[Advaita-l] wilhelm halbfass

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

However the problem is that his assertion is that Western methods of
analysis are essentially "superior". His claim regarding critiques such as
by Said on Orientalism is essentially that Western methods can reveal their
own deficiencies and hence does not matter. While Halbfass doesn't show any
explicit superiority complexes as evidenced in many Indologists, his final
conclusion (at least to me) seems to be "We are the best, so just shut up
and listen". I am being a little brutal here for making a point, but
Halbfass seems to be just a more sophisticated pleading for status quo
rather than anything else.

Rama

On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <
svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

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> I first read Halbfass's India and Europe about ten years ago and it was an
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> eye-opener regarding European scholarship on India. I have reread the book
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> many times since and each reading has been very rewarding in many ways.
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> Wilhem Halbfass's range and depth of scholarship are evident throughout.
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> He also never talks down to his reader nor does he take a patronizing tone
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> towards the Indian half of his subject matter. Ever since I first read Paul
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> Hacker's articles, my critical antennae would go up for the merest hint of
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> special pleading disguised as scholarly comment. I have yet to find any
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> such thing to criticize in Halbfass's book! There are some conclusions and
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> analyses that I may disagree with, but even then, only with the highest
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> respect for Halbfass's scholarship.
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>