Aryan World-view

by Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Some studies I have been working on in earlier times have had a lasting influence on the direction of my thoughts. On the following pages I have tried to make my efforts fertile, in the hope to encourage others to take up similar studies and to give them some helpful advice along their journey. The layman is the expert of laymanism, as it were, and so he may succeed in ways that are unpermitted to the professional. As soon as the provisional stimulation and explanation has taken place, the neophyte has to entrust himself to the guidance of competent scholars. At the end of this book a short list of literature will provide the necessary grip for further studying. The title „Aryan World-view“ isn't entirely free of objection. „Indo-Aryan“ would have been more precise, or even „ancient Aryan“, if need be. But the composer fears to discourage just the reader he wishes to interest, by using a learned-sounding word. Let be said right here that in this little book „Aryan“ is not meant in the much debated and anyway difficult to limit sense of a problematic primeval race, but in the sensu proprio, meaning, to characterize the people that descended, several millennia ago, from the Central Asian plateau into the valleys of the Indus and the Ganges and who remained pure by obeying strict caste laws for a long period to keep themselves from mingling with strange races. These people called themselves the Aryan, that is to say the noblemen or the lords. Vienna, January 1905 Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

Genres: Race, Philosophy

52 pages, Paperback

First published August 29, 2012

Reviews

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in 1905, this book is hardly racist for its time. Chamberlain wrote in the preface for the third edition that "being 'Aryan' is not the point, becoming 'Aryan' is what matters" meaning a mindset, not fixed racial characteristics. I can only assume that the few people who gave it one star and criticized it for the unforgivable sin of racism, didn't read it at all.

The book is about ways of thinking. It's a philosophical book and, for example, spends a chapter criticizing Buddhism for it's "denial of nature" as opposed to the Indo-Aryan harmony with nature.

At one point in the book, Chamberlain writes, "With respect to their principles there's almost no difference between Thomas Aquinas and Ludwig Büchner. This means an inner alienation, a discord with ourselves. This explains the lack of harmony in our interior live. Every noble-hearted, thinking man among us is swung between the desire for a forming, leading, life-explaining religious worldview and the incapability to resolutely tear himself away from ecclesiastical ideas."
Then he continues, "For this purpose the Indo-Aryan thinking is perfectly apt, to encourage us and to show us the way. That's why Deussen can express his expectation: 'A sufficient acquaintance with Indian wisdom will result in a revolution, not so much affecting the surface but especially the last depths of religious and philosophical thinking of the Western world.'"

He quotes Goethe warning that "Education entirely dedicated to the intellect leads towards anarchy“ and this "mental anarchy" fools us into thinking we are free. Then a few pages later he writes, "We may have shaken off the tyranny of faith, the straitjacket of logic restricts us even more" so he argues for a balance and refers to the ancient Indo-Aryan philosophy.

He also says that that the conviction of the moral meaning of our own existence guarantees a moral meaning of the entire universe. And the men who believed this were the men who wrote the Upanishads.

This book also isn't an attack on Christianity either as near the end he writes, "Rather I am convinced that the school of Indian thinking is suitable to initiate a purer, freer, more sublime and consequently also worthier relationship to Jesus Christ."

This is an interesting well-written philosophical book to read and considering how short it is, well worth your time.

[ALL · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely Terrifying

How nazis apply ideas from the Indian and Hindu caste system to support their views of superiority. Each word is more frightening than the first to think some people believe this and call it their religion. A very real primary source of how racists defend their ideology, of which we should all be aware in order to protect ourselves.

[Stuart Yellop · Rating 1 out of 5]

Spurious, speculative, romantic, and pseudo-scientific - the intellectual equivalent of a wet fart.

[Hank · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Aryan Worldview”, skriven av Houston Steward Chamberlain 1905, är en kort introduktion till den traditionella Indoariska världsbilden där religion och filosofi existerar tillsammans i harmoni. Vi rekommenderar denna bok om du planerar att läsa Indoariska verk då den ger dig värdefulla insikter och perspektiv som är nya och ovana, men viktiga för förståelsen, för oss västerlänningar. Författaren hoppades på att en återupptäckt av den indoariska världsbilden skulle ge oss Indoeuropéer en väg tillbaka till en mer spirituell tillvaro. Detta var tyvärr en förhoppning som inte infriades. Vi avslutar med ett citat där författaren på ett vackert sätt beskriver religionens plats i den Indoariska världsbilden:

"Religion is never with the Indians an attempted explanation of external, temporal things, but means a symbolic shaping of inner, unmechanical, timeless experience. It is an actual process, an elevation of the mind, a turning of the will - a realisation in so far as it means an immediate grasping of the transcendent but at the same time and as a result of this present experience a transformation of the whole being"