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)
The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore
only in relation to human evaluation. And this is surely a plausible position. After all, it is difficult to understand how one could be attributing value to anything unless one could see how this thing matters to us, how it bears upon the context of human life. It will not, of course, follow from this relational claim either that value is merely ‘subjective’ and a matter of ‘choice’ or that things are valuable only in virtue of contributing to some practical human purpose or end. If the ‘deep’ ecologist’s talk of intrinsic value in nature is intended to counter subjectivism and instrumentalism about values, it is perfectly in order. But if the intention is to ascribe to nature values that it possesses in isolation from how nature engages with a human sense of significance, then, for Tagore, this ‘deep’ ecological rhetoric is unintelligible. Tagore’s broadly aesthetic case for protecting the natural environment is certainly not an instrumentalist one. This is apparent from his discussion, reminiscent of Kant’s Critique of Judgement, of the notion of disinterested- ness. Aesthetic pleasure and satisfaction, he writes, is ‘enjoyment which is disinterested’. 54 ‘Any aesthetic relation with an object,’ he holds, ‘is a spiritual one involving joy irrespective of any pragmatic consequence or practical advantage.’ Or again, ‘we cannot appreciate beauty without separating it from our desires and temptations.’ 55 This disinterestedness of aesthetic contemplation is a notion that might be clarified by invoking the idea of an ‘alternative world’ to which we are given access by, say, a great novel. 56 While, in an obvious sense, we may be interested in the events and characters of the ‘worlds’ created by Proust or Dostoevsky, they are one into which we can enter only setting aside the ordinary interests and concerns – connected with our jobs and homes – that press in upon us in everyday life. Someone who reads Proust only in order to get tips on how to organize a dinner party is failing in any imaginative entry into Proust’s ‘world’. Indeed, that ‘world’ is one, arguably, that we enter into and explore precisely in order to relieve us, at least temporarily, from the pressures and involvements of our ordinary, practical pursuits. This notion of an ‘alternative world’ may also be applied to nature considered as an object of aesthetic experience. The forest that engages the aesthetic imagination is not one we explore in the way that the professional botanist does, and is not to be described in the vocabulary of science. But nor is it the ‘world’ of the forester, the charcoal-burner and others who depend on the forest, and perceive it, as the place and source of their livelihood. It is not therefore a place to be described in pragmatic terms, as potential lumber, say, or a supplier of nuts and berries for the dinner table. When we are moved by the smell of grass, the graceful movement of the boughs of trees, the melody of bird songs, it is not nature as it objectively or actually is that we experience. Rather, this is nature as it is ‘for us’ – an ‘alternative’, or one might say a ‘phenomenological’, nature. It is nature, to recall another of Kant’s points, that appears as if designed for our imaginative investigation. It is nature Communion with Nature 73 removed from its entanglement, causal and pragmatic, with our everyday lives. The point being made here emerges more clearly in Tagore’s insistence, as noted already, on the relation of love we enter into with nature in our aesthetic contemplation of it. ‘Love,’ he writes, ‘gives evidence to something which is outside but which intensely exists and thus stimulates the sense of our own existence.’ 57 Elsewhere and in the same vein, he says that ‘in my son I find my own being, I feel my own extension and joy. It is for this reason that I love my son so much.’ 58 The point, here, is that when I love anyone or anything, I cannot think of seeing my beloved either in the light of any usefulness for me, or as something purely external to my being. On the contrary, I find in my beloved an extension of my being, something in ‘my world’ as well as the actual world. It is this relation of love, Tagore claims, that we have with nature in our aesthetic experience of it. It is in this relation of love that I am intensely aware of nature, not as an object either for detached enquiry or practical use, but as belonging to the expanded sphere of my being. It is because, and only because, it is a relation that is irreducible to an instrumental one that, as Tagore puts it, ‘there is an element of [the] superfluous in our heart’s relation with the world’. 59 There are other charges, beyond that of ‘anthropocentrism’ or ‘speciesism’, that ecologists might level against Radindranath’s broadly aesthetic case for caring for the natural environment. In particular, some of them will charge that aesthetic judgement is too variable, too subjective and, hence too fragile a thing on which to base a commitment to the well-being of the environment. Today it may be fashionable to enjoy the sights and sounds of unspoilt forests, but this has not always been so, and may not be tomorrow. Tagore’s response to this charge would surely begin by criticizing the simplistic idea of aesthetic appreciation that it seems to assume. Such appreciation is hardly exhausted by ‘enjoyment’, by receiving pleasurable sensations from certain sights and sounds. (Indeed, he might add, there is, ironically, something ‘instrumental’ in this idea: nature is being regarded, as it were, as a resource for producing pleasures – like the River Rhine in Heidegger’s example of the tourist industry.) There is no reason to think, he would continue, that aesthetic judgement, more richly and adequately conceived, is as variable and subjective as the critics imagine. And in this connection he can appeal, once more, to the notion of disinterestedness. I may find pleasure in Indian classical music which to you may seem extremely dull and dreary. But that is no basis for concluding that aesthetic judgement is subjective unless it can be shown that you and I are judging in a disinterested and informed way, and matters are no different when one turns to the case of aesthetic appreciation of natural things. Indeed, Tagore would go further. Is it not part of what we mean in judging a piece of music or a stretch of forest to be beautiful, grand or graceful that we expect 74 Download 467.3 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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