ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the concept of reality in Tagorean philosophy in the backdrop of the philosophy of the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus by Wittgenstein, who is known to be fond of the writings of the poet, especially his play The King of the Dark Chamber. The discussion moves around Wittgenstein’s preoccupation with the place of value in humans while the subject for scientific study and analysis, which he technically designates as the world in the Tractatus, does not incorporate value. One finds a secular concept of spirituality in the mysticism mentioned in the Tractatus that logically transcends the world of science, and yet does not posit a metaphysical entity as basis for the value. The chapter points to some of the philosophical reasons that might account for the strong attraction the philosopher felt to the play by the poet, even as we highlight some important differences in the respective positions of the two geniuses of our times. Value is phenomenologically present to the poet without demanding an ontological mooring, accounting for his subscription to a secular spirituality as well. Tagore, however, holds a thoroughgoing phenomenological perspective, which makes his world a human world, where there is room for value which is imbued by the humans in the process of an existential becoming. The virtue harmony within is pivotal in the virtue ethics of Tagore based on which Tagorean activism moves toward building harmony where it is found missing. The virtue provides the ground for ethics, as the ethical space is nested in a broad aesthetic space here. Tagore’s phenomenological mooring furnishes him with ideas as back as in 1916–1917 that might appear as foreshadowing some thoughts in Quantum Physics before they took concrete shape in the history of western science. His existentialistic ideas flourished when existentialism had not yet become a prominent movement in the continent. The article hopes to add a new dimension to Tractatus studies helping the understanding of the concept of mysticism in it. Technical expressions have been avoided as far as possible in the main body of the chapter in order to make the thoughts contained in the discussion accessible to a non-philosophical reader.
