to represent the experience. What is experience? If it is an isolated event or shared by many dead and alive beings? I think, no experience is uniquely fresh. It has its genesis in the history and which is shared by all the creatures, irrespective of evolutionary differences. Whether man is different from animal? Yes, some differences but much similarities. Physiological and psychological differences are obvious. But man lives in the future more than present. Man is essentially a hopeful animal who suffers immensely once that hope is not materialized. Which hope has enteral future? No hope can survive a longer period. It must be abandoned. Hope is a future and future does not exist. Only present is a reality which is sacrificed for a future to come. Am I wrong to say that man is a sacrificial animal who sacrifices his life for the sake of a future which is never ever realized except in symbol and image. The structure of society and the education curriculum are designed to ensure a passive amnesia to reign over the hearts and minds of man, so as to lose the chance of awakening until the last breath makes one realized how has he lost his life, sacrificing everything for a utopia, which was never supposed to be an alive experience. Every sacrifice which is consciously pursued even if for a utopia has at least some merits that a man has felt something in heart while living life without feeling the moments, on the contrary, man, as a machine, running mechanically everyday for success as salvation doesn't have a moment to reflect if he is suffering inside. Such kind of sacrifice deserves special attention especially with respect to a culture which is thriving on a made dance of imitation and competition; because a collective neurosis is hardly a disease to be healed by a conscientious voice. A culture like this needs more than a thousand of Buddha and Socrates to heal the irreversible malaise, which seems to be growing rapidly and tearing apart every possibility of love, happiness, and compassion.
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...
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