The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore
Why We Should Care for Nature
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The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) by Kalyan Sen Gupta (z-lib.org)
Why We Should Care for Nature
The environment, in the relevant sense, is the natural world – land, sea, air and the plants and animals that live on or in them. We shall now try to explicate why concern for the natural environment matters so much to Tagore, why he cannot ‘bear’, like John Clare, ‘to see the tearing plough / Root up and steal the Forest from the poor’, 42 and why he would be as dismayed at the ruthless destruction of nature as Wordsworth was at the humanly inflicted damage done to the fir trees surrounding the church at Grasmere Vale: … unfeeling heart Had he who could endure that they should fall, Who spared not them, nor spar’d that scymore high, The universal glory of the vale. 43 Ecologists and environmentalists – so-called ‘shallow’ ones, at least – are primarily concerned with our treatment of the environment in terms of the pragmatic consequences this has for humans. They urge that misuse of nature will affect human beings adversely. Pollution of air and water, destruction of forests, and insensitivity to ecological balance, many of them argue, will result in global catastrophe and even threaten the prospects for human survival. In the words of one environmental thinker, Bernard E. Rollin: The consequences of lack of control of environmental damage can range from loss of potential benefits – such as loss of new medication derived from plants … to positive and serious harm – the dramatic rise in cancers or diseases produced by environmental despoliation of air, water or the food chain. 44 The moral is clear: only if the environment is taken care of, and not unduly exploited, can we secure healthier, more secure lives for our own species. Tagore is certainly not unaware of the alarming consequences of technological exploitation, and he recognizes the misuse of nature as a terrible threat to human life. In his drama Red Oleanders, this awareness is voiced in the following observation by Nandini, the main female character in the play: ‘The living heart of the earth gives itself up in love and life and beauty, but when you rend its bosom … you bring up the curse of its dark demon.’ 45 Again, when in his play Waterfall, we encounter lines such as ‘the Machine appears like the menacing fist of a giant’, ‘The Demon whose dry tongue grows and grows, like a flame of fire fed by oil’, and ‘it kills the music of the earth and laughs its sinister laughter, displaying its rows of steel teeth in the sky’, we may read them as witnessing the extent to which industrialization and mechanization are poisoning sky, earth and water. 46 Nevertheless, Tagore’s primary concern for nature or environment is based on a different and non-utilitarian ground. While one may, of course, seek protection for the environment in the name of human survival, one may, with equal significance, seek it, as Tagore does, on the grounds that nature and man are ‘adapted’ to one another in the ways described in the previous section, that authentic human being is inseparably related to the flourishing of the natural world. Tagore’s form of environmental concern may be better understood by invoking, once again, his idea of surplus. He expresses this idea in the following way: The most important distinction between the animal and man is this, that the animal is very nearly bound within the limits of its necessities. But there is a vast excess of wealth in man’s life, which gives him the freedom to be useless. 47 This, however, does not mean that man is not bound by any necessities. Certainly, he has biological and other needs. But there is still a remainder or ‘surplus’ in human beings, once their desires, needs, and the satisfaction of these have been taken into account. For it is only man, and not animals, who is able to enquire, ‘Is this all there is? Is there nothing else?’ All such reflections of human beings arise because they do not live by bread alone; they experience a sense of lack even after all their biological and material needs have been provided for by technology. This feeling of lack or dissatisfaction comes from the ‘surplus’ in human nature, from the excess of ‘wealth’ in a human being’s life which constitutes his or her spiritual make-up. This spiritual component transcends pragmatic need and the sphere of utility: it ‘extends beyond the reservation plots of our daily life’. 48 This ‘surplus’ or spiritual wealth indicates an aspect of human being, ‘a fund of emotional energy’, which is ‘useless’ or ‘superfluous’ in the sense that it is not regulated by self-interest or practical ends. Whether there is such a spiritual aspect to human existence has, of course, always been a matter of debate among philosophers. Certainly many 70 Download 467.3 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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