Nature of Being: A Comparative Analysis through the Lens of Rabindranath Tagore and Martin Heidegger

Abstract

This research article undertakes a detailed comparative philosophical investigation into the nature of Being in the thought of Rabindranath Tagore and Martin Heidegger. Although these two thinkers emerged from radically different cultural, linguistic, and intellectual traditions, their philosophies reveal a striking convergence when the question of Being is considered in its deepest sense. Rabindranath Tagore, shaped by the spiritual, literary, and philosophical heritage of the Upanishads and Vedantic humanism, develops a vision of existence grounded in unity, relationality, and the infinite unfolding of the self within the cosmic whole. Martin Heidegger, on the other hand, writing within the context of twentieth-century European existential phenomenology, seeks to recover the forgotten meaning of Being through an analysis of human existence, or Dasein. Despite the obvious differences between Tagore’s spiritual universalism and Heidegger’s phenomenological existentialism, both reject the conception of Being as a fixed, inert, or purely objective substance. Instead, they present Being as a living, dynamic, and self-disclosing process—something that becomes, unfolds, and reveals itself through the situated existence of human beings. The central purpose of this article is therefore to examine how Tagore and Heidegger each understand the nature of Being and to explore the deeper philosophical affinities that emerge from their respective accounts.