The German Gita: Hermeneutics and Discipline in the Early German Reception of Indian Thought

by Herling; Bradley L.

• ISBN13: 9780415976169
• ISBN10: 0415976162
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-12-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

How did theBhagavadgatafirst become an object of German philosophical and philological inquiry? How were its foundational concepts initially interpreted within German intellectual circles, and what does this episode in the history of cross-cultural encounter teach us about the status of comparative philosophy today? This book addresses these questions through a careful study of the figures who read, translated and interpreted the G?t? around the turn of the nineteenth century in Germany: J.G. Herder, F. Majer, F. Schlegel, A.W. Schlegel, W. von Humboldt, and G.W.F. Hegel. Methodologically, the study attends to the intellectual contexts and prejudices that framed the early reception of the text. But it also delves deeper by investigating the way these frameworks inflected the construction of the G?t? and its foundational concepts through the scholarly acts of excerpting, anthologization, and translation. Overall, the project contributes to the pluralization of Western philosophy and itshistory - while simultaneously arguing for a continued critical alertness in cross-cultural comparison of philosophical and religious worldviews

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations	1	(40)
The Early Flowers of India: Johann Gottfried Herder	41	(32)
The Bhagavadgita and the Blossoming of India in Herder's Thought	73	(44)
The Pantheism Dilemma and Friedrich Schlegel's Gita	117	(40)
August Wilhelm Schlegel's ``Indian Sphinx'': The Persistent Riddle of Gita Translation	157	(46)
German Absorption in the Gita: Wilhelm von Humboldt and Hegel	203	(52)
Conclusion	255	(24)
Notes	279	(52)
Bibliography	331	(12)
Index	343