Philosophy

Rabindranath Tagore

1861 to 1941, Calcutta, India

Finding the infinite in the finite: joy as the mark of truth, art as the language of the soul, education as freedom, and a humanity larger than any Nation.

Start learning Rabindranath →

Lessons

Sadhana: Finding the Infinite in the Finite

Tagore’s core philosophy, drawn from the Upanishads and made modern: our end is not to escape the world but to realise the infinite within the finite, the one Self in all things, and to find that the ground of cre…

The Religion of the Artist

Why Tagore’s philosophy runs through song and poem: creation is the language of the infinite, and man’s ‘surplus’ - the emotional energy left over from mere survival - is what seeks expression in…

Against the Nation

Tagore’s 1917 lectures on Nationalism : the sharp distinction between society (the living web of human relationships, an end in itself) and the Nation (a people organised as mechanical power for a purpose), and hi…

Education as Freedom

Tagore the educator: the school he built at Santiniketan, where children learned in the open air, in sympathy with all life, against the ‘factory’ that stamps out standardised minds - a philosophy in which f…

Is Truth Human? Tagore Among the Scientists

Tagore’s humanist conception of truth - that reality, as we can ever know it, belongs to human personality rather than to abstract reasoning - tested against Gandhi’s asceticism and, most famously, in his 19…

More in Philosophy

AristotlePlatoImmanuel KantFriedrich NietzscheConfuciusSenecaEpictetusMarcus Aurelius
← All thinkers

epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.