Abstract: The Indian poet and educator Rabindranath Tagore was the creator of an original philosophy that gives additional meaning to the picture of the history of Indian philosophy in the 20th century. He usually emphasized his identity as a poet and an artist, not considering himself a philosopher. However, Tagore embodies the phenomenon of a poet-thinker who comprehends universal philosophical problems and, in the process of philosophizing, offers his own vision of them. Moreover, he owns a number of texts of a religious-philosophical and socio-philosophical nature, in addition to the content of poetry and fiction. The philosophy created by the poet requires a comprehensive holistic study, which, in turn, raises the problem of research methodology. The article proposes the author's methodology for the reconstruction of Rabindranath Tagore's philosophy, based on an understanding of his personality, the contexts of thought and the hermeneutics of texts. The methodological model of philosophy reconstruction includes three levels. The first involves analyzing the personality of R. Tagore using the categories "cross-cultural thinker" and "problematic thinker". The second is a description of the contexts of his philosophizing: external general civilizational, internal epochal and internal biographical. The third is the hermeneutics of texts, taking into account the poetic component and the philosophical problems of speeches and fiction. The novelty of the described methodological model is due to the possibilities and prospects of reconstructing Tagore's philosophical thought and concepts. 1. Description of the phenomenon of a poet and writer creating a philosophy in which the experience of artistic creation generates a universal religious and social meaning and actualizes humanistic issues. 2. Presentation of the process of formation of cross-cultural philosophy of the XX century on the material of a particular thinker. 3. The analysis of the contexts of the unfolding of philosophy helps to trace the continuity of the thinker and his ideas with the Indian philosophical tradition in a broad sense and at the same time identify innovation, not least due to his dialogue with Western culture and modernity. 4. Seeing Tagore's philosophy as a kind of quintessence of the Bengali Renaissance heritage, it is not difficult to notice its significance and relevance for modernity. 5. Reconstruction along the proposed methodological path will open up not only direct, but also comparative prospects for studying Tagore's philosophical thought in comparison with the reflections of philosophers from different cultural areas, primarily peripheral to the West and non-Western ones.

Abstract: The origin of Modern Indian ethical thought is described in the article. The author depicts the genesis of ethics as originated from the works by key personalities of the Bengal Renaissance XIX – early XX century. The juxtaposition with traditional Indian thought permits to present the intellectual process in Modern Bengal elite minds as ‘discovery of morality’. Based on hermeneutic analysis of the texts on moral problematics from Rammohun Roy and the Brahmo Samaj thinkers to Krishnamohun Banerjea, the author reconstructs the becoming of Indian ethical thought in the context of their striving for the moral regeneration of traditional society. For the first time the genesis and becoming of thinking of Indian intellectuals about morality in its connections with the present condition of social decline in colonial India are disclosed in the research. The experience of Bengal thinkers of 1815–1870th demonstrates the solution of super-task to find ethics in ancient sacred texts and next to build religiously based ethics. The super-task had been settled by the method of interpretation that permits to see high moral precepts in high faith in One God of original religion as it opposed to polytheistic Hinduism. The result of applying the method was embodied in the creative and high conception of Hindu morality based on ethical God Creator. The Bengal thinkers are firmly convinced that displaced into periphery of Hindus’ consciousness morality as a code of normative ethics must be revived and turned into leading imperatives of consciousness of people.

Abstract: Among the key ideas of the Bengal Renaissance (XIX–early XX century) was one of a future India considered from the point of view of India's weal. An creative embodiment of the idea in Rabindranath Tagore’s poem ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear’ (1901) is analyzed in the article. Based on hermeneutical approach, the author traces an origin of the idea, its evolution in creative thought of the national-cultural renaissance in Modern India and its content in Tagore’s thought. The application of a principle of historicism helped to trace the emergence of ‘dreamland’ idea in Michael Madhusudan Dutta’s poetry, then its ‘antithesis’ in philosophy by Swami Vivekananda and next transformation into the image of future free India in Rabindranath Tagore’s poem. For the first time ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear’ has been philosophically considered in the broad context of the history of thought and culture in India from Rammohun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore. The poem is an application of social ideal of free society to future perspective of India; its practical embodiment is possible, but it depends from positive activity of Indian people. The poem represents a set of key ideas of the epoch such as renovation of spiritual life, overcoming of the dead rules, rational thinking of all life spheres, human liberation from traditional dependencies, finding of dignity and discovery of new ways of development. Moreover, Tagore maintains universal human problematic of freedom and circumstances of its embodiment in peoples’ life.

