Tagore’s “Religion of Man”
Martha Nussbaum
Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics
University of Chicago
Friday, April 22 at 5:30 pm
State Room East
Indiana Memorial Union
Martha Nussbaum
Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics
University of Chicago
Friday, April 22 at 5:30 pm
State Room East
Indiana Memorial Union
ABSTRACT
Nineteenth-century political thinkers grew obsessed with the question of how politics might
motivate citizens to depart from narrow egoism and greed, accepting sacrifices for the sake
of fair political institutions and a decent living standard for all. Auguste Comte’s “Religion of
Humanity” had enormous influence all over the world, including India, where leading Bengali intellectuals adapted his ideas to their own situation. Meanwhile, Comte’s proposals, which asked for a great deal of social homogeneity and control, were undergoing criticism and reformulation—by John Stuart Mill in Britain, and later by Tagore in his 1930 Hibbert Lectures in Oxford. Tagore and Mill agree in basing the new humanistic religion in a cultivation of individual freedom and self-expression, but Tagore, drawing on the Baul tradition, gives it a more richly emotional foundation.
Nineteenth-century political thinkers grew obsessed with the question of how politics might
motivate citizens to depart from narrow egoism and greed, accepting sacrifices for the sake
of fair political institutions and a decent living standard for all. Auguste Comte’s “Religion of
Humanity” had enormous influence all over the world, including India, where leading Bengali intellectuals adapted his ideas to their own situation. Meanwhile, Comte’s proposals, which asked for a great deal of social homogeneity and control, were undergoing criticism and reformulation—by John Stuart Mill in Britain, and later by Tagore in his 1930 Hibbert Lectures in Oxford. Tagore and Mill agree in basing the new humanistic religion in a cultivation of individual freedom and self-expression, but Tagore, drawing on the Baul tradition, gives it a more richly emotional foundation.
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