Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: History Is Personal
- Prologue: Original Attributes, 425 B.C.–A.D. 1765
- I L'Âge des Ombres, 1765–1790s
- II Textual Salvation from Social Degeneration, 1790s–1808
- 3 Hindu Predecessors of Christ: Novalis's Shakuntala
- 4 Reconcilable Indifferences: Schelling and the Gitagovinda
- 5 Fear of Infinity: Friedrich Schlegel's Indictment of Indian Religion
- III Alternate Idealizations, 1807–1885
- Epilogue: Destinies Reconsidered, 1885–2004
- Conclusion: The Intersection of the Personal, the Philosophical, and the Political
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Fear of Infinity: Friedrich Schlegel's Indictment of Indian Religion
from II - Textual Salvation from Social Degeneration, 1790s–1808
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: History Is Personal
- Prologue: Original Attributes, 425 B.C.–A.D. 1765
- I L'Âge des Ombres, 1765–1790s
- II Textual Salvation from Social Degeneration, 1790s–1808
- 3 Hindu Predecessors of Christ: Novalis's Shakuntala
- 4 Reconcilable Indifferences: Schelling and the Gitagovinda
- 5 Fear of Infinity: Friedrich Schlegel's Indictment of Indian Religion
- III Alternate Idealizations, 1807–1885
- Epilogue: Destinies Reconsidered, 1885–2004
- Conclusion: The Intersection of the Personal, the Philosophical, and the Political
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Ah Pythagoras metem su cossis were that true, This soule should flie from me, and I be changde Vnto some brutish beast.
— Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1604)FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL CONTINUED the tradition of locating the origins of the Germans in India, but eventually took an adversarial stance against South Asian religions. In Über die Sprache und die Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians, 1808) he described Hinduism and Buddhism as not only pale imitations of the perfected Christianity to come, but essentially nihilist. He thus established a viewpoint about Asian religion that would prove detrimental to the interpretation of Asian religious texts well into the twentieth century. The primary problem for Schlegel's encounter with Hinduism and the reason for his eventual attack on it is the irreconcilability of Eastern concepts that have no Western equivalents, such as the concept of the void. He was unable to reconcile these cyclical and rectilinear systems because of what one might call his “fear of infinity.”
Schlegel's original fascination with Sanskrit literature reflected his longing to find in India a unifying spiritual revolution outside traditional classical and Christian frameworks that might synthesize religion, philosophy, and art. In defining this revolution, he emphasized the similarities between Vedantic philosophy and German idealism, which both center on questions of dualism. Schlegel's conversion to Catholicism, which occurred during the same week in April 1808 in which Über die Sprache und die Weisheit der Indier was published, is also indicative of such longing.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Indo-German IdentificationReconciling South Asian Origins and European Destinies, 1765–1885, pp. 107 - 128Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010