Abstract: Based on the matter of the Bengal Renaissance as a cultural phenomenon of the XIXth –early XXth century, the author of the article describes the phenomenon of the so-called problematic thinker, an intellectual who acts as a subject of the Indian–Western cultural dialogue and a creator of the modern philosophy and culture. The problematic thinkers from Rammohun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore constitute the core of the creative minority creating new synthetic forms in philosophy, spiritual and social life, politics and culture owing to their ability to understand the meanings and images of the Other. The research methodology bases on Martin Buber’s existential philosophy where “a problematic thinker” is phenomenologically described as a person who have survived existential loneliness and realized his or her freedom in reference with the Other. For the first time in Russian academic literature the author describes the process of Bengal intellectual’s estrangement from traditional society and conversion of his existential loneliness into personal freedom in the process of spontaneous activity and creation. A special type of personality is formed in the process of individualization. This is the person who is able to create circumstances for understanding and having a dialogue with the Other's culture as well as create a new religious and humanistic ethics.

Abstract: Used by the Bengal Renaissance thinkers in the process of understanding of Other, a method of dialogical hermeneutics is reconstructed in the article. The method is described as a mental phenomenon and general way of understanding the Other, the latter is being represented by the Western culture and its representatives. The generality of the method depends on both circumstances of colonial urban society and educational and scientific development in India and general aspiration to revive as well as general aspiration of Bengal intellectuals to revive and develop India. Admitting the presence of some general method of understanding, the author reconstructs the method based on the phenomenological approach and analysis of texts created by the key persons of the epoch. The methodology helps to present a structure and peculiarities of the process of understaning as well as working of dialogic hermeneutics. Dialogic hermeneutics is described as a trajectory of the thought moving that proceeds from the aspiration to find universal grounds behind differences of cultures and points of contacts and similarity of traditions, and then it moves from an exposing the deep similarity to an understanding of differences as a result of many-sides of life. This method opened new ways of self-cognition for Indian culture and created “understanding as an event” (M. Buber) owing to which India opened herself to interaction with the modern world.

Abstract: This article examines the formation process of Neo-Hindu thought in Bengal at the end of the 19th century on the basis of the religious and philosophical material from the works of the author, publicist, and public figure Bankimchandra Chattopaddhyay. The interpretation of Hinduism in his works of 1880–1892 presents the creation of a positive image of his native religion, directed at exonerating it from the criticism of Hindu Religious reformers and Christian missionaries. In creating an image of Hinduism Bankimchandra proceeds from recognising it as a multifaceted whole (the metaphor of the tree) tied by fundamental principles. For the description of the image of Hinduism in Bankimchandra’s works the author used the method of reconstruction, which is based on the hermeneutical analysis of the texts of the corresponding period, as well as taking into account the socio-cultural context of the time. For the first time in Russian Indology the author describes the complete image of Hinduism resulting from the reflections of one of the founders of Neo-Hinduism as a direction of social thought. Bankimchandra’s version of Hinduism was the worldview justification of this religion as a comprehensive spiritual tradition rooted in deep antiquity. Having appeared as a religion of nature, Hinduism evolved from the original form of the Vedic religion to the enlightened and good religion founded on the interpretations of the Dharma in the “Bhagavad Gita”.

Abstract: In this article Skorokhodova describes pedagogical experiment of the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore as a successful attempt of practical implementation of the main principles of educational school philosophy founded by the poet. He based on his own critics of actual school in colonial India and the idea of understanding of children. The key principles of Tagore’s educational philosophy include respect for children’s freedom, training in the dialogue of equals – teacher and pupils – and focus of education on the development of creative personality as an active member of the society. Philosophy and practice of school education are reconstructed based on the phenomenological approach and hermeneutical analysis of Rabindranath Tagore's lectures. The main aspects of Tagore' pedagogical experience are philosophical, theoretical and practical. The philosophical aspect is represented in the humanist content of the ducational model. The theoretical aspect is the creation of the basis for the dialogical model of the subject–subject training. The practical aspect is the combination of national traditions and universal contents of education for the needs of development in the society.

Abstract: The process of Hinduism’s universalization is depicted in the article as re-interpretation of Hindu tradition by intellectuals of the Indian Renaissance XIX– early XXth century. Author considers the interpretations by Rammohun Roy and his Brahmo Samaj, Prarthana Samaj, Swami Dayananda and his Arya Samaj, and also by Neo-Hindu thinkers Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Swami Vivekananda and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, as different variants of answers to key question of spiritual-intellectual searching on real essence of Hinduism.
Based on phenomenological approach, the process is represented as dialogue of Hinduism and other religious – before all Christianity and Islam – and creating a concrete image of Hinduism as universal religion in Indian intellectual’s mind. The variants of the interpretations underlie the religious movements – reformist and neo-Hinduist.
Author suggests, that in Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab intellectual universalization of Hinduism had helped to ground the world status of the religion. The universalization had two variants. First was negative universalization from sharp critics of religious forms to grounding high monotheism and humanist ethics. Second was positive universalization based on accepting of all worship forms as different paths to Divine Absolute. Hinduism was symbolically depicted by intellectuals as universal world religion, the repository of highest truth for all humanity.