SV: SV: Sanskrit translations in Nazi hands

[Alf Hiltebeitel]

By the way, one of the things I like most about Ginzburg's article is that
it ends with the metaphor of "turning pages." Best and more :->

Alf Hiltebeitel
Director, Human Sciences Program
Columbian School Professor of Religion and Human Sciences
The George Washington University
Phillips Hall 412
Washington, D.C., 20052
202/ 994-4297
Fax: 202/ 994-7034

Department of Religion
2106 G St., NW
Washington, D.C. 20052
202/ 994-6325 or 202/ 994-1674
Fax: 202/ 994-9379



On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, Lars Martin Fosse wrote:

> Alf Hiltebeitel wrote:
>
> > I agree that Sheldon Pollock's article, cited below, is indispensible
> > reading to anyone who wants to think seriously about the issues raised,
> > but it is quite a stretch to say that he "claims that the academic
> > standards of these scholars were impeccable." Having just reread the
> > pertinent pages, I see what might be quoted in that direction: "They are
> > for the most part unimpeachable with respect to scholarly 'standards'"
> > (p. 94). But those quotation marks around "standards" are not making it
> > into the paraphrase. To interpret them, one may turn two pages:
> > "Whatever other enduring lessons this may teach us, it offers a superb
> > illustration of the empirical fact that disinterested scholarship in the
> > human sciences, like any other socal act, takes place within the realm of
> > interests" (96). For a "closer reading" of some pertinent NS period
> > German Indological texts, see Carlo Ginzburg, "Germanic Mythology and
> > Nazism: Thoughts on an Old Book by Georges Dumezil," in _Clues, Myths and
> > Historical Method_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uniersity Press, 1989), pp.
> > 126-45.
>
> Obviously, I was a bit too quick. It's a few months since I read the article.
>
> > Perhaps it is a question of whether anything can rise to the level of
> > unimeachability.
>
> Probably  not, not even Clinton. What struck me, when I read Pollock's paper,
> was that most of the people he mentions as members of the Nazi party (in
> several cases, members even BEFORE the Nazis came to power, an important
> difference), are regarded as "staple food" for students of Indology, yet their
> political leanings had never been mentioned - to me, at least. If you know that
> a person was an active Nazi (or has some other aberrant ideology), you read his
> work with more attention  than if you deal with a non-fascist indologist. When
> doing my Ph.D., I had to read several works by Walther Wuest, apparently one of
> the more vicious Nazis from what I have been told. Although you could see in
> dications of his political ideas in the texts, they were rather subdued (at
> least in the texts I read), and most of what he had to say, was put forward in
> a competent manner and had to be taken seriously. We cannot reject works by
> competent colleagues simply because of their political leanings, however
> abominable they may be. Scholarly arguments have to be treated on their own
> merit as long as they are made competently by knowledgable people. And most of
> the German scholars who were members of the Nazi party, happened to be
> competent. I guess it is a bit like Werner von Braun, a major of the
> Schuetzstaffel and involved in acts that perhaps should have brought him to
> Nuremberg. He was instead, on the pure merit of his competence, transported to
> a better life in the US, his background whitewashed by the US army and, since
> his arrival in the land of the free, apparently of an impeccable democratic
> mindset. Possibly, some of the old Indologists of Nazi leanings changed their
> ways and ideas after the war. Even intellectuals can learn, given a hard enough
> blow! :-)
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lars Martin Fosse
>
>
>
> Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
> Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
> 0674 Oslo
> Norway
> Phone/Fax: +47 22 32 12 19
> Email: lmfosse at online.no
>