Hegel’s India

Description

In his writings on India, Hegel characterized Indian thought as “fantastic,” “subjective,” “wild,” “dreamy,” “frenzied,” “absurd,” and “repetitive.” If Indian art, religion, and philosophy were so inadequate, what explains his lifelong fascination with India? This unique volume brings together Hegel’s reflections and argues that Indian thought haunted him, representing a nemesis to his own philosophy. Further, it indicates that the longstanding critical appraisals of Hegel are incommensurate with his detailed explorations of Indian thought.
Hegel distinguished his own thought on two grounds. The first was to focus on freedom and to rail perpetually against the caste system. The second was to indicate the necessity for dialectical mediation, and thus to reprove the stasis of Indian thought. But did Hegel ever manage to exorcise the evil twin that beset his work?
Shedding new light on Indological and Hegelian studies, this book systematically presents all of Hegel’s writings on and about India for the first time, including translations of his lesser-known essays on the Bhagavad-Gita and the Oriental Spirit, along with a substantive reinterpretation and a bibliography.

About the Authors

Aakash Singh Rathore is Visiting Faculty, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
Rimina Mohapatra is Publishing Manager, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New Delhi, India.

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Reviews

‘’Hegel’s India takes the challenge of a detailed reading of Hegel’s texts with a surprising result: behind Hegel’s dismissal of India, there lies not only his profound fascination with India but also an uncanny proximity between India’s ancient wisdom and Hegel’s speculative thought.’
—Slavoj Žižek
International Director, the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London, United Kingdom

‘This volume makes a compelling case for a reassessment and it does so at a time when Western philosophy faces renewed challenges for its Eurocentrism.’
—Robert Bernasconi
Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, USA

Table of contents

Acknowledgments
Reinterpretation
1. India in Hegel’s System: The Ladder to the Circle
2. Hegel’s Indological Sources and the Standard Interpretation
3. Hegel’s India Writings: The Gita and World History
4. Hegel’s India Writings: Art, Religion, and Philosophy
5. Fragments: Oriental Spirit, Logic, and Right
6. Conclusion
References
Texts
1. On the Episode of the Mahabharata Known by the
Name Bhagavad-Gita by Wilhelm von Humboldt
2. Philosophy of World History
3. Lectures on the Philosophy of Fine Art
4. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
5. The Philosophy of Mind (Encyclopedia, Part III)
6. Lectures on the History of Philosophy
7. Fragments: Oriental Spirit, Logic, and Right
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors