What do you think?
Rate this book
Rabindranath Tagore Ka Darshan: Exploring the Vision of the Nobel Laureate
रवींद्रनाथ टैगोर के दर्शन और संदेश की व्याख्या करते हुए यह पुस्तक दर्शन, धर्म और कला के भारतीय आदर्श की व्याख्या करती है। यह उनकी रचना का परिणाम और अभिव्यक्ति है। यह ज्ञात नहीं है कि यह रवींद्रनाथ का अपना हृदय है या भारत का हृदय, जो यहाँ धड़क रहा है। उनकी रचना में भारत को वह खोया शब्द मिला, जिसकी वह तलाश कर रहा था। भारतीय दर्शन और धर्म के चिर-परिचित यथार्थों के मूल्यों की आलोचना करना अब एक फैशन बन गया है, लेकिन उनकी चर्चा यहाँ इतने सम्मान और अंतर्मन से की गई है कि उनमें एक नयापन दिखता है। भारत की आत्मा से डॉ. राधाकृष्णन का परिचय रवींद्रनाथ टैगोर के लिए प्रेरणा का स्रोत है, और उससे इस वर्णनात्मक रचना में उन्हें सहायता मिली है। गुरुदेव टैगोर के दर्शन की व्याख्या के माध्यम से उनके हृदय में बसे भारत, उसकी संस्कृति, उसके गौरवशाली अतीत की मनोरम झाँकी प्रस्तुत की है डॉ. सर्वपल्ली राधाकृष्णन ने।
- GenresPhilosophy
539 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 8, 1999
25 people are currently reading
205 people want to read
About the author
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
141 books237 followersBharat Ratna Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was an Indian philosopher and statesman. He was the first Vice-President of India (1952–1962) and subsequently the second President of India (1962–1967).
One of India's most influential scholars of comparative religion and philosophy, Radhakrishnan is thought of as having built a bridge between the East and the West by showing that the philosophical systems of each tradition are comprehensible within the terms of the other. He wrote authoritative exegeses of India's religious and philosophical literature for the English speaking world. His academic appointments included the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta (1921-?) and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford University (1936–1952).
Among the many honours he received were a knighthood (1931), the Bharat Ratna (1954) and the Order of Merit in 1963. His birthday is celebrated in India as Teacher's Day.
One of India's most influential scholars of comparative religion and philosophy, Radhakrishnan is thought of as having built a bridge between the East and the West by showing that the philosophical systems of each tradition are comprehensible within the terms of the other. He wrote authoritative exegeses of India's religious and philosophical literature for the English speaking world. His academic appointments included the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta (1921-?) and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford University (1936–1952).
Among the many honours he received were a knighthood (1931), the Bharat Ratna (1954) and the Order of Merit in 1963. His birthday is celebrated in India as Teacher's Day.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 8, 2023
Dr Radhakrishnan perfectly understood the predicament of Guru ji Tagore. For Tagore, poetry was not bland semantic and devoid of spirit and the poet artists has to surrender himself to the spontaneity of the spirit. To get a grasp of Tagore we must compare him to Gandhi. Tagore abhorred a nationalism that was devoid of humanity. He was not interested on freedom of humanity. Dr Radhakrishnan wrote a delightful book full of the potency of divine love that Tagore incarnated ! A must read
August 7, 2025
Today is the 85th Death Anniversary of Tagore
It was sometime in 1998, a monsoon afternoon thick with the smell of petrichor and the drone of ceiling fans battling humidity, that I stumbled upon The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore in a softly lit Asutosh College library. At the time, I was dabbling in Tagore’s poetry and chasing after the elusive promise of Indian philosophy—but this book felt like a revelation, a torch held aloft in the mist.
Published in 1918, when Radhakrishnan was still a young lecturer in Madras, this work was a rare, audacious thing—a philosophical treatment of a living poet, and more shockingly, a Bengali one. What struck me then—and still lingers—is how Radhakrishnan refuses to cordon off the poet from the philosopher. Tagore, to him, isn’t just the bard of Gitanjali, but a seer whose every metaphor pulses with metaphysical insight.
Radhakrishnan’s argument is unpretentious yet powerful: a true poet, especially one like Tagore, is necessarily a philosopher. He dives into Tagore’s texts—not just poems but also plays, letters, and essays—and pulls out threads of Vedanta, Upanishadic thought, and the bhakti tradition, weaving them into a tapestry that’s both scholarly and spiritually alive.
