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
other people, if they attend in the proper manner, to share our judgement? As Kant put it: Where anyone is conscious that his delight in an object is with him independent of interest, it is inevitable that he should look on the object as one containing a ground of delight for all men. 60 This does not, of course, guarantee that, in practice, people will all converge in their aesthetic judgements. But it does suggest that when they make efforts to appreciate works of art or natural scenes patiently, intelligently and disinterestedly, there will be much less variation in aesthetic response than the critics suppose. It suggests, for example, that we should be extremely surprised if large numbers of competent judges – and why take account of incompetent ones? – were to consider a multi-storey car park more beautiful than the Taj Mahal or the Yosemite valley. It suggests, if you will, that aesthetic appreciation is, potentially at least, grounded in sensibilities and capacities far less subject to caprice and personal bias than are our passing individual pleasures. Hence, there is no reason to think that aesthetic appreciation is a more fragile basis on which to rest a case for environmental concern than a more overtly moral one would be. After all, are there not fashions in ethics too? With a final worry that some people might express about Tagore’s position, we can be brief. This is the worry that talk of aesthetic appreciation of nature is anyway misguided. This sort of worry goes back at least to Hegel, who thought that the term ‘aesthetic’ should be restricted to discussion of the fine arts. (For Hegel, it stretches the meaning of the term to regard even gardens as objects of aesthetic appreciation.) This view, however, seems to rest either upon an arbitrary stipulation of the meaning of the word ‘aesthetic’ or upon a stunted understanding of what the experience of nature may offer. It is Tagore’s conviction, certainly, that nature has as much to offer by way of rich and rewarding experience, by way of input to our imagination and understanding, as artworks do. Indeed, for him, it is misleading to see a dichotomy between art and nature appreciation. Admittedly, we cannot approach unspoiled nature in precisely the same ways we approach a work of art. We cannot, for example, enquire into the intentions of its maker and its fidelity to those intentions. Nor can we try to understand its significance within a particular historical tradition. Such concerns have no place in our appreciation of nature. In other respects, however, we can approach and experience natural scenes in ways very close to those in which we do artworks. In both cases, for example, we may appreciate aspects of form and structure and hold ourselves open to sensual enjoyment. Moreover, it is easy to exaggerate the importance of the differences just noted. First, one should not conclude from Communion with Nature 75 the absence of intentions behind natural scenes that all talk of their meaning is illegitimate. Even in the case of works of art, there are few philosophers these days who would equate their meaning with the intentions of the artist. We familiarly speak of paintings and pieces of music possessing a meaning or significance not at all intended by their creators. Now once meaning is distinguished from intention, it surely becomes legitimate to enquire into the meanings of natural phenomena. What do they indicate? What significance do they have for us? Many of the passages of Tagore’s that we have quoted record experiences of nature – of budding leaves, of clouds sweeping over rice-fields – that can only be described as experiences of the significance for us of such phenomena. Second, one should not conclude from the fact that untouched nature has no cultural history, in the way the arts have, that it does not invite reflections on cultural history. For, except for literally undiscovered wildernesses, natural regions are bound to have been connected with human experience – with, as one author puts it, ‘ancient and changing visions of the natural world and its relationship to human beings’. 61 In a sense, that is, a natural environment has a history, that of human beings’ different ways of encountering and responding in different ages to its rocks, hills, forests and rivers. Sensitivity to the history thus attaching to natural places is not only possible but, for Tagore, a crucial dimension of what is not unreasonably described as an aesthetic perception of nature. Notes 1 Cf. Editor’s Introduction, in volume 1 of The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, ed. Sisir Kumar Das, 3 vols, New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 1999. 2 Gitanjali, poem 16, The English Writings, vol. 1, p. 67. 3 Lover’s Gift, poem 20, ibid., p. 202. 4 Gitanjali, poem 67, ibid., p. 66. 5 Autumn Festival, ibid., vol. 2, p. 134. 6 ‘Basundara’, in the poetical work, Sonar Tari, Calcutta: West Bengal Government, 1961, pp. 434–41. 7 Gitanjali, poem 74, The English Writings, vol. 1, p. 68. 8 Stray Birds, poem 259, ibid., p. 427. 9 The Gardener, poem 74, ibid., p. 120. 10 Poems, poem 20, ibid., p. 334. 11 Lover’s Gift, poem 11, ibid., p. 198. 12 Stray Birds, poem 29, ibid., p. 400. 13 The Religion of Man, London: Allen & Unwin, 1970, p. 99. 14 Sadhana, The English Writings, vol 2, p. 316. 15 Ibid. 16 Rabindra Rachanabali, vol. 14, p. 354. 17 ‘The Religion of an Artist’, The English Writings, vol. 3, p. 692. 18 Pancha bhut, Rabindra Rachanabali, vol. 14, p. 637. 19 Sadhana, The English Writings, vol. 2, p. 283. 20 Ibid., p. 324. 76 The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore 21 Ibid. 22 ‘Fact and Truth’, in Sahityer Pathe (On the Way to Literature), Calcutta: Visva Bharati, 1968, p. 53. 23 Sadhana, p. 325. 24 Ibid., p. 317. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Thoughts from Rabindranath Tagore, The English Writings, vol. 3, p. 57. 29 Sadhana, pp. 322–3. 30 Lectures and Addresses, The English Writings, vol. 3, p. 391. 31 Sadhana, p. 523. 32 ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. D.F. Krell, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, p. 297. 33 Sadhana, p. 321. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., p. 287. 36 Ibid., p. 282. 37 Thoughts from Rabindranath Tagore, The English Writings, vol. 3, p. 29. 38 Creative Unity, London: Macmillan, 1962, p. 312. 39 Ibid. 40 Sadhana, p. 281. 41 See ‘The Message of the Forest’, Lectures and Addresses, The English Writings, vol. 3, pp. 385–400. 42 John Clare, Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. M. Williams and R. Williams, London: Methuen, 1986, p. 165. 43 William Wordsworth, The Tuft of Primroses and Other Late Poems, ed. J.F. Kishel, London: Cornell University Press, 1986, p. 42. 44 In L. May and S. Sharratt (eds), Applied Ethics: A Multicultural Approach, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1994, p. 81. 45 Red Oleanders, The English Writings, vol. 2, p. 215. 46 Waterfall, The English Writings, pp. 176–7. 47 The Religion of Man, pp. 79–80. 48 Ibid., p. 33. 49 Ibid., p. 87. 50 ‘The Religion of an Artist’, The English Writings, vol. 3, p. 691. 51 Cf. D.E. Cooper, ‘Aestheticism and environmentalism’, in D.E. Cooper and J.A. Palmer (eds), Spirit of the Environment, London: Routledge, 1998, p. 101. 52 The Religion of Man, pp. 72, 83. 53 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes, New York: Washington Square Press, 1966, p. 114. 54 Lectures and Addresses, p. 79. 55 Sahitya, Rabindra Rachanabali, vol. 3, pp. 639, 759. 56 See Alan Goldman, Aesthetic Value, Boulder, CO: Westview. 57 ‘The Religion of an Artist’, p. 690. 58 Panchabhut, Rabindra Rachanabali, vol. 14, p. 763. 59 Lectures and Addresses, p. 93. 60 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, trans. J.C. Meredith, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928, p. 50. 61 Cooper, ‘Aestheticism and environmentalism’, p. 111. Communion with Nature 77 |
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