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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 Kingdompetersahota@gmail.com
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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 

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