Mapping Channels between Ganges and Rhine:
German - Indian Cross-Cultural Relations

An international, interdisciplinary Conference

University of Toronto, May 25-26, 2006

Presenters/Contributors and Abstracts

Keynote Address:

"The White Man's Burden": Friedrich Max Müller and his Imperialist Fictions

Kamakshi P. Murti, Middlebury College

Kamakshi P. Murti is Professor and Chair of the German Department of Middlebury College, Vermont, U.S.A. She has published extensively on the conference theme, including her two books Die Reinkarnation des Lesers als Autor: ein rezeptionsgeschichtlicher Versuch über den Einfluß der altindischen Literatur auf deutsche Schriftsteller um 1900 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1990) and India: The Seductive and Seduced ‘Other’ of German Orientalism (Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 2000) as well as numerous articles and book chapters. This research is part of her wider interest in questions of Orientalism and minority discourses. She recently received a Mellon Foundation grant to conduct research in Turkey and Germany for a project entitled: "To Veil or not to Veil: Turkish-/Germans, Islam, and the headscarf-debate". Professor Murti is also actively involved in pedagogical and professional aspects of North American German studies, including service as Chair of the AATG Committee on the Recruitment and Retention of Minorities.

Douglas L. Berger, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

Presentation abstract:

"The 'Tat Tvam Asi' Ethic in Vedanta and Schopenhauer"

The appropriation of pre-systematic Brahminical and Buddhist thought by the nineteenth century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was complex, entailing both insightful reflection on the implications of Indian ideas and Orientalist stereotypes that were so influential in the reception of Indian philosophy in the West. One of the aspects of Schopenhauer’s appropriation of early Indian thought into his ethics, namely the notion that the Upanisadic formulation “tat tvam asi” had ethical implications, was a claim that effected both German thinkers like Phillip Mainlander and (adversely) Nietzsche as well as Neo-Vedantic philosophers like Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan. Schopenhauer’s conviction that the grounds for human compassion lie in the essential metaphysical unity of beings proved a powerful hermeneutic for both adherents of Schopenhauer as well as advocates of a twentieth century “practical Vedanta.”

A number of trenchant critiques of this version of metaphysically-grounded ethics were made by the seminal twentieth century German Indologist Paul Hacker, who labeled the phenomenon the “tat tvam asi ethic.” Hacker claimed that no such understanding of the Upanisadic mahavakya existed among classical Vedantic commentators, and he ridiculed neo-Vedantins for so readily accepting, through the influence of Paul Deussen, Schopenhauer’s interpretation. He further argued that any such ethic premised on thoroughgoing metaphysical identity (the universality of the featureless atman on the side of Vedanta and the universality of the unqualified Will as thing-in-itself in Schopenhauer) made a mockery of true ethical discourse, for in relegating individuality to a merely phenomenal status, this brand of theory virtually dissolves the significance of how individuals treat one another.

About the presenter:
Douglas L. Berger is Assistant Professor of Asian Philosophical Traditions at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. He specializes in classical Brahminical and Buddhist philosophical traditions as well as cross-cultural philosophical hermeneutics. His first book, entitled The Veil of Maya: Schopenhauer's System and Early Indian Thought. (Global Academic Publications, Binghamton University, 2004) explores the relationship between Schopenhauer's sytematic philosophy and his appropriation of various concepts from the pre-scholastic Indian tradition.

Presentation abstract:

"Rewriting Indian Thought: Hegel’s and Schopenhauer’s Interpretations of Indian Philosophy and Religion"

German Romanticism and its excitement about India produced significant research, translations and comparative analysis of ancient Indian literary, religious and philosophical texts. Among the German philosophers, who interpreted and commented upon this material, my paper investigates G.W.F. Hegel’s and Arthur Schopenhauer’s interpretation and re-working of Hindu religious philosophy. Hegel and Schopenhauer shared the most important sources of translation and commentary on Indian religio-philosophical texts like the Vedas, Upanisads and the Bhagavadgītā. From the available material Hegel and Schopenhauer interpreted key philosophical concepts concerning universality and particularity, especially Vedāntic concepts such as brahman and māyā. I claim that despite having common sources on Indian thought, Hegel and Schopenhauer delivered almost diametrically opposite interpretations of these concepts: Hegel criticized brahman for being external to the particular, while Schopenhauer stated that, like his concept of will, it is internal within the particular. Hegel understood māyā or the illusory world as an escape from reality, while for Schopenhauer it explained the process of perception and understanding of the empirical world. Hegel saw excess, fantasy and lack of ethics and morality in the Hindu religion, while Schopenhauer praised Vedānta for having the most sophisticated and concise statement on ethics.

I analyze Hegel’s and Schopenhauer’s interpretation in detail and compare it closely with their sources and with original Indian texts. I demonstrate where and how the Indian sources got selectively read and presented and how the meaning of Indian religious and philosophical concepts got re-configured. I claim that Hegel and Schopenhauer had such opposite interpretations because they isolated pieces of information from various sources, assembled them together and reworked them in a way that would fit their own individual dispositions and philosophies: Hegel was a strong critic of Romanticism and in his linear understanding of history, the enlightened European present had nothing to learn from the primitive Oriental past. And Schopenhauer, in the vein of affiliating his philosophy with ancient wisdom, insisted that his own philosophy drew the same sophisticated epistemological, metaphysical and ethical conclusions as the ancient Indian texts.

I further explore whether this selective reading raises questions about Hegel’s and Schopenhauer’s own philosophies. I demonstrate, for example, that even with the information available to Hegel, Indian religious concept of the Absolute could potentially qualify for being a philosophically evolved and mature concept, even by Hegel’s own definitions in his philosophy of religion. This would in turn question Hegel’s placement of India in the initial stages of “childhood” and would question his theme of historical development of thought. In Schopenhauer’s case, I claim, that he constantly makes parallels between his own concepts and those of Indian thought, which, rather than supporting and legitimizing his philosophy (as per Schopenhauer’s intention), actually inserts inconsistencies and contradictions in his own philosophy.

The implications of this study are threefold: firstly, it encourages a serious rethinking of the philosophers’ authority in this matter and of the image of India that they perpetuated among western thinkers. Secondly, the study also goes one step beyond the post colonial critique of western reception of the orient: it states that whether one looks at the orient as the other (Hegel) or embraces it as one’s kin (Schopenhauer), both these images are a result of selective and manipulative representation; it exposes the extent of exploitation and reworking of the source and the motivations for such reworking. Thirdly, again, going beyond postcolonial critique, it demonstrates that the damage does not just limit itself to creating a distorted image of the orient, but works back on the western thinkers themselves and raises serious questions about the consistency and coherence of their own thought. In other words my paper studies the process and implications of Rewriting Indian thought.

