Paul Deussen
Paul Deussen ( born January 7, 1845 Westerwald village Oberdreis; † July 6, 1919 in Kiel ) was a German philosophy historian and Indologist. He was also a founder of the Schopenhauer Society and lifelong friend of Friedrich Nietzsche. Deussen, who became famous with the Indian philosopher and Hindu saint Vivekananda is regarded as the first Western scholar who introduced the Indian thought of Western philosophy equivalent to the side.
Life
Growing up as a pastor's son Westerwald, Deussen visited five years together with Nietzsche the humanist elite boarding Schulpforta at Naumburg. After graduation in 1864, she studied for two semesters in Bonn and were together members of the Bonn fraternity Franconia. In Bonn Deussen discovered the Sanskrit. While Nietzsche moved to Leipzig, sat Deussen his studies in classical philology in Tübingen and Berlin continued. After completing his doctorate on Plato's dialogue the Sophist, he worked as a secondary school in Minden and Marburg. Nietzsche, who had since converted him to Schopenhauer, a gutdotierte private tutor taught him at a Russian industrialist in Geneva, where he simultaneously held lectures in philosophy as a lecturer at the university and the Sanskrit studies substantiated.
Since his pupil should be an engineer, Deussen went with him to Aachen. Here he held at the Polytechnic Lectures on the Philosophy of Schopenhauer, giving him the reactionary newspaper protest article brought "Echo of the Present" and strongly criticized the Prussian Parliament. The responsible Ministry of Commerce made him to rest, the history of philosophy to be limited to the development of Plato to Kant. Deussen withdrew its the " unchristian " Indian ideas of Schopenhauer, but not on a representation of the pre-Socratics. Hundreds flocked to his lectures the audience, their written summaries he has been distributed and 1877 published as a book. The " elements of metaphysics " were later throughout Germany to a much-used textbook.
After another private tutor at a Prince in Ukraine, Deussen habilitation in Berlin with the Indological work " of the Vedanta system ". With Nietzsche, he remained in contact by correspondence; to personal reunion came there several times in Basel and in 1887 in Sils- Maria, where Deussen visited him, accompanied by his young wife, Marie (nee Volkmar ). Deussen was also one of the few faithful who in Naumburg who made everyone since 1889 the benighted Nietzsche visiting the sick. In the same year Deussen was appointed as a full professor in Kiel, where he began to turn his life plan of a " general history of philosophy with special emphasis on the religions " into action.
1892/93 undertook Deussen with his wife a six-month trip to India. In Bombay, he gave a significant awakening for the Neo - Hinduism Advaita Vedanta speech on and its relationship to Western metaphysics. In subsequent years, Deussen worked on his monumental translation of " Sixty Upanishads of the Veda ", which appeared in 1897 and to this day is regarded as the standard work.
In 1911 he founded the Schopenhauer Society and began in the same year with the publication of a first historical- critical edition of the works of Schopenhauer.
The outbreak of the First World War, he condemned vehemently.
Deussen was guided by the philosophical belief that " faces in all countries and at all times, in all sewing and Far it one and the same nature of things ( is ) that one and the selfsame Spirit contemplating. How should it be different as can than that of the thinking mind, unless traditions and prejudices blind him, if he pure and uninhibited faces of nature, in his exploration of the same should reach the same results everywhere, in India as in Greece, in ancient and modern times. "
The tomb of Paul Deussen is located on the church hill next to the Protestant Church of Oberdreis.
Deussen and Advaita Vedanta
Deussen was convinced that the Advaita Vedanta in India occupies an omnipresent position and represents this thesis not only in his famous speech in Bombay, but also in its entire research work. Due to this, the acquaintance resulted with Swami Vivekananda Deussen view teilte.Vice versa saw Deussen in Vivekananda's position, especially his personal view of Hinduism confirmed that understands the Advaita Vedanta as the primary religion in India. This is historically questionable, however; The Advaita Vedanta was originally designed by and for an elite minority. This finding generates another causality for acquaintanceship between Paul Deussen and Vivekananda. Both look in Advaita Vedanta the "core of Hinduism ." Due to this problematic assumption Deussen found in Vivekananda confirmation of the extensive presence of Advaita Vedanta in India without having to confront this with the fact that this idea could not be true. This example shows an example of the extent to which pre-defined European ideas India have shaped up in the post-colonial time into it, without reflecting the actual facts critically. Paul Deussen thus is no exception in its hegemonic and almost oktroyierenden idea of colonized India.
Awards
Works
- The elements of metaphysics (1877 ) - "together with a preview of the essence of idealism " - 6th Edition (1919)
- The system of Vedanta. According to the Brahma Sutra 's of Badarayana and the commentaries of Cankara about the same as a compendium of the dogmatics of Brahmanism from the standpoint of Cankara from (1883 )
- The Sutra 's of Vedanta or the Çariraka - Mimansa of Badarayana together with a complete comments of Cankara. Translated from Sanskrit (1887 )
- General history of philosophy, with special emphasis on the religions ( 1894ff. ): Volume I, Part 1: General introduction and philosophy of the Veda and the Upanishads (1894 )
- Volume I, Part 2: The philosophy of the Upanishads (1898 )
- Volume I, Part 3: The nachvedische philosophy of the Indians (1908 )
- Volume II, Part 1: The philosophy of the Greeks (1911 )
- Volume II, Part 2.1: The Philosophy of the Bible ( 1913)
- Volume II, Part 2.2: The philosophy of the Middle Ages (1915 )
- Volume II, Part 3: Modern philosophy from Descartes to Schopenhauer (1917 )