Owen Ware, "Indian Philosophy and Yoga in Germany" (Routledge, 2023)
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Welcome to New Books in Philosophy, a channel on the New Books Network. I'm Malcolm Keating, and today we'll be talking to Owen Ware, author of Indian Philosophy and Yoga in Germany, published open access in 2024 by Rutledge. Owen is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy, Owen.
Thanks
so much for having
me.
Why did German philosophers become interested in Indian yoga philosophy in the 19th century?
Yeah, thanks for being on. So let's dive into things. Your book focuses on how German thinkers and especially after Kant responded to the philosophy of yoga in classical India in the 19th century. So let's kind of start with a big picture before we drill down into the particular thinkers. Why this period of time in this geographical context? Why is this an interesting place to explore the reception of Indian philosophy and what we consider the West, broadly speaking?
Yeah, so what I discovered is that there was this debate already going on surrounding Spinoza's philosophy and his doctrine of pantheism. And at the time, there was sort of a division amongst German intellectuals between those who thought that Spinoza's pantheism was something really great and those who thought it was something really terrible.
How did the debate over Spinoza’s pantheism shape the early German reception of the Bhagavad‑Gītā?
And what happened is by the 1790s, there were sort of an emerging number of German intellectuals who were really inspired by Spinoza's pantheism and thought that it was a new kind of way of creating a system of philosophy that would overcome traditional problems that had afflicted previous systems. And it was around this time that some of the first translations of classical Indian philosophy entered into Europe. Specifically, there was a translation of the Bhagavad Gita, first in English, and it was quickly read by these German intellectuals and eventually translated into German. Mind you, many of them could read English, so they just got their hands on the English translation and they kind of devoured it.
And they noticed these affinities between these doctrines that they found in the Gita and Spinoza's pantheism. And remember, at the time, they were kind of like pro-Spinoza and pro-pantheism. So there was this initial wave of excitement and enthusiasm that swept over Germany at the time regarding what they took to be ancient Indian philosophy and the doctrines of yoga that were being articulated in the Gita.
What sparked the initial wave of enthusiasm for Indian yoga texts among German romantics?
And so my book sort of enters into this intellectual moment, this intellectual chapter. And what it does is that it explores this sudden change of fortune where concerns about pantheism from these same authors, many of whom we would call sort of post-Kantian romantic authors, their own sense of disillusionment with Spinoza and pantheism, then shifted on to a sense of disillusionment with regards to Indian philosophy and specifically the doctrines of yoga. So my book is sort of tracing that aftermath and is trying to put new light on this story of what happens to the reception of Indian philosophy in Germany into the 19th century, and it sort of ends into the early 20th century.
Right. And just a clarification before we go on, can you say just briefly a little bit about Spinoza's pantheism? I know it's a huge topic, but roughly what is it?
Yeah, so the way it was interpreted at the time, and this is still an ongoing debate, is this idea that for Spinoza, there's just one infinite substance, one really existent fundamental substratum of reality, a single substance, and everything else is a modification of that single substance. And so what was attractive about this was this idea that there's a kind of a sense in which all things belong to some infinite singular ground of being. And you know to the extent that they could see affinities with that doctrine and what was coming out of these texts from ancient india they thought oh there's a similar kind of pantheism going on in these ancient texts and that was sort of i think the object of the initial enthusiasm in the reception of indian thought
right thanks so how did you come to be interested in this topic
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:27
2
Why did German philosophers become interested in Indian yoga philosophy in the 19th century?
0:27–1:24
3
How did the debate over Spinoza’s pantheism shape the early German reception of the Bhagavad‑Gītā?
1:24–2:44
4
What sparked the initial wave of enthusiasm for Indian yoga texts among German romantics?
2:44–13:08
5
Why did thinkers like Friedrich Schlegel and Carolina von Günderode shift from enthusiasm to disillusionment?
13:08–22:04
6
How did Alexander von Humboldt defend the philosophical value of the Gītā against accusations of nihilism?
22:04–31:40
7
What were Hegel’s and Schelling’s responses to Humboldt’s defence of Indian philosophy?
31:40–43:22
8
How did late‑19th‑century scholars such as Max Müller, Swami Vivekananda, and Bengali philosophers reinterpret yoga philosophy?
43:22–57:11
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