Presentation abstract:

"The Hegemony Inherent in European 'Emancipation': Günter Grass' Show Your Tongue"

Post-1945 German-language literature can be seen as engaged in a "project," shaped by writers such as Anna Seghers, Peter Weiss, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Heiner Müller and others, attempting, roughly speaking, to analyze and criticize "Western" power structures from the perspective of the political emancipation of the "Third World." This "project" has led to a discussion of "German" postcolonial research that the present paper, by offering a close textual analysis of Günter Grass' book Show Your Tongue, hopes to contribute to. Naturally, the aim here is far from lending credence to Show Your Tongue's allegedly unbiased portrayal of Calcutta; instead, the intention is to question its apparently "humanist," "emancipatory," and "progressive" leanings. Rather than merely noting the Eurocentrism running through the text, we need to investigate its function, i.e., address the issue of how, despite the politically "progressive" ideas of the narrator, stereotypes come to form a distinct "discourse." How can we explain the discrepancy between the avowed intention to reject authoritarian thought and the constantly recurring hegemonic patterns of judgment? In approaching this question we will be confronted with the limits of the Enlightenment project's understanding of an encounter with the genuine "Other" and, as we will see, such meetings are generally marked by an underlying fundamental dilemma unable to be resolved by a binary model constructed around instrumental and "emancipatory" tendencies. Instead, we need to find terms able to allow for the entanglements and inner contradictions in "emancipatory" tendencies. Show Your Tongue illustrates the complex nature of hegemonic thought and the paradoxical quality of a European identity seemingly capable of unifying both "progressive" and authoritarian perspectives. By the end of this essay, it should be apparent, though, that although European literature and the body of research concerned with it inherently reflects hegemonic attitudes, a certain degree of resistance can, nonetheless, be brought to bear. This paper is an attempt to actively contribute to this "project."

About the presenter:
Martin Blumenthal-Barby is a graduate student in the Yale University Department of German. His interests center on twentieth-century literature and theory, especially Benjamin, Freud, Kafka, and children's literature. He is working toward a dissertation examining the literary representation of childhood in twentieth-century totalitarian systems. He has an article on GDR children's literature forthcoming in Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der SBZ/DDR 1945-1990 (Stuttgart: Metzler).

Presentation abstract:

"August Wilhelm Schlegel's India Theory"

In various texts written between 1805 and 1834, particularly in his French works, August Wilhelm Schlegel developed a theory of "Aryan" origins, whose remarkable historical significance has not yet been examined. In 1833/34 Schlegel wrote that the nature of the Sanskrit language proves the "pureté du sang" of the Hindus. He describes the Hindus as members of the "Indo-German" "family of people" and implies their "natural" supremacy and "Aryan" descent. Based on "many facts of old and new history" Schlegel sees "indestructible differences in the natural predisposition of the human races." He sums up these differences as "indisputably as old as history" (Translation by myself, M.R.A.). More than 160 years after Schlegel's death I want to illustrate how he crosses linguistic and anthropological classification in the works in question and creates a new method of philological anthropology and a new kind of "race"-discourse, which anticipated similar developments in the later part of the 19th century.

About the presenter:
Manuel da Rocha Abreu is a graduate student at the Freie Universiät Berlin, Department of German Studies. He has published an article on Friedrich Schlegel: "Die Schule des Vorurteils. Friedrich Schlegels Sprachvergleich und die zeitgenössische vergleichende Anatomie in Deutschland," in kultuRRevolution. Zeitschrift für angewandte Diskurstheorie, Nr. 45/46 (2003), 109-115. In 2005 he taught a course, " Ursprungsmystiker - die Brüder Schlegel und die Erfindung des arischen Mythos" at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.

Presentation abstract:

"Intimations of India? Zemlinsky’s Lyrische Symphonie and the Poetry of Tagore"

The names of Alexander Zemlinsky and Rabindranath Tagore are individually familiar—Zemlinsky as a figure in the school of early modernism that clustered around the seminal figure of Arnold Schoenberg; and Tagore the most famous Bengali literary figure and personality of the first part of the 20th century. This paper treats the artistic relationship between these two men as present in the Zemlinsky's Lyrische Symphonie, a major symphonic work based upon Tagore's poems. The paper examines the Tagore phenomenon in Germany during the 1920s and discusses the ways in which Tagore's erotically charged poems influenced and shaped the creation and style of Zemlinsky's Symphony. The paper also addresses the wider issue of music and orientalism during the early 20th century and particularly potential ways in orientalism might be seen to be present in Zemlinsky's most important work. Musical examples accompany the paper.

About the presenter:
Kenneth DeLong is Professor of Music History at The University of Calgary, where he is also the coordinator of the music history program. Raised in India of missionary parents, he took undergraduate degrees at Acadia University and at The University of Manitoba, completing his doctorate at Stanford University with a dissertation on the Czech composer, Jan Hugo Vorisek. He has published in the field of Romantic Czech music, notably on Vorisek, Tomasek, and Smetana, as well as contributing articles on the piano music of Chopin and Liszt. He has also published on English music of the Victorian period and is currently preparing an article on Sullivan's music to Macbeth. Kenneth DeLong is also a practicing music critic and has been the classical music reviewer for the Calgary Herald and Opera Canada for over 20 years.

