ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I provide a phenomenological reading of the idea of the human which Tagore presents to Einstein in the Kaputh conversation of 14 July 1930. I make three interrelated points. First, I develop the idea of the human as a limit-concept with the aid of phenomenology as it emerges in the context of the conversation. Second, I connect the themes of this conversation to Tagore’s social philosophy. A philosophical task that is accomplished in the process concerns the grounding of cosmopolitanism in the idea of the human. A conclusive suggestion of these remarks would be that in this conversation Tagore was not mainly attacking realism (as Einstein thought) but rather systematically extending his richly worked out cosmopolitan concerns.