Reading it at 19, I felt a thrill in how Tagore’s metaphors of light, the soul’s journey, and divine longing were shown to echo Shankara and Buddha, yet never dogmatically. Radhakrishnan emphasizes how Tagore privileges experience over doctrine and inner vision over ritualism. There’s a wonderful section where he defines Tagore’s spirituality as a harmony of the real and the ideal—a vision in which beauty, truth, and goodness are not separate pursuits but facets of the same cosmic dance.
What made the book even more compelling was its historical moment. In the wake of colonial modernity, with British rationalism often dismissive of Indian thought, Radhakrishnan stages a subtle rebellion. He shows how Tagore’s poetic philosophy is not some fuzzy mysticism but a rigorous response to the West’s spiritual crisis. Tagore’s humanism, his embrace of the world even while transcending it, becomes an Indian answer to both industrial modernity and materialistic despair.
Tagore himself, charmingly, was impressed. In a letter, he praised the young philosopher for his clarity, sincerity, and poetic grace. And it’s true—Radhakrishnan writes not like a professor grinding an axe, but like a devotee trying to make sense of a master’s music.
Reading it today, I can see the seams in places—the occasional overreach, the youthful exuberance of systematizing a poet who defies neat systems. But as a first book, as a work of cross-cultural philosophy, and as an early love letter to Tagore’s genius, it remains luminous.
If you love Tagore or are inquisitive about how philosophy and poetry can merge in the Indian tradition, this book still sings.
And I’m glad that monsoon day led me to its quiet fire.
It was sometime in 1998, a monsoon afternoon thick with the smell of petrichor and the drone of ceiling fans battling humidity, that I stumbled upon The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore in a softly lit Asutosh College library. At the time, I was dabbling in Tagore’s poetry and chasing after the elusive promise of Indian philosophy—but this book felt like a revelation, a torch held aloft in the mist.
Published in 1918, when Radhakrishnan was still a young lecturer in Madras, this work was a rare, audacious thing—a philosophical treatment of a living poet, and more shockingly, a Bengali one. What struck me then—and still lingers—is how Radhakrishnan refuses to cordon off the poet from the philosopher. Tagore, to him, isn’t just the bard of Gitanjali, but a seer whose every metaphor pulses with metaphysical insight.
Radhakrishnan’s argument is unpretentious yet powerful: a true poet, especially one like Tagore, is necessarily a philosopher. He dives into Tagore’s texts—not just poems but also plays, letters, and essays—and pulls out threads of Vedanta, Upanishadic thought, and the bhakti tradition, weaving them into a tapestry that’s both scholarly and spiritually alive.
Reading it at 19, I felt a thrill in how Tagore’s metaphors of light, the soul’s journey, and divine longing were shown to echo Shankara and Buddha, yet never dogmatically. Radhakrishnan emphasizes how Tagore privileges experience over doctrine and inner vision over ritualism. There’s a wonderful section where he defines Tagore’s spirituality as a harmony of the real and the ideal—a vision in which beauty, truth, and goodness are not separate pursuits but facets of the same cosmic dance.
What made the book even more compelling was its historical moment. In the wake of colonial modernity, with British rationalism often dismissive of Indian thought, Radhakrishnan stages a subtle rebellion. He shows how Tagore’s poetic philosophy is not some fuzzy mysticism but a rigorous response to the West’s spiritual crisis. Tagore’s humanism, his embrace of the world even while transcending it, becomes an Indian answer to both industrial modernity and materialistic despair.
Tagore himself, charmingly, was impressed. In a letter, he praised the young philosopher for his clarity, sincerity, and poetic grace. And it’s true—Radhakrishnan writes not like a professor grinding an axe, but like a devotee trying to make sense of a master’s music.
Reading it today, I can see the seams in places—the occasional overreach, the youthful exuberance of systematizing a poet who defies neat systems. But as a first book, as a work of cross-cultural philosophy, and as an early love letter to Tagore’s genius, it remains luminous.
If you love Tagore or are inquisitive about how philosophy and poetry can merge in the Indian tradition, this book still sings.
And I’m glad that monsoon day led me to its quiet fire.
April 4, 2023
One of the most beautiful expositions I've read of a single man's philosophy. Tagore's message of creative love in spiritual awareness of the divine, and his exhortations to the East and the West should have been heeded in his time. Perhaps the great tragedies of the century would have been avoided. While some of Radhakrishnan's work reads like a typical book of the era in terms of the history and racial categories, it's not in an offensive way, just simplistic positive caricatures. Overall, a great read!
April 9, 2020
a very complicated and deep analysis of philosophy, how nature loves contrasts....many such deep meaning topics and discussion. Not for everyone.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews