Rabindranath Tagore · Philosophy
Tagore’s 1917 lectures on <em>Nationalism</em>: the sharp distinction between <em>society</em> (the living web of human relationships, an end in itself) and the <em>Nation</em> (a people organised as mechanical power for a purpose), and his warning that the Nation is organised selfishness - a critique aimed at the West and, more painfully, at its imitation across Asia and in his own India.
You learned that Tagore separated society (an end in itself, the natural web of human bonds) from the Nation (a people organised as mechanical power), called the Nation-idea a moral ‘anaesthetic,’ and criticised not only Western nationalism but its adoption by the colonised, including India. Explain the di…
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