Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:54:45.090Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hegel’s Criticism of Hinduism: A Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2016

Peter Sahota
Peter Sahota*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex, United [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

This paper offers a response to Hegel’s critique of Hinduism as explicated by Jon Stewart, by drawing on a variety of textual sources which are normative for Hinduism. In a first section, Hegel’s idea that the Hindu conception of the divine is too abstract to provide meaningful content is challenged by explicating the role of the Veda in Hinduism. A second section seeks to question the idea that the kind of naturalism available in Hinduism is necessarily incompatible with subjective freedom in the way that Hegel suggests. A third section engages with the specific empirical question regarding the subjective freedom of women in Hindu society which Hegel provides as one practical illustration of the lack of subjective freedom. Rather than providing a definitive rebuttal, the evidence adduced on all these points suggests a more heterogeneous picture of Hinduism than that which Hegel was able to provide.

Type
Articles
Information
Hegel Bulletin , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , October 2016 , pp. 305 - 317
Copyright
© The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmed, A. F. Salahuddin (1965), Social Ideas and Social Change in Bengal 1818–1835 . Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, R. (2012), ‘ Svabhāvavāda and the Cārvaka/Lokāyata: A Historical Overview’, Journal of Indian Philosophy 40: 593–614.Google Scholar
Colebrooke, H. T. (trans.) (1810), Two Treatises on the Hindu Law of Inheritance. Calcutta: Hindoostanee Press.Google Scholar
Colebrooke, H. T. (1826), ‘On the Philosophy of the Hindus. Part III’, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1:2: 439–466.Google Scholar
Dasti, M. and Bryant, E. (eds.) (2014), Free Will, Agency and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ganeri, J. (2004), ‘The ritual roots of moral reason: Lessons from Mīmāṃsā’, in K. Schilbrack (ed.), Thinking Through Rituals: Philosophical Perspectives. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Halbfass, W. (1988), India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding. Albany NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Halbfass, W. (1992), Tradition and Reflection: Explorations in Indian Thought, First Indian Edition. New Delhi, India: Sri Satguru Publications.Google Scholar
Nuckolls, C. (1987), ‘Causal Thinking in Śākuntala: A Schema-Theoretic Approach to a Classical Sanskrit Drama’, Philosophy East and West 37:3: 286–305.Google Scholar
Saksena, K. P. (1941), The Principles of Hindu Jurisprudence. Allahabad: Rai Sahib Ram Dayal Agarwala.Google Scholar
Stewart, J. (2016), ‘Hegel’s Criticism of Hinduism’, Hegel Bulletin 37:2: 281–304.Google Scholar
Taber, J. (2012), ‘Dharmakīrti and the Mīmāṃsakas in Conflict’, in V. Eltschinger, H. Krasser and J. Taber, Can the Veda speak? Dharmakīrti against Mīmāṃsā exegetics and Vedic authority. An annotated translation of PVSV 164,24–176,16. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Thapar, R. (2002), Śakuntalā: Texts, Readings, Histories. London: Anthem Press.Google Scholar