Presentation abstract:

"India/Sri Lanka, the Holocaust, and the Western Gaze in Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay and Jeannette Lander’s Jahrhundert der Herren"

Both Anita Desai’s and Jeannette Lander’s novels deal with existential crises. Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988) tells the story of Hugo Baumgartner, a Jewish refugee who leaves Berlin just as Hitler comes to power and now lives in exile in India. In Jahrhundert der Herren (1993), Ilse/Juliane Brabant leaves an abusive marriage in her native Germany to become a producer of textiles in the war-torn Sri Lanka of the early 1980s. Both protagonists escape oppression, albeit of different kinds, to remake their lives in India and Sri Lanka respectively. Baumgartner first becomes a victim of India and ultimately of the fate that he has evaded for fifty years. In Jahrhundert der Herren the Holocaust is evoked by the non-Jewish German protagonist’s complicity in violence and oppression. It is also directly evoked through the character of Harry Silberzweig, a Holocaust survivor who has lived and done business in South East Asia for twenty years and who becomes Juliane’s friend and advisor. While Hugo Baumgartner remains haunted by the Otherness of India, Juliane Brabant, who feels equally as threatened by the country’s Otherness, in addition becomes complicit in exploiting the native population, particularly the Tamil minority, in setting up her business. Desai’s novel culminates with the death of Baumgartner at the hands of a German drug addict whereas Juliane, to ensure her and her daughter’s independence, has her husband killed by Tamil terrorists. Both novels endorse the view that violence begets violence. I argue that it is through their use of setting and their protagonists’/narrators’ unstable narrative positions that the novels become problematic. Interestingly, the writing of both Desai and Lander is similarly informed by their cultural “in-betweenness.” Desai was born in India in 1937 to an Indian father and a German mother and now resides in the United States. Lander was born in 1931 to Polish-Jewish immigrants to the United States and has lived in Germany since 1960, except for a year in Sri Lanka in 1984-85. I argue that their authors’ specific cultural heritage as well as their shared fictional interest in the human condition itself and their preoccupation with universal issues account for the at times ambivalent representation of the Indian subcontinent in these two novels.

About the presenter:
Petra Fachinger is an Associate Professor in the German Department at Queen’s University. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of British Columbia (thesis title: “Counter-Discursive Strategies in First-World Migrant Writing”). Fachinger is the author of Rewriting Germany from the Margins: “Other” German Literature of the 1980s and 1990s (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2002) as well as several articles on ethnic-minority writing in English and in German. Among her primary research interests are German Jewish, Turkish German, Jewish American as well as Asian American literature.

Presentation abstract:

"'The Pale Lotus Flower of the Ganges': The Imperial Shadow in E. Marlitt's Novel Die zweite Frau"

An Indian woman is trapped in a German castle. She has been completely paralyzed for the past thirteen years. She cannot speak, she can only groan. The German heroine of this 19th century novel unravels the mystery and finds out that the nameless Indian woman, whom I call "Lotosblume" ("Lotus Flower"), barely survived an attempted murder by a rejected German "nobleman."   Die zweite Frau resembles a detective story - it is intricate, mysterious, and messy. What role is assigned to "Lotosblume" within the imperial context? How is she re-presented (dargestellt) and what does she represent (vertritt)? In my reading of this romance I uncovered misogynist, racist, and imperialistic forms of violence. I suggest that this popular novel, written by a relatively unknown female German author, be discussed in the larger context of imperial exploitation of the "Orient." I will demonstrate how "Lotosblume" is constructed as the shadow female and cultural object in a colonial subtext, reinforcing ideological constructions of Western, here specifically German, hegemony. I argue that literature, whether in popular or so-called high culture, needs to be subjected to critical scrutiny in terms of categories such as "race," gender, class, ethnicity, and sexuality beyond aesthetic values.

About the presenter:
Marion Gerlind is teaching German at San Joaquin Delta College, Stockton, California. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her dissertation is entitled "Off the Record: Remapping Shoah Representations from Perspectives of Ordinary Jewish Women." This comparative and interdisciplinary study of oral history interviews and unpublished third-person accounts focused on working-class and rural Holocaust survivors from Germany and Poland. Her research interests and publications include Holocaust and Genocide studies and German cultural studies, with emphasis on
gender, class, and ethnicity.

Presentation abstract:

"German Diligence and German Profundity: The Institutionalization of Sanskrit Studies in Prussian Universities, 1818-1830"

By the mid-nineteenth century, German orientalist scholars had come to be seen as the “Indians of Europe”,(1) and by the early twentieth century, Indian philosophy and symbolism had become widely diffused throughout German culture. Theosophists and racialists helped to popularize ideas about the “Aryan race”,(2) and Buddhist societies and journals gained numerous members and subscribers.(3) Dictating Mein Kampf from prison in the early 1920s, Hitler regarded the swastika, derived from ancient Indian symbolism, as the ideal symbol of National Socialism because of its associations with the racial purity and genius of the Aryans.

The growth of Indology and popular interest in India by Germans is remarkable considering the relatively late start they got compared to the British and French. Academic Indology had begun in those countries in the late eighteenth century as a result of imperial interests in South Asia. French Jesuit missionaries and British colonial officials uncovered Indian texts that had been virtually unknown for centuries, they translated these works into English, French, and Latin, and they shipped the oldest manuscripts and artifacts back to their capitals in Europe. The first German orientalists had to work from foreign translations or travel to Paris or London in order to learn the languages first-hand. And yet, despite this late start, it was German orientalists who came to dominate the field by mid-century. How such a rapid rise occurred presents a compelling question.

This paper will conclude that there are three major causes of the growth of Indology in Prussia in the 1820s. First, Prussian officials supported the growth of academic orientalism in an effort to compete with its early popularity and growth in England and France. Second, the popularity of these studies in German literary culture provided much needed prestige for universities. Finally, Sanskrit rose to particular prominence because of the efforts of linguistic scholars who were convinced of its centrality to an understanding of Indo-European languages more broadly.

Scholars have recently taken a significant interest in the growth and advancement of German Indology in the nineteenth century.(4) These studies have largely focused on the mid-to-late nineteenth century, that is, the period when German Indology had already become well established. Little detailed work has been done on the crucial period of the late 1810s and 1820s. It was in this period that Sanskrit studies became institutionalized in Prussian universities, where it received the greatest official support in all of Germany. This paper will consider this period and pose two questions - what interest did the state/state officials have in supporting these studies? And, how did scholars successfully appeal to state interests?

The period treated in this paper, 1818-1830, marks the years in which the first three Sanskrit scholars were appointed to academic chairs in Prussian universities – August Wilhelm Schlegel in Bonn (1818), Franz Bopp in Berlin (1821), and Peter von Bohlen in Königsberg (1824; full professor 1830). The paper is based on archival sources from the Geheimes Staatsarchiv für Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin and the archives of Humboldt University. In particular, I draw on personnel files concerning appointments, applications for promotion, and requests for leaves of absence and funds for research materials. These documents provide unique insight into the role of the Prussian state in the growth of academic Indology, about state interests in this new field, as well as state expectations about a return on the investment of “public funds”.

