Paul Hacker

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Paul Hacker (born January 6, 1913 in Seelscheid , † March 18, 1979 in Münster ) was a German Indologist. He concentrated primarily on a philological-text-critical approach, his studies were the Vedānta writings and the texts of the Purāṇa, but also the examination of neo-Hindu works. Hacker also dealt with the history of ideas and the philology of modern Indian languages, especially that of Hindi .

Life

Hacker grew up in Seelscheid, where he also went to school until he started studying at the age of 19. He studied Slavic Studies, Indology, Comparative Linguistics, English and French in Bonn, Heidelberg, Frankfurt and Berlin. In 1940, at the age of 27, Hacker received his doctorate with a thesis "Studies on Realism I. J. Turgenev ". Hacker served in the Wehrmacht from 1940 until the end of the war . In 1947 he was given a grant by means of which he wrote a thesis that enabled him to do his habilitation: "Investigations into the history of early Advaita ". From 1949 he gave lectures in Bonn , from 1950 in Münster . In 1954 he worked at an institute in Darbhanga, Mithila University. From 1955 to 1963 he worked again in Bonn and finally returned to Münster in 1963, where he took over the newly established chair for Indology. In 1971 he went to the University of Pennsylvania for a visiting professorship. Paul Hacker retired in 1978.

meaning

At the beginning of the 1950s, Hacker devoted some work to the Śañkara Advaita philosophy . Even in these texts, one encounters Hacker's tendency to deal in depth with Indian terms that lack a correlate in modern-western languages. His essays on Dharma , Śraddha and Vrata and, last but not least, the never-ending formulation of the term “ inclusivism ” should also be seen in this context .

Paul Hacker developed the textual history method developed by Willibald Kirfel for the treatment of anonymous literature. “Due to the partially identical text pieces, the Purāṇen offer a unique opportunity (missing in other high cultures) to organize documents of mythology, cult and legend (and thus also largely theology) according to earlier and later components and thus the historical development of their contents to pursue. ”He formulated this method in various essays and used it z. B. in the Prahlāda treatise consistently. In this book, published in 1959, Hacker used 16 versions of the legend, made commonalities and differences apparent and, following Kirfel's method, reconstructed an original form of the Prahlāda legend.

Inclusivism

In the course of his work, Hacker coined the term “inclusivism” more and more clearly as a description of a universal peculiarity of Indian thought. “Inclusivism means that one declares that a central idea of ​​a foreign religious or ideological group is identical to this or that central idea of ​​the group to which one belongs. Most of the time, inclusive or unspoken includes the assertion that what is alien, which is declared to be identical with one's own, is in some way subordinate or inferior to it. Furthermore, the proof that the foreign is identical with the own is not undertaken. "

Hacker made this "way of thinking" in many areas of Indian religions, such as B. in the Upaniṣads , the Bhagavadgītā , the Purāṇas and the thinking of neo-Hindu representatives. “In all (...) cases, inclusivism is a sign of an intellectual struggle. One does not polemicize directly against the opposing worldview, but one recognizes its important terms, perhaps even its most important term (...). But at the same time one subordinates the central concepts to one's own worldview. This method of argument differs from the later developed polemics, which worked with formally logical means and methods. It shows extraordinary smoothness and flexibility of mind, and it probably had a certain promotional power with some listeners. As far as I can see, the Indians themselves have no term for it. You haven't reflected on it. We have no exact equivalent to this inclusivism in our culture, and that's why we misunderstood it as tolerance. "

"As I said before, inclusivism is a means of the inferior or the still weak, of the still developing, to assert oneself, to assert oneself."

Hacker counters the possibility that inclusivism is viewed as a generally human possibility of intellectual confrontation with something outside of one's own world: “That it is limited to India is most palpably shown by the fact that inclusivism as such, as a special one mental attitude was [not understood or] misunderstood, and that if one wanted to designate inclusiveist attitudes with modern-western terms, one spoke of tolerance. "

plant

In addition to Hacker's Indian work, which is essentially summarized in the Small Scriptures, Hacker also left numerous theological works, the importance of which Joseph Ratzinger points out in his autobiography. Hacker is one of the founders of the High Church Society of St. James .

