Modernity and Cosmopolitanism

Saranindra Nath Tagore

(Philosophy, National University of Singapore)

Wednesday, 12 April 2017

East Core Board Room (EC 03-08)

1:30-3:00 p.m.

Yale-NUS College

Abstract
The postmodern literature in general and Jean-François Lyotard in particular observes correctly that plurality needs to be protected from the threat of totality.  However, the Lyotardian-postmodern argument for this position summons a critique of modernity (constellation of grand narratives) that champions the cause of incommensurable fragments (little narratives), thereby undermining the possibility of cosmopolitan exchange between cultural orders globally conceived.  In my remarks, I will argue on behalf of a cosmopolitan account of modernity which can withstand the postmodern trajectory of equating the modern with subversion of the plural.  I will consider resources available in modern Indian thinking to facilitate my task. This talk is sourced from a larger project and is exploratory in nature. It is also interdisciplinary ranging across Philosophy and Indian Studies.

About the Speaker
Saranindra Nath Tagore is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department, National University of Singapore.  His main teaching and research interests are in the general areas of twentieth century Continental-European Philosophy (mainly the French and German traditions) and Indian Philosophy, especially the modern tradition.  He has been a visiting scholar at the Munk Center of International Studies at the University of Toronto and at the Harvard Yenching Institute and was appointed an Affiliate Fellow, South Asia Initiative, Harvard University (2009-2010). He was conferred an honorary professorship by Zhejiang Yuexiu University of Foreign Languages (China, 2016). He will be soon starting as one of the Editors-in-Chief of Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Tradition (Springer).  He is a literary translator:  Rabindranath Tagore: Final Poems (New York).  His most recent philosophy paper is forthcoming in the next issue of Philosophy East and West.