State officials at the Kultusministerium were devoted to fulfilling the command of King Friedrich Wilhelm III that “the state must replace through intellectual powers what it has lost in the way of physical powers.”(5) This paper will argue that the funding of research and academic chairs in oriental studies was part of this mission, and a reaction to the popularity of such studies in France and England, as well as within German literary culture. German literary periodicals kept up with the publication of translations from Sanskrit, as well as the publication of grammar guides and other Hülfsmittel for lay readers. They lauded German scholars in this new field and the patrons who made their work possible. Such praise helped to advance the reputation of universities that were newly opened or reformed, which in turn attracted more reputable faculty. Jena had been the academic hot-spot before 1806, then Heidelberg. By the 1820s, Prussian universities, especially Berlin, had gained the upper hand.

This paper will also argue that Sanskrit rose to prominence not because of any particular preference on the part of state officials, but because of the importance linguistic scholars ascribed to it among Indo-European languages. In the Reform era, German officials had made the conscious decision to attempt to reinvent the university grounded in humanist educational principles, in contrast to the radical transformation of French institutes of higher education into technical colleges. This image of a neo-humanist Bildung grounded in the Sprachwissenschaften, classical and comparative philology, owed more to the vision of Wilhelm von Humboldt than any other individual. Von Humboldt was an intimate friend of both Schlegel and Bopp, and his intervention on their behalf had considerable impact on the progress of their research and publication projects. His belief in the importance of Sanskrit for the study of Indo-European languages, and consequently its importance for the project of a humanist education itself, led him to pursue his own intense study of the subject as well as support its growth in Prussia.

(1) Foucher de Careil, Hegel et Schopenhauer (1862), cited in Roger-Pol Droit, The Cult of Nothingness: The Philosophers and the Buddha (trans. David Streight and Pamela Vohnson, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 102

(2) George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Howard Fertig, 1934), 89-90

(3) Douglas T. McGetchin, The Sanskrit Reich: Translating Ancient India for Modern Germans, 1790-1914 (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 2002), 222-224

(4) Cf. Sanskrit and Orientalism: Indology and Comparative Linguistics in Germany, 1750-1958 (ed. Douglas T. McGetchin, Peter K.J. Park, Damodar Sar Desai, New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), and Suzanne Marchand, “’The Lonely Science’: Oriental Studies in Germany, 1820-1880” (paper delivered at the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies Conference, April 22, 2005)

(5) Max Lenz, Geschichte der königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin, Vol. I (Halle:Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1910-19018), 78

About the presenter:
Nicholas Germana is an advanced doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Boston College. He expects to defend his dissertation, "The Orient of Europe: The Mythical Image of India and Competing Images of German National Identity, 1760-1830", in early June 2006. He is the author of an essay on Johann Gottfried Herder's writings on India in a forthcoming anthology from Stanford University Press, titled "Anthropology of the Enlightenment".

Contribution abstract:

"Virtually Indian: The internet portal theinder.net’s imagination of India"

Clicking on www.theinder.net one reaches the self-proclaimed “Indian Online Community” which calls itself also “Germany’s Indian online portal”. theinder.net is an internet portal founded by three students in the summer of 2000. The founders were all born and brought up in Northern Germany and know each other since childhood as their Indian parents met regularly at functions. They grew up with the medium internet, experimented with it and created personal websites. When in 2000 the German news were dominated by the planed introduction of “Green Cards” to attract foreign IT professionals as well as the conservative counter campaign “Kinder statt Inder” (children instead of Indians), the three decided to merge their websites and create their own Indernet (network of Indians – merging the German word for Indians Inder with internet). Their initiative was the right one at the right time. Since then the number of users has increased to many thousands, new editors have joined, the media take notice of the internet portal, most members of the second generation know it. It is by now well established and still runs on voluntary basis. theinder.net offers both editorial content on India and Indians in Germany as well as interactive elements for online discussions.

Only few people of Indian origin live in Germany, most of them live in a predominantly “German” environment meeting others of Indian origin - like the founders of theinder.net - only at occasional functions. Their Indian parent(s) and relatives, their skin colour and names make the Indians of the second generation aware of some link to India, but in their everyday life this so called country of origin hardly plays a role. theinder.net offers them a space where they can both get into contact with others of Indian origin in Germany and find information about India. Images of India are constructed, negotiated and presented there. Often these have little links to the actual India as many of the users have hardly been there except for holidays at their parent’s home. Thus the images created of India seem to be more linked to their life in Germany than to India itself. They reflect the “German” environment imagining them as experts on India, asking them for information, reacting irritated when they cannot provide it. The images also reflect the prejudices they are faced with in Germany as these are discussed, positive ones are encouraged and negative ones are opposed. Finally, the images reflect some longing for a place mostly unknown, where they feel they belong, where they consider themselves not to be seen as strangers. Through all these images a virtual India is created which is shaped by the feelings of being Indian in Germany. An example from the early days of theinder.net highlights how little this virtual India has to do with the real one. In the forum one user asked whether in India a women could attain a high political office. This question was then discussed seriously by many. None, however, mentioned that Indira Gandhi had already been prime minister. Nobody seemed to know.

About the contributor:
Urmila Goel is a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer in social and cultural anthropology at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder (Germany). She works about South Asians in Gemany, particularly about the secondgeneration. Currently she is working in the research project "The virtual second generation" about the negotiation of ethnicy on the internet. Her fields of interest are racism, othering and the construction of ethnic identities. Contact:  goel@urmila.de, Homepage: http://www.urmila.de .

Presentation abstract:

"The Problem of Ethical Action in the Early German Interpretation of the Bhagavadgītā"

Building upon the analysis presented in my book, The German Gītā: Hermeneutics and Discipline in the German Reception of Indian Thought, 1778-1831 (Routledge, 2006), this paper will offer a survey of the construal of the Bhagavadgītā by its earliest German interpreters: Herder, F. Schlegel, A.W. Schlegel, W. von Humboldt, and Hegel. In particular, the paper will focus on the way in which these figures interpreted the ethical content presented in the text, with special attention to their reading of karmayoga, or the Gītā’s innovative teaching on action.

Overall, the German readers in question found the practical side of Krishna’s advice to Arjuna lacking. In his often sympathetic reconstruction of the text, for example, the late Herder struggled to discern an ethical ground for action in the midst of its supposed espousal of vitalist pantheism, but he failed to discern one, just as he found difficulty reconstructing a basis for ethics in his own neo-Spinozistic system. F. Schlegel also suspected the text of having a pantheistic essence, and thus he thought that it ultimately negated the possibility of moral action. If everything is God, why is any action necessary at all? And aren’t good and bad ultimately the same? Hegel (in)famously claimed that karmayoga was an impossible and incoherent doctrine that fell back on the “natural determination” of caste duty. These evaluations fit into a genealogy of the text’s early German reception that positioned it as irrational, dreamlike, and amoral, feeding a broad discourse that ultimately derided and mastered Indian culture, contributing to the suppression of Indian thought from Western philosophy.

Despite their contribution to a potentially derogatory set of claims about the Indian text and its native culture, I argue that these idiosyncratic, peripheral interpretive efforts in the German context are well worth reconsidering in careful detail. On one side of the equation, a dismissal of these early attempts at cross-cultural understanding has to confront the contributions of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who utterly disputed his tradition’s negative interpretation of the Gītā’s ethics. In fact, he read the karmayoga doctrine with empathy, trying it on for size, and associated the text’s teachings with the Kantian framework.

At the same time, the seemingly local, ethnocentric debates about the Gītā’s doctrines touched on issues that were already of significant concern within the Indian commentarial tradition that surrounded the text. As post-Kantian philosophy confronted and reconstructed the Gītā, it was confronting its own demons, as it were, but it had also sensed, almost as a product of its own ethnocentric projections, the kinds of troubles that had already plagued some of the most famous Indian interpreters of the text. Exhibiting this strange/estranged moment of cross-cultural encounter, as reflected, for example, in Rāmānuja’s Gītābhāsya, perhaps illustrates Slavoj Žižek’s intriguing formulation: cross-cultural understanding occurs when it’s realized that the problem “bothering” us (we who want to “understand” the other culture), namely “the nature of the Other’s secret,” was “already bothering the Other itself.”

Presentation abstract:

"Hegel and the Unicultural Perspective on India"

Although Hegel seems to be a secular philosopher, his philosophy, however, is rooted in his religious background. He had been very pious and orthodox in his younger days. His world view as a mature philosopher is still based on his Christian-Germanic convictions, as his theory on the movement of history from the East, from Huang He (The Yellow River) via Ganges, Euphrates, Nile, to Rhine confirms. In my paper, I shall analyse Hegel’s interpretation of the Indian culture.

Presentation Abstract:

"Alfred Döblin’s Epos Manas and the reception of India’s religion and philosophy in Berlin at the beginning of the 20th century"

„Es ist mir [...] nicht ein einziger Abschnitt meines Lebens bewußt, in dem nicht Dinge, die ich als >religiös< empfand, mich zentral beherrscht haben.“ (SLW 207)

In all of Alfred Döblin’s texts, religion is of central concern. There is hardly any religious (and/or philosophical) school of thought he has not reflected and written about. Judaism, Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, natural religion – each and every one of them is treated directly or indirectly in Döblin’s texts. „Glaubensfragen“, he wrote in a letter in 1957, „erweisen sich mehr und mehr als Existenzfragen.“ Therefore, religious and philosophical issues are hardly distinguishable. Depicting individuals who live and represent specific religious beliefs within a fictitious world is a literary experiment with various matters of existence. The obstacles and doubts they have to face are signs of existential struggles which they fight delegatedly. Thus, the fictitious world of the novel turns into an “Überrealität” (“Over-reality”; Döblin, der Bau des epischen Werks).

In 1926 Döblin started work at the Epos Manas, a text basing on facts he drew from books and mixed to a masterpiece which turned out a flop. This book wasn’t ignored by research, but didn’t really get much attention. Of greatest interest seemed to be the position of the book in a line of increasing individuality within Döblin’s complete works, not the digestion of knowledge about India and Hinduism.

In the centre of my current work are firstly Döblin’s view on India given by books, secondly the presentation of these facts in a poetical text and thirdly the knowledge about India in Berlin at the beginning of the 20 th century. Döblin was neither the first nor the only who cared for Asian culture – to find out how this interest came to light will be the aim of my research in the following months.

About the presenter:
Ursula Kocher is scientific assistant at the Freie Universität Berlin and has taken her Ph.D. with a dissertation on the reception of Boccaccio's Decameron in Germany (published 2005). Her fields of interest are narratology, literary theory (she's responsible for the e-learning-project www.literaturtheorien.de), emblematics and mnemonics, German literature in the 20th century, early modern literature and theory of editing. At present she's writing a book on the Codifying of knowledge in emblematics and mnemonics and working on a project about "Narrating towards India and China".

Presentation abstract:

"How German is the Indian Tiger? The Uncanny as the Repressed Familiar in Der Tiger von Eschnapur"

There is hardly any film that has shaped Germany’s perception (or ‘misperception’) of India more significantly than the cinematic realization of Thea von Harbou’s novel Das Indische Grabmal (1918). Under the title Das Indische Grabmal and Der Tiger von Eschnapur, Joe May (1921), Richard Eichberg (1937), and Fritz Lang (1958) have directed versions of the novel, which were -- although despised by critics -- hailed by popular audiences. This paper asks for the reasons behind this popular success. In particular, it examines the historical setting that has shaped realization and audience response to the 1921 and 1958 versions.

In Imagerie des Anderen im Weimarer Kino (2003), Wolfgang Kabatek has claimed that after World War I and the fall of the Empire, the German population was desperately looking for a new collective identity. In this situation, he argues, the exotic “Other” was used to redefine German identity by declaring “what we are not.” This paper complicates Kabatek’s claim by showing that in the movies under discussion the Indian subcontinent not only serves as the exotic and uncanny “Other” of a heroic and virtuous Germany, but also as the very incarnation of an aspect of German mentality that the defeated nation wanted to overcome. Both, Harbou’s novel as well as its filmic realization, show India as a place where the ruler is cruel and decadent and where the population is submissive and without own will. These qualities connect the Indian subcontinent with a Germany that struggled with a broken self-confidence after World War I and II, in which it had acted as an aggressive attacker and a submissive “Mitläufer” of a cruel ruler. Juxtaposing these qualities with a German hero who is morally superior to the Indian villain and full of mercy for his subordinates, the films enabled the German audience to work through and at the same time to distance itself from these ‘Indian’ qualities and to reassert German superiority. Hence, the creepy and uncanny features of the Maharaja, the “Tiger of Eschnapur,” become understandable as the repressed familiar, the “un-heimlich” as Freud puts it in his essay on the uncanny (Das Unheimliche, 1919).

