Introduction

This Introduction outlines the guiding questions of this study, asking how Indian systems of thought were first encountered in Europe, and why their reception was hotly debated among German thinkers at the turn of the nineteenth century. To contextualize the coming chapters, the Introduction sketches the controversy around Spinoza and the perceived threats of his pantheism, as a doctrine that identifies God and nature. When this controversy reached its pinnacle among post-Kantian thinkers, Sanskrit texts became available in translation for the first time. Part 1 of this study investigates the reactions to these texts from some of Germany’s leading intellectuals. Part 2 then turns to a group of Indian thinkers who worked to defend counter-readings of classical Yoga philosophy from the charges levelled by its European critics.