The Philosopher as Pilgrim Poet and Agapeic Wayfarer: Navigating Transcendence in Tagore and Desmond

Abstract

This paper attempts to find similar grounds in the poetic mysticism of Bengali polymath nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) and the metaxological metaphysics of the contemporary Irish philosopher William Desmond (b. 1951), by casting the philosopher-poet not as an autonomous master of systems, but as a peripatetic pilgrim-poet venturing toward Transcendence. Defying the historical rivalry between abstract speculation and embodied thinking, this study establishes that cognitive and creative functioning are inherently linked to one’s mobility. By revisiting the ancient Greek Peripatetic tradition of Aristotle's Lyceum and examining the etymological root of methodos as an active "way" or "journey," the inquiry positions the seeker as homo viator—an itinerant subject whose methodology is fundamentally an existential movement. Through a companioning approach, the paper analyzes how both Tagore and Desmond envision human existence as an ontological pilgrimage. This journey demands a radical dispossession of self-sovereignty, casting off the "holy mantle" of intellectual pride to embrace an existential poverty and porosity of being. While traditional Eastern mysticism often emphasizes an ascetic absorption into the Absolute, Tagore’s relational, world-affirming mysticism converges beautifully with Desmond’s agapeic mindfulness and the concept of “indirections.” Both thinkers demonstrate that navigating transcendence is achieved not through an imperialistic conquest of absolute conceptual mastery, but through an embodied, relational itinerary of love. The paper concludes that this spiritual and philosophical Jātra culminates not in structural finality, but in a triumphant Jaitrayātra—a victory race of love where the naked self undergoes an ongoing purgatorial renewal, finding a transfigured, originary homecoming when confronted with the inexhaustible, hyperbolic surplus of the Divine Keywords: Pilgrim-poet, Poetic Mysticism, Wayfaring, Agapeic Mindfulness, Indirections, Jātra, Homo-viator, Metaxology.