I will support my claim by pointing out references to national events and by highlighting connections to cultural products, which stress how much the films’ topics are interwoven with contemporary questions. One of the most impressive scenes in this respect is the raise of the lepers who haunt the German hero and eventually infect him (he recovers later). I will show that this scene in the 1921 version is a reference to the raise of the dead of World War I in Abel Gance’s anti-war film J’Accuse (1919). Fritz Lang repeats this reference in his 1958 version, thereby connecting the movie not only to Abel Gance’s work and WWI but more directly to Wolfgang Liebeneiner’s Liebe 47 (1949), a cinematic adaptation of Wolfgang Borchert’s Draußen vor der Tür, which quotes J’Accuse.

To summarize: this paper shows that the after-war versions of Das Indische Grabmal/Der Tiger von Eschnapur are embedded in a close network of historical and cinematic references, which reveal that in these movies India and its people function as a metaphor of Germany’s haunting past and are used to prove German superiority. As Kracauer would say, the Germans left the imprisonment of their crippled fatherland behind, by continuing their “Weltmission” on the screen (Theory of Film, 1960).

About the presenter:
Christine Lehleiter is a PhD student in the Department for Germanic Studies at Indiana University. Her dissertation, “Inheriting the Future – Generating the Past: Heritage, Pedigree, and Lineage in German Literature and Thought around 1800,” examines scientific treatises on biological inheritance and their impact on the definition of the self. She shows that an increasing distance between parent and child (mother and fetus), which emerges in connection with the discovery of childhood as an independent period of life, opens up a space for new discourses on the question of how inheritance shapes the individual. Parallel to her work on the connection between the life sciences and literature, Christine Lehleiter has focused her attention on the question of the Uncanny and the Sublime in German literature and culture. She has delivered conference papers pursuing this question in such different authors as Mendelssohn, Lenz, Kleist, and E.T.A. Hoffmann. She plans to devote her second research project to the question of the Uncanny in Weimar and Nazi mass media

Presentation abstract:

"The Whitney-Müller Conflict and Indo-German Connections"

The German-born-and-educated Oxford Sanskritist F. Max Müller (1823-1900) was a popular and important figure in Europe and India during his lifetime, most noted for his Veda translations and for forcefully speaking out in favor of India’s ancient civilization during the height of English rule. Despite his many public honors, by his death in 1900, within European linguistic scholarship his arguments were obsolete. This decline began during the 1870s when Müller's methodology, motives and scientific theories faced sharp criticism from a then little-known American linguist at Yale, William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894).

This paper examines published writings and unpublished letters from Whitney to the University of Berlin’s Albrecht Weber (1825-1901) to show that Whitney had scientific and personal reasons for criticizing Müller's work. More importantly, Whitney was able to rally some German scholars to his cause, such as Weber and the University of Tübingen’s Rudolph Roth (1821-1895). The significance of the Whitney-Müller conflict for German-Indian connections is complex. Despite Whitney’s devastating critique, Müller’s contributions as a translator and promoter of Oriental texts, culture, and literature remained strong; even in his later years Müller edited the “Sacred Books of the East” translation series. A key point of contention for Whitney was Müller's reliance on Indian pundits and commentators, such as the 4 th c. CE Indian grammarian of classical Sanskrit, P ÁÆ ini [Panini]. Following the Anglicist tradition, Whitney scornfully dismissed the expertise of Indian pundits, an attitude also shared by some German Indologists such as Weber and Roth. By highlighting these issues, the Whitney-Müller controversy provides insight into the German-Indian connection and Orientalism.

About the presenter:
Douglas T. McGetchin is Assistant Professor of History at the MacArthur Campus of Florida Atlantic University. He is revising his dissertation “The Sanskrit Reich: Translating Ancient India for Modern Germans, 1790-1914” (University of California, San Diego, 2002) and has co-edited with Peter K. J. Park and Damodar SarDesai the volume Sanskrit and “Orientalism”: Indology and Comparative Linguistics in Germany, 1750-1958 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004). He has also published an article about French Orientalism: "Wilting Florists: The Turbulent Early Decades of the Société Asiatique, 1822-1860," Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): 565-580. He is currently working on “Gandhian Non-violence and the European Peace Movement, 1919-1939” for the conference “The Exchange of Ideas and Culture between South Asia and Central Europe” upcoming in Heidelberg in October, 2006.

Presentation abstract:

"Reading Austrian Contemporary Writers in India: Debates and Controversies"

If one is publishing a literary magazine bringing out only translations from foreign languages, then one has to deal with a readership of a different kind. A quarterly magazine called ‘Saar Sansaar,’ which I have been publishing for the last 10 years, caters mainly to intellectuals from the Hindi-speaking belt, but there are many readers from non-Hindi speaking regions too. Though these readers are acquainted with the literatures of other countries - they can persuasively talk about Pushkin, Marquez, Kundera, Hesse, Thomas Mann or any such author, whom they know through the translations of his/her work from English - still the fact remains that they are starved of modern literature from other, mainly, non-English-speaking countries. Elfriede Jelinek, for instance, was an unknown entity, when she received Nobel Literature Prize, even to English-speaking reading-public in India.

‘Saar Sansaar’ publishes more number of texts from Europe than from any other region, the reason being the shortage of translators in non-European languages – even from European languages. German has a special place there with the highest number of texts published from this language - if translations from other languages are not available, then I have to fill all the 64 pages of the magazine with my own translations. Due to certain reasons the number of texts by Austrian authors is much more than that of German and Swiss authors. Since most of the texts are very contemporary – from a few months to 2-3 years old – the lasciviousness in the modern texts sometimes shocks the readers, as they have are not exposed to the latest literature from German-speaking countries. The first angry letter I received was, surprisingly, against use of certain obscene expressions from Günter Wallraffs book “Ganz unten”, which is being serialized in the magazine for a long time. The reader, a well-known, respected Hindi-writer from Ambala, was so vexed that he called me indecent, accused me of spoiling Indian culture through importing decadent western culture into my magazine, and asked me to stop sending him the magazine in future. Later on, a number of readers, mainly editors of literary magazines, writers, critics and college and university teachers found the prose by Austrian writers like Margit Schreiner, Margit Hahn, Monica Wogrolly, Zdenka Becker, Gustav Ernst etc. too offensive to find place in a literary Hindi magazine. While Hindi writers like Rahi Masoom Raza, Saadat Hasan Manto and Mahendra Bhalla etc. did receive flak from common folk for using explicit expressions and situations in their prose, they were still accepted by the intelligentsia, but this was not expected from a literary magazine. Even though Rajendra Yadav of ‘Hans’ and Shailendra Sagar of ‘Kathakram’ have also been publishing texts with explicit sexual expressions and situations, I have been given the argument that the obscenity in those texts had some relevance, since they conveyed some social message or other, whereas the Austrian authors were just pandering to the basic instincts of their readers.

