The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore
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The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) (Ashgate World Philosophies Series) by Kalyan Sen Gupta (z-lib.org)
Self, Art, Evil and Harmony
79 The implication is that, not only is there no fixed, pre-given self-identity, but, if there were, no sense could given to the ideas of human agency and freedom, and of the possibility that a person has to transcend himself. A human being, to invoke Sartrean language, is what he does, is how he creates himself. He is his freedom. For Tagore, to abandon the project of self-fashioning is, in effect, to abandon one’s freedom. He would surely endorse Baudelaire’s injunction to recognize ‘first and foremost the burning need to create for oneself a personal originality’. 7 He would be equally sympathetic to Michel Foucault’s call to ‘separate out from … what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing or thinking what we are, do or think’. For that distinction, as Foucault points out, is a precondition of ‘the undefined work of freedom’. 8 In Tagore’s later writings, then, self-realization in the Upanishadic sense yields to the idea of self-realization through freedom and self-creation. Since there is no ‘given’ or ‘essential’ self, the issue of how it might be realized is one that makes no sense. Our aim can no longer be to encounter and identify with some deep and ultimate ‘inner’ state of ourselves, but to remain embarked on the project of self-creation, of the ‘endless proliferation of freedom’. ‘This way of knowing me’, as Tagore said in one of his songs, ‘never ends, will never end.’ 9 The call here is for a space of private autonomy, one in which there is the possibility, in Rorty’s words, for ‘the process of fighting free of every particular inheritance in order to work out the consequence of idiosyncratic “blind impresses” ’. 10 While this space requires that freedom from interference which Isaiah Berlin refers to as ‘negative liberty’, it also enables that self-creativity associated with a more ‘positive’ notion of freedom. The question then arises of locating, within the field of human activity, the most appropriate means for securing this space, for serving as a vehicle for self-creation. It is Tagore’s contention that this is to be found, primarily, not in social and political activity, but in art. In this respect, he belongs within a romantic tradition that sees art as an essential realm of human experience and as the authentic site for the freedom of self-expression. In a letter written to Amiya Chakraborty, he said: Science gives us knowledge of object. What it endeavours is to separate our personality from this knowledge. But art reveals what is inner in man. Its truth is, therefore, not empirical but personal. 11 Here Tagore is indicating how he distinguishes between the world of science and the world of art. The former, he says, is the ‘abstract world of force’ which is known impersonally and dispassionately by our intellect. But the world of art is the personal world animated by our emotions, one that is an expression of our creativity through which we attempt to understand ourselves. In his words: 80 The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore [Science] has taken its special features of shape, colour and movement from the peculiar range and qualities of our perception. It is what our sense limits have specially acquired … Not only the physical and chemical forces, but man’s perceptual forces are its potent factors. 12 Science seeks to penetrate this world of physical, chemical and perceptual forces so as to give information about it. As such, it is only the objects of enquiry that are revealed, and not the human subjects that are doing the enquiring. On the other hand, there is the personal world of art: ‘with our love and hatred, pleasure and pain, continually working upon it, this world becomes a part of our personality. It grows with our growth, it changes with our changes. If this world were taken away, our personality would lose its content.’ 13 The world of art is, therefore, the world where human beings reveal themselves. In the creation of a work of art, a person selects ‘things from his surroundings in order to make them his own. He has his forces of attraction and repulsion by which he not only piles up things outside him, but creates himself.’ 14 In short, it is art that provides a private, personal space for self- expression and self-creation. Tagore, of course, concedes that it is not only in art, but also in more practical activities – in the world of work or use – that human beings may express themselves. But self-expression as found in ordinary, mundane life, he says, is not the expression of the depth of one’s being. As he writes: It has to be conceded that man cannot help revealing his personality, also, in the world of use. But this self-expression is not his primary object. In every day life, when we are mostly moved by our habits, we are economical in our expression; for then our soul-consciousness is at its low level … it has just volumes enough to glide on in accustomed grooves. But when our heart is fully awakened in love, or in other great emotions our personality is in its flood-tide. Then it feels the longing to express itself for the sake of expression. Then comes art, and we forget the claims of necessity, the thrift of usefulness, the spires of our temple try to kiss the stars and the notes of our music to fathom the depth of the ineffable. 15 In and through art, this passage contends, one is brought to a region where one is free from all the habits and necessities of everyday social life, and hence is released from the constraints of the expedient and the useful. It is in artistic creativity, therefore, that one expresses oneself most fully and truly, that one exercises the capacity to create and refashion oneself in infinitely diverse ways. This is the point being made in such remarks as the following: Music, painting, literature reveal one deep pain in man. How can we ignore it? When it is the pain of the inner man which seeks expression in various forms, colours, melodies and dances. 16 Download 467.3 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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