Table Of ContentSTUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
Edited by
Robert Bernasconi
University of Memphis
A ROUTLEDGE SERIES
STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
ROBERT BERNASCONI, General Editor
THEREuwANCEOFPHENOMENOLOGYTO ANTHROPIC BIAS
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND MIND Observation Selection Effocts
Sean D. Kelly Nick Bostrom
BE1WEEN DEFLATIONISM AND THE BEAUTIFUL SHAPE OF THE GOOD
CORRESPONDENCE THEORY Platonic and Pythagorean Themes in Kant's
Matthew McGrath Critique of the Power of Judgment
Mihaela C. Fistioc
RISK, AMBIGUITY, AND DECISION
Daniel Elisberg MATHEMATICS IN KANT's CRITICAL
PHILOSOPHY
THE ExPLANATIONIST DEFENSE OF
Reflections on Mathematical Practice
SCIENTIFIC REALISM
Lisa Shabel
Dorit A. Ganson
REFERENTIAL OPACITY AND MODAL loGIC
NEW THOUGHTS ABOUT OLD THINGS
Dagfinn F0l1esdal
Krista Lawlor
EMMANUEL LEVINAS
EsSAYS ON SYMMETRY
Ethics, Justice, and the Human beyond Being
Jenann Ismael
Elisabeth Louise Thomas
DESCARTES' METAPHYSICAL REAsONING
THE CONSTITUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Roger Florka
A Study in Analytic Phenomenology
EsSAYS ON LINGUISTIC CONTEXT Wolfgang Huemer
SENSITMTY AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL
DIALECTICS OF THE BODY
SIGNIFICANCE
Corporeality in the Philosophy ofT.W Adorno
Steven Gross
Lisa Yun Lee
NAMES AND NATURE IN PLATO'S CRATYLUS
ART AS ABSTRACT MACHINE
Rachel Barney
Ontology and Aesthetics in Dekuze and
REALITY AND IMPENETRABILITY IN KANT'S Guattari
. Stephen Zepke
PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE
Daniel Warren
THE GERMAN GiTA
FREGE AND THE loGIC OF SENSE AND Hermeneutics and Discipline in the German
REFERENCE Reception ofI ndian Thought, 1778-1831
Kevin C. Klement Bradley L. Herling
TOPICS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF POSSIBLE
WORLDS
Daniel Patrick Nolan
UNDERSTANDING THE MANY
Byeong-uk Yi
GITA
THE GERMAN
Hermeneutics and Discipline in the German
Reception of Indian Thought, 1778-1831
Bradley L. Herling
Routledge
New York & London
Published in 2006 by Published in Great Britain by
Routledge Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group
270 Madison Avenue 2 Park Square
New York, NY 10016 Milton Park, Abingdon
Oxon OXl4 4RN
© 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
International Standard Book Number-lO: 0-415-97616-2 (Hardcover)
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-97616-9 (Hardcover)
Library of Congress Card Number 2005024334
No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microftiming, and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Herling, Bradley L., 1969-
The German Gita : hermeneutics and discipline in the German reception of Indian thought, 1778-
18311 by Bradley L. Herling.
p. cm. --(Studies in philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-97616-2 (alk. paper)
1. Philosophy, German--18th century. 2. Philosophy, German--19th century. 3. Bhagavadgita-
Influence--Germany. I. Title. II. Studies in philosophy (New York, N.Y.)
B2748.B43H47 2005
294.5'9240460943--dc22 2005024334
informa Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at
http://www.taylorandfrancis.com
Taylor & Francis Group and the Routledge Web site at
is the Academic Division of Informa pIc. http://www.routledge-ny.com
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Vll
Chapter One
Introduction: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations 1
Chapter Two
The Early Flowers ofIndia: Johann Gottfried Herder 41
Chapter Three
The BhagavadtJtii and the Blossoming of India in Herder's Thought 73
Chapter Four
The Pantheism Dilemma and Friedrich Schlegel's Gitii 117
Chapter Five
August Wilhelm Schlegel's "Indian Sphinx": The Persistent Riddle of
Gitii Translation 157
Chapter Six
German Absorption in the Gitii: Wilhelm von Humboldt and Hegel 203
Chapter Seven
Conclusion 255
Notes 279
Bibliography 331
Index 343
v
This page intentionally left blank
Preface and Acknowledgments
WCATING THE TEXTUAL HERO
On the surface, this study tells a simple story: in an enthusiastic time of
uncertainty and promise, a stranger with an illustrious history arrived in an
exotic foreign locale and was welcomed by some and resisted by others. Mis
understanding was always a danger, but this wandering hero eventually
achieved fame-and a new set of adventures began.
This main plotline is elemental, but the twists and turns of detailed
sub-plots provide much of the interest in this kind of epic tale. In the story
told here, the deepest truths often appeared in the way natives of the far
flung land questioned (and showed they were questioned by) the mysterious
stranger, and these striking episodes are found in writings that later observers
have consigned to relative obscurity.