In June 2004 I visited Austria at the invitation of the Austrian Society for Literature and talked to and interviewed some of the authors on this subject. On my return I presented their views to the readers of the magazine in order to provoke readers to an open debate on the issue. The magazine has published selected letters of the readers in the issues from Oct. 2004 to January 2006 – 23 of these readers are writers, 9 are academicians and another 9 are editors of literary magazines. The reactions have come from nearly every region of India, from Darjeeling to Mumbai, and from Kaithal to Hyderabad. A vast majority of enlightened readers does not find the texts in question offensive, and has expressed the view that one should not look for his own culture in another culture. The paper analyzes the opinions expressed by some of the modern Austrian authors and the reactions of Hindi readers of ‘Saar Sansaar’ on these opinions.

About the presenter:
Amrit Mehta is working as Head of the Center for Translation Studies at the Central Institute of English & Foreign Languages.  He worked as journalist for 3 years in the Hindi-Service of Deutsche Welle, Cologne.  He did his Ph.D at the University of Delhi on the theme "Individual and Society in the Novels of Hermann Hesse."  For the last 10 years, he has devoted himself intensively to Translation Studies,  has edited 2 volumes on translation theory and has also translated 26 books, mainly from German into Hindi.  He has special interest in modern Austrian and Swiss literature, and most of the literary works translated are those of contemporary  authors from these two countries. He is a columnist in Hindi and English papers and Chief Editor of a quarterly literary magazine titled "Saar Sansaar", which publishes foreign language literatures published directly from their source languages into Hindi.

Presentation abstact:

"Knowing India, Traveling India: Joseph Dahlmann’s Indische Fahrten"

Joseph Dahlmann (1861-1930), a Jesuit father and noteworthy German Indologe, published numerous books and essays on Indian religious traditions and philosophy. Most significant were his controversial and stimulating theories on the Mahabharata, which evoked a rigorous academic debate in Germany at the end of the 19th century about that text’s authorship--fluent in Sanskrit, possessing intimate knowledge of India’s sacred texts, Dahlmann knows India. Yet, perhaps following the trend of increasing popularization of academic subject matter, Dahlmann desired to inspect the purported enormous transformations occurring in Asia at the turn-of-the-century. After his three- year excursion (1902-1905), which included India, Japan and China, Dahlmann published his travel account in 1908, Indische Fahrten, in which most of 2 volumes reports on India--where “das geographische und ethnologische, das literarische und künstlerische Bild klar und bestimmt in seinen Grundzügen vor uns steht.” Thus Dahlmann seeks to consummate his elaborate scientific knowledge by crossing borders--encountering India’s traditions as they have become manifest in that present-day. In consequence, Dahlmann’s report provides a particularly insightful avenue for exploring what Bourdieu has described as “the gulf between this potential, abstract space [...] and the practical space of journeys actually made” -- knowing India, traveling India. In a similar context, Russell Berman has argued that “the Enlightenment may not only be part of a system of domination, it may also be the vehicle for a genuine knowledge of another culture and the site for fruitful border crossings.” Yet, this only holds true, if and when, as Berman suggests, “we hold reason to its own standards.” As we might expect from a Jesuit father, Dahlmann unabashedly supports the Catholic missions in these countries, but as a scientist and Indologe, Dahlmann has a unique understanding of Indian culture, its religious and philosophical traditions--knowledge attained through textual study, and academic reason based on Enlightenment perquisites. Applying this knowledge to “eine echt indische Umgebung,” Dahlmann’s text places particular emphasis on elaborate descriptions of India’s architectural wonders in their artistic and religious distinction as well as religious practices and rituals. Thus Dahlmann’s report provides unique insight into how this enlightened traveler--a specialist, an Indologe--employs the standards of his reasoned knowledge--knowing India--in the “real” India-- traveling India. In my paper I will explore how Dahlmann’s intimate knowledge of India’s cultural heritage informs and conflicts with those impressions attained through travel--how Dahlmann puts the standards of his Enlightenment reason into practice. More specifically, I will depict how those Enlightenment values of truth, scientific knowledge, understanding and progress are applied to an (other) culture--Enlightenment ideals applied to alterity. By emphasizing how Enlightenment reason plays out in this travel report I will examine how this enlightened German explorer/Wissenschaftler discovers the “real” India--how Dahlmann’s assessment of India’s present-day cultural conventions authorizes a kind of German “Oriental” discourse through his use of social science, thus disregarding Enlightenment dictates, arguing instead that even Dahlmann’s application of “scientific” knowledge of the Orient is filtered by a colonialist consciousness.

About the presenter:
Perry Myers grew up in Texas and attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas. After completing his education with a Master of Business Administration in May 1981, he spent the following years as an investment banker in Frankfurt, Germany. In September 1994 he re-entered the academic world at the University of Texas and completed his Ph.D. in Germanic Studies in August, 2002. He recently published a book entitled The Double Edged Sword: The Cult of Bildung, Its Downfall and Reconstitution in Fin-de-Siècle Germany (Rudolf Steiner and Max Weber). Peter Lang, 2004. He is presently working on German social scientists studying and traveling India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is an Assistant Professor of German at Albion College, Michigan.

Presentation abstract:

"Sikh Diaspora Life and the Invisible Sites of German Ethnicity"

There is a discernible trend toward “ India” in German popular culture today; we could even speak of a kind of “ India hype”, considering that Bollywood movies are now regularly shown in prime time television, and hybrid Punjabi music reached the shores of the German popular culture. Does this mainstreaming of popular culture lead to changes in public recognition? Is South Asian diasporic life known and accepted as part of German normality today? And does the recognition of bands like Punjabi MC transgress the existence of an exotic brand name and discursively open German public discourse toward regional (i.e. Punjabi) histories and cultural formations as well as the complex transnational realities Punjabi MC is evidently a product of? I want explore such questions by focusing on contemporary issues that, from my point of view and based on long-term ethnographic work in Punjab and the Punjabi (Sikh) diaspora community in Germany, account for a much more differentiated and problematic reality on the ground. In the presentation, my main focus will be the recent debate on the Muslim head scarf and Islamic fundamentalism in Europe. These issues had an immediate effect on contemporary forms of Sikh self-understanding, not only in Germany, but also in France and other European countries.

