ABOUT FIFTY YEARS AGO, in 1961, Jean-Paul Sartre complained
about the state of Europe. “Europe is springing leaks
everywhere,” he wrote. He went on to remark that “it simply is
that in the past we made history and now history is being made
of us.” Sartre was undoubtedly too pessimistic. David Hume was
born three hundred years ago, in 1711. The world has changed
radically since his time, and yet many of his ideas and
admonitions remain deeply relevant, though rather neglected, in
the contemporary world. These Humean insights include the
central role of information and knowledge for adequate ethical
scrutiny, and the importance of reasoning without disowning the
pertinence of powerful sentiments. The Essential Tagore By
Rabindranath Tagore Edited by Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarty
(Harvard University Press, 819 pp., $39.95) In his book Raga
Mala, Ravi Shankar, the great musician, argues that had
Rabindranath Tagore “been born in the West he would now be [as]
revered as Shakespeare and Goethe.” This is a stron