The heroic wanderer, in the case taken up in this project, was the Bha-
gavadgjtii, a text that has become one of the most prominent and well known
expressions of Hindu thought and belief The foreign land that the Gitii
encountered was Germany, where it appeared originally in the waning years of
the eighteenth century and eventually drew the attention and interest of some
of the most prominent intellectuals of the time, including Johann Gottfried
Herder, Friedrich Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt,
and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Given the prominence of these figures in
the Western intellectual tradition, a detailed examination of their encounter
with the Gitii offers a response to the question that has guided this project: how
was this Indian text first constituted as an object of Western knowledge?
Answering this question with specific regard to the German context
has significant implications for understanding the way that comparative,
cross-cultural inquiry became part of the European episteme during the
modern era. As this book will show, the Gitii arrived in Germany during a
V1t
Preface and Acknowledgments
VIII
period in which fundamental debates that still resonate today embroiled its
intellectual community. In the wake of the Enlightenment, German Roman
tics and Idealists sought higher ground for their inquiries with an eye
towards both cultural renewal and the philosophical absolute. An unprece
dented impulse towards cross-cultural knowledge was a crucial part of these
efforts, and the German intellectual circle invited the Gitii into the structures
of Western knowledge as a part of this new imperative. As acquaintance with
other cultures grew, enthusiasm for them was paired with and eventually
channeled through academic disciplines within the nascent human sciences.
The reception of the Gitii played a crucial role in these developments, taking
its place in a moment that would give rise to the philological apprehension
of Indian sources (Indology), to the technical, scientific study of language
(comparative linguistics), and later, to the academic investigation of mythol
ogy and scripture (the study of religion). All the while, philosophy was both
witness to and participant in these developments, and the reception of the
Gitii therefore made an impact on its post-Kantian manifestations. Hence
this study opens the foundations of several disciplines in the human sciences
to scrutiny, while it also makes a contribution to the history of philosophy.
The investigation of this topic has inherent historical interest for those
working in a variety of contemporary fields, but history also serves the pres
ent. The origin under investigation here has no power in and of itself to
explain or to proscribe in contemporary efforts in the many fields that it
implicates, but persistent attention to the history of European compara
tivism does have the power to re-assert pressing theoretical and methodologi
cal quandaries. Even mistakes continue to be instructive, if they are engaged
in all their complexity and context. This study contributes to the richness of
the dialectic between present work in the study of Indian thought and the
past by restating the challenges that troubled some of the best minds of the
Western tradition as they attempted to constitute a German Gitii.
STORIFS LEFT UNTOLD
The Gitii is the hero here, and thus many important areas of inquiry must be
left aside. This is not a comprehensive intellectual history of India in the
German imagination from the end of the eighteenth century through the
early decades of the nineteenth. A remarkable project like that would first
take account of the history of German interpretation of Indian culture lead
ing up to the period in question. I have not even broached this topic, and I
refer the reader to the thorough study by Gita Dharampal-Frick, Indien im
Spiegel deutscher Quellen der Frahen Neuzeit (1500-1750), for a fascinating
Preface and Acknowledgments
IX
prologue to my own analysis. 1 In addition, while it will be necessary to mark
specific points of contact between the German discourse on India and
British sources in particular (because the British so often mediated German
reception of the Gitii) , I will not treat the contributions of British and
French intellectuals in extensive detail. The literature on this topic is vast
(especially on the British Orientalists), but I do hope to open issues that
deserve closer attention in this field, while maintaining focus on the German
context.
Following the reception of the Gitii has also led me to omit some
important figures who contributed significantly to the representation and
understanding of India during the period in question. The traveler, politi
cian, and translator Georg Forster, for example, who rendered the Indian
drama Siikuntala in German, based on William Jones's English edition of
1791, is not treated, though this work produced much of the public enthusi
asm that fuelled the early German investigation ofIndia.2The text impacted
Goethe, but I will not analyze his interpretation of Indian culture in any
detail, nor will I examine the contributions of the many Popularphilosophen
who examined Indian philosophy within a number of vast, systematic works
around the turn of the nineteenth century.3 The work of Herder's student,
Friedrich Majer, who produced the first full German translation of the Gitii
will also be given short shrift, but his translation was highly prosaic, and like
the translated excerpts that his teacher presented, it derives entirely from
Wilkins' English edition. In addition, I will only briefly touch upon figures
like Windischmann, Creuzer, and Garres, though they were extremely
important in the post-Schlegelian interpretation of India. My scope of
inquiry also excludes Schelling, because he did not directly address the Gitii,
and Schopenhauer, because his contributions come after my historical
purview. If there were another chapter, charting the later trajectory of Ger
man views, it would be devoted to these figures. With regard to the Gitii
itself, I acknowledge that my study will be something of a cliffhanger: the
hero will be left in a rather curious position, somewhere between being con
signed to the dusty archive of philological research and becoming a much
more famous textual phenomenon in Europe. Detailing the later fate of the
text would require another complicated project.
Methodologically, I have attempted to build on previous scholarship by
continuing to synthesize hermeneutical and critical approaches. I am aware
that my methodology still retains traces of a "great man" brand of intellectual
history; a full contextualization of a text's reception would require greater
attention to social, cultural, and material history. As I will suggest below,
however, attending to the details of Orientalist textual practice is a step in