About the presenter:
Michael Nijhawan (PhD Heidelberg) is a cultural anthropologist specializing on religious transnationalism, political violence, migration, ethnicity, and identity. He has conducted anthropological fieldwork in India, Pakistan and Germany, focusing on matters of Sikh identity formation in Punjab and the diaspora. His forthcoming book is: Dhadi Darbar - Religion, Violence and the Performance of Sikh History (OUP Delhi). He is currently working on a project on Sikhs in Germany and other diasporic locations. He has just accepted an appointment as assistant professor in the sociology of culture and identity at York University, Toronto. Contact: nijhawan@yorku.ca

Contribution abstract:

"From Schopenhauer to Sankara. Paul Deussen's (1845-1919) Cross-Cultural Philosophy"

In the paper, I would like to focus on the extraordinary personality of Paul Deussen (1845-1919), philosopher, philologist and Indologist, Professor of Philosophy in Kiel, admirer of Schopenhauer, editor of Schopenhauer’s works and founder of the Schopenhauer Society (1912), schoolmate of Nietzsche and author of an autobiography which provides us with an interesting insight into Wilhelminian society.

As the son of a Protestant priest he grew up in a rural environment, but managed the social and intellectual advancement through grammar school (Lateinschule) and academic education. But unlike Nietzsche’s snobbish arrogance Deussen seems to have kept his background in mind which made his approach to philosophy more modest and open. In contrast to Nietzsche’s (and to some extent also Schopenhauer’s) attitude towards Asian philosophy which adopted only ideas which fit into the own conception of the world, it looks like Deussen was truly and deeply interested in “the Other” — the Asian, especially Indian philosophical and religious ideas. A great number of his publications, voluminous translations and commentaries, shows this interest and are still relevant for academic Indologist work today.(1)

The paper will concentrate on the narrow boundaries the Wilhelminian society set for cross-cultural thinking—especially if succeeding Schopenhauer who’s philosophy was not at all “gesellschaftsfähig”. Central for the approach is the question if Deussen managed to go beyond these boundaries. Did Deussen at least prepare a new reception of Asian philosophy in the 20 th century—beyond prejudices as well as beyond Schopenhauer’s pessimistic fatalism and Nietzsche’s chauvinistic vitalism? To what extent did he try to get rid of the Eurocentric focus and the post-romantic Orientalism of his time, especially with his idea of a “Weltphilosophie”(2)? Can he be regarded as a real mediator between Indian and German culture, religion and philosophy?

(1) To name just a few of them:

• Paul Deussen: Das System des Vedanta. Nach den Brahma-Sutra’s des Badarayana und dem Commentare des Cankara über dieselben als ein Compendium der Dogmatik des Brahmanismus vom Standpunkte des Cankara aus, Leipzig 1883
• Paul Deussen: Die Sutra’s des Vedanta oder die Cariraka-Mimansa des Badarayana nebst dem vollständigen Commentare des Cankara. Aus dem Sanskrit übersetzt, Leipzig 1887
• Paul Deussen: Sechzig Upanishad’s des Veda. Aus dem Sanskrit übersetzt und mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen versehen von Paul Deussen, Leipzig 1897
• Paul Deussen: Erinnerungen an Indien, Leipzig 1904
• Paul Deussen: Die Geheimlehre des Veda,. Ausgewählte Texte der Upanishad’s, Leipzig 1907 (2. Auflage)
• Paul Deussen: Vedanta und Platonismus im Lichte der Kantischen Philosophie, Berlin 1922

(2) Paul Deussen: Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Religionen, Leipzig 1894ff.

About the contributor:
Julia Schöll is an assistant professor (wissenschaftliche Assistentin) at the Department of German Literature at the University of Bamberg, Germany. She gained her Ph.D. with a dissertation (published 2004) on Thomas Mann’s exile novel Joseph und seine Brüder. Her fields of interest are the interdisciplinary relations between literary and philosophical theory, identity theory and narrative psychology, German literature and philosophy around 1800, German exile literature (1933-1945) and contemporary German literature. Her postdoctoral project deals with the inter-discourses between aesthetical and ethical theory around 1800.

Presentation abstract:

"Idealism and Time: Temporal Consciousness in Bhartrhari and Hegel"

The encounter between classical Indian philosophy and German Idealism is fascinating and complex; at times these traditions seem to exhibit conceptual kinship in the way they conceive of the relation between consciousness and being. They see in human subjective awareness (individual and collective) the workings of “absolute consciousness” as it produces those structures/categories which enable us to make ontological and epistemological determinations about the nature of being. A deeper analysis, however, reveals a fundamental difference between these forms of idealism; they actually move towards widely divergent conceptions of human understanding-especially in its social and ethical applications. In my paper, I will explore this difference. I will compare elements of Hegel’s arguments with one of the earliest major proponents of systematic Indian idealism; Bhartrihari, the sixth century Indian grammarian-philosopher.

Bhartrihari and Hegel each present a slightly different version of idealistic monism, a system wherein successive emanations of consciousness produce the differentiation which makes up empirical reality. I will focus the discussion here on how these thinkers develop this “temporal outpouring” of consciousness. In the case of Bhartrihari, we have one of the most original thinkers of the sabdadvaita/word monistic school; he argues that Brahman is ultimately “non-different” than consciousness, language, and reality. His version of Sabdavaita is rooted in the notion of “word-principle,” through which language operates not only as a vehicle for empirical knowledge, but as the pre-condition for awareness. According to this principle, consciousness “occurs” in time as a series of linguistic representations or emanations of Divine Word. Bhartrihari’s great insight here foreshadows the contemporary Western philosophy’s view of cognition as inherently mediated by language and time. He does not, however, draw the kind of hermeneutic-historical conclusions about the nature of human knowledge that we find in Western idealism.

About the presenter:
Dr. Theodorou is Chair of the Philosophy Department at Immaculata University in Malvern, PA ( USA). Her research areas include phenomenology, philosophy of language, hermeneutics, and epistemology in the European/continental and classical Indian philosophical traditions. She has recently published articles on the cognitive functions of metaphor in contemporary hermeneutic theories and is currently embarking on a cross-disciplinary research project on metaphor; she is particularly interested in combining various methodological approaches from cognitive science, phenomenology, and epistemology (including continental and analytic approaches).