ABSTRACT
It is interesting that Tagore has become an absent interlocutor in a contemporary debate in political philosophy. In her debate with her critics on the nature of patriotism and cosmopolitanism Martha Nussbaum has enlisted Tagore on the side of cosmopolitanism based on the idea of universal reason. This chapter rejects Nussbaum’s argument and suggests that while Tagore was opposed to the idea of the nation, he was equally emphatically opposed to the idea of cosmopolitanism based on the principle of an individual’s primary allegiance to the world community and consequent denial of the individuality of culture and tradition: “Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history.”
