Abstract

Hinter–Asien. Hegel’s Interpretation of the spiritual dimensions of the Far East. The topic of this dissertation is Hegel’s interpretation of the Chinese, the Indian and the Buddhist civilizations. The first part handles the origin of some images of these civilizations in the Augustan and Romantic Age, and the interests and approaches of many European philosophers in order to understand them. Then we deal with Hegel’s philosophical attitude towards the “Other”: special attention is given to the speculative reasons of his position in the debates on the ideas of development and progress and on the translation and understanding of other civilizations’ philosophical concepts. In this context Hegel’s position is compared to that of Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt and to the Romantic critic of the concept of progress in the Enlightenment. The second part concerns Hegel’s interpretation of the East in its entirety as well as his analysis of these three civilizations, examined from the point of view of the philosophy of history and the philosophy of religion. A chapter aside handles the most speculative aspects of Indian and Buddhist religions, since they were actually considered philosophical and as such they played an important role in the renewed debates on pantheism in thinkers like Friedrich Schlegel and Hegel himself