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The early nineteenth-century German engagement with India is a topic that is important not only to intellectual historians but also to philosophers working across the boundaries of the Indian and Western intellectual traditions.1In an increasingly globalized world, and at a time when questions about the methodologies and aims of comparative philosophy are being considered with increasing vigour and sophistication, a fuller consideration of this pioneering era would seem to be a desideratum. As Wilhelm Halbfass explains, 'Together, Hegel, Schelling and Schopenhauer represent what is still the most memorable episode in the history of European philosophical responses to India' (Halbfass 1988: 100). Despite this, the distinctive character of this German effort has not as yet been fully brought to light, especially in regard to critiques of Western Indology such as that of Edward Said. In this general context, the paper by Jon Stewart makes a welcome contribution.
Stewart states his central finding as follows:
[Hegel's] objection [to Hinduism] ultimately concerns what he takes to be the mistaken conception of what it is to be a human being that underlies the Hindu view. This conception, he argues, undermines the development of subjective freedom that he takes to be so important. (Stewart 2016: 281).
This finding emerges from an extensive discussion of the Hindu conception of the divine, which for Hegel 'is a reflection of the conception of the human being' (Stewart 2016: 281). It is because this conception of the divine 'is too abstract and therefore empty of content' that 'the conception of self-consciousness has no meaningful content. There is no subjectivity or inwardness that we take to characterize the modern individual' (Stewart 2016: 296). This leads to a 'conception of humans as simply a part of nature', which in practical terms means that 'human value and dignity is not recognized ... the Hindus were indifferent to the value of human life' (Stewart 2016: 296). The abstract nature of the divine also means it is cut off from the rich sphere of actuality that consists of particular actions and thoughts ... [the] particular actions [of Brahmins] are entirely detached from any universal principle' (Stewart 2016: 290).
Without disclaiming the evidence raised by Hegel to support his characterization of Hinduism, this article endeavours to...