(Excerpts from: Kleine Schriften . Edited by Lambert Schmithausen. Wiesbaden, Franz Steiner 1978. pp. IX – XX)

Independent works

  • Upadeśasāhasrī from Master Shankara. Translated and explained from Sanskrit. Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid 1949.
  • Research on early Advaitavāda texts. 1. The disciples of Śañkaras. Mainz: Akad .; Wiesbaden: Steiner in Komm. 1953 (= treatises of the Academy of Sciences and Literature. Humanities and social science class. Born 1950, Volume 26).
  • On the function of some auxiliary verbs in modern Hindi. Mainz: Akad .; Wiesbaden: Steiner in Komm. 1958 (= treatises of the Academy of Sciences and Literature. Humanities and social science class. Born 1958, Volume 4).
  • Prahlada. Becoming and changing an ideal figure. Contributions to the history of Hinduism. Part I: The Making of the Legend; the Prahlāda legend of Viṣṇupurāṇa and Bhāgavatapurāṇa. Part II: Further developments after the Bhāgavatapurāṇa; Side developments. Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, commissioned by Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1960 (= treatises of the humanities and social science class of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. Born 1959, No. 9 and 13).
  • The I in faith with Martin Luther. Graz: Styria 1966 (reprint Bonn 2002, with a foreword by Joseph Ratzinger ).

Essays, lectures

  • Peculiarities of Śañkara's teaching and terminology: Avidyā, Nāmarūpa, Māyā, Īśvara. In: ZDMG 100.1950, pp. 246-286.
  • Vivarta. Studies on the history of the illusionistic cosmology and epistemology of the Indians (= treatises of the academy of sciences and literature. Humanities and social sciences class. Born in 1953, volume 5).
  • Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Hinduism. In: Saeculum 8.1957, pp. 167-179.
  • The concept of dharma in neo-Hinduism. In: ZMR 42.1958, pp. 1-15.
  • Purāṇen and History of Hinduism. Methodological, programmatic and intellectual history remarks. In: OLZ 55.1960, Col. 341-354.
  • To the development of the Avatar teaching. In: WZKSO 4. 1960, pp. 47-70.
  • On the method of historical research into the anonymous Sanskrit literature of Hinduism. (Lecture given at the 15th German Orientalist Day in Göttingen 1961.) In: ZDMG 111.1961, pp. 483–492.
  • Mechanistic and Theistic Cosmogony in Hinduism. In: ZMR 49.1965, pp. 17-28.
  • On the method of philological conceptual research. In: ZDMG 115.1965, pp. 294-308.
  • Vivekānanda's religious nationalism. In: EMZ 28.1971. Pp. 1-15.
  • Inclusiveism (1979). Posthumously in: Oberhammer, Gerhardt (Ed.): Inclusiveism: An Indian way of thinking. Vienna: Akad. 1983.
  • Small fonts. Edited by Lambert Schmithausen. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner 1978.
  • Joseph Ratzinger and the destruction of dogma. In: On the philosophy and theology of Joseph Ratzinger , ed. v. Wigand Siebel , 4th edition, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 3-928198-03-3 , pp. 14-30.

swell

  1. ↑ From: Purāṇen and History of Hinduism. Methodological, programmatic and intellectual history remarks. In: OLZ 55.1960, Col. 343.
  2. ↑ From: Inclusiveism (1979) . Posthumously in: Oberhammer, Gerhardt (Ed.): Inclusiveism: An Indian way of thinking. Vienna: Akad. 1983. p. 12.
  3. ↑ From: Inclusiveism (1979) . Posthumously in: Oberhammer, Gerhardt (Ed.): Inclusiveism: An Indian way of thinking. Vienna: Akad. 1983. p. 14.
  4. ↑ From: Inclusiveism (1979) . Posthumously in: Oberhammer, Gerhardt (Ed.): Inclusiveism: An Indian way of thinking. Vienna: Akad. 1983. p. 17.
  5. ↑ From: Inclusiveism (1979) . Posthumously in: Oberhammer, Gerhardt (Ed.): Inclusiveism: An Indian way of thinking. Vienna: Akad. 1983. p. 23.
  6. ↑ See Joseph Ratzinger : From my life. Munich: Heyne 1998.
  7. ↑ See also the essay by Hacker: Joseph Ratzinger and the destruction of Dogma , in: Zur Philosophie und Theologie Joseph Ratzinger , ed. v. Wigand Siebel , 4th edition, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 3-928198-03-3 , pp. 14-30.

literature

  • Wilhelm Rau: Images 135 German Indologists. 2nd, enlarged and improved edition. Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden 1982.
  • Valentina Stache-Rosen: German Indologists. Biographies of scholars in Indian studies written in German. Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi 1981.
  • Gerhardt Oberhammer (Ed.): Inclusiveism: An Indian way of thinking. Academy, Vienna 1983 (on the critical examination of Hacker's inclusivism thesis).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hacker, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Indologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Seelscheid
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1979
Place of death Muenster