SV: Sanskrit translations in Nazi hands

[Robert Zydenbos]

At 21:52 12.01.99 +0100, Lars Martin Fosse wrote:

>Therefore, I think the acid test is whether a person with a
>totalitarian past loses his or her old ideas in a democratic setting and adopts
>new attitudes. [...] Their extremism was born in difficult times, and was
>sometimes cured in a more benevolent society. Therefore, we have to judge their
>work by its merit, not by the ideological past of the author. The person
>writing in 1960 or 1970 may be a very different person from the one that wrote
>in 1940.

That is the whole point. What remains of a person's thoughts / theories etc.
when the uglier things are removed? Are they meaningful / useful? Hence I
mentioned Frauwallner as an example.

This same question can be repeated innumerable times, in different settings.
E.g., Shankaracharya was a rather ugly casteist, in spite of his
advaitavaada. For that reason, there are modern authors who condemn each and
every thing he has done and written. Is this right? Shankara never recanted.
If Jung ever was a real Nazi, he did recant (at least implicitly, as I have
already mentioned).

>> And for everybody's information: I am not a (neo-)Nazi and am not German /
>> Swiss / Austrian / Rumanian / Ukrainian / Finnish / Italian / Spanish etc.
>> So none of that kind of innuendo will stick.
>
>My goodness, Robert, what ARE you then?????

Yes, it's embarrassing, isn't it... not even any of all that. I suppose that
I'm just a very nasty guy. :-)))))

Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos
Mysore (India)
e-mail zydenbos at bigfoot.com