Priyambada Sarkar, "Language, Limits, and Beyond: Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore" (Oxford UP, 2021)
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What is the main aim of Priyambada Sarkar’s book on Wittgenstein and Tagore?
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Welcome to New Books in Philosophy, a channel on the New Books Network. I'm Malcolm Keating. Today we'll be talking to Priyambada Sarkar, author of Language, Limits and Beyond, Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore, published in twenty twenty one by Oxford University Press. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy, Priyambhutta.
Thank you so much, Malcolm. Uh it's uh great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Well, I'm really looking forward to talking with you. Uh let me start by asking you my first question. W what is your book's main goal? And why did you think it was important to write?
Uh well, uh the primary uh goal or the primary aim of my book is to point out that uh that despite innumerable differences uh m in in the intellectual makeups in belonging to two different modernities. These two intellectual uh geniuses and creative geniuses, Tagore and Wittgenstein, they had uh they had some uh striking parallels In their thoughts about about the limits of language. About the limits of the world. at the distinction between sense and nonsense or the expressible and the inexpressible. uh in their writings and uh my goal was to show that More sense can be made of. uh Wittgenstein's cryptic writings, early writings, early cryptic writings on these things. uh where he's talking about the identity of ethics, aesthetics and religion on the one hand
And he's talking about that something, some important things, uh you cannot state it in you cannot represent it in ordinary terms. All these uh cryptic things which have generated lots and lots of controversies, uh much more sense can be made of these remarks if uh if these views are juxtaposed with the writings. uh regarding all these issues. So this is the this is more or less the fundamental aim of the text. Uh yes. Now you might you might think that uh why is this juxtaposition important? Well, okay, uh the poet says uh so and so and the uh philosopher says such and such. But they and they overlap in their thinking, but uh why is it important? It is important. It is important. І на і на вери фанаталсенс.
And these fundamental sense are Is that There are some perennial issues. In philosophy. About life and world, where we can see the concurrence of concerns. Uh not philosophical agreements or disagreements, but concurrence of concerns of the poet and the philosopher. And such overlapping uh is important. Such overlapping is important because It points To the reader to look into this uh to go deep into this bigger picture where the meaning of life and world is connected with Ethics, aesthetics, and religion. And it also gives rise to various important uh questions.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main aim of Priyambada Sarkar’s book on Wittgenstein and Tagore?
0:00–5:57
2
How do Wittgenstein and Tagore converge on the limits of language and the ineffable?
5:57–13:07
3
Why is silence important for philosophers but not for poets and artists?
13:07–20:39
4
What role does the rose play as an aesthetic bridge between Tagore’s poetry and the Tractatus?
20:39–26:42
5
How does Tagore’s play *Raja* illustrate the transformation of the unutterable?
26:42–33:48
6
What does the discussion of ethics, religion, and the ‘good life’ reveal about both thinkers?
33:48–41:11
7
How does viewing the world ‘from eternity’ help resolve the tension between fact and truth?
41:11–48:37
8
What projects is Priyambada Sarkar pursuing now and how can listeners explore Bengali philosophy?
48:37–55:15
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