LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 20:9 September 2020
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

Celebrate India!
Unity in Diversity!!

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2020
M. S. Thirumalai

Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
11249 Oregon Circle
Bloomington, MN 55438
USA
Custom Search

Examining Religion in Society: Hölderlin, Nietzsche and Periyar

Dr. S. Sridevi

Abstract

The nineteenth century Europe and the early twentieth century Tamil Nadu witnessed thinkers examining the roles played by religion in society. The German poet Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), German philology professor and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and the Tamil social reformer E.V. Ramaswamy (1879-1973), well-known as Periyar, have interrogated and investigated the political and social facets of established religious systems. Hölderlin celebrates past religions and cultures; Nietzsche studies the limitations of his contemporary religious ideologies; Periyar demands a religious system that will accept human egalitarianism. This paper aims at studying the similarities between these thinkers in their respective location of their ideologies.

Keywords: Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Periyar, religion, caste

Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) longs to bring back the polytheistic Greek way of life back into the Christianized, monotheistic Europe of the nineteenth century. Christianity has become the official religion in a millennium and a half, and the ancient gods have been branded as pagan gods or demons. In the military evolution of Christianity, Greece has lost its sacred significance, and has re-emerged as a civilization of great culture during and after the renaissance.

The religion of the pagans was widely regarded as the worship of demons, and, even setting aside that fear, the Christian faithful was urged to remember the cultural achievements of ancient Greece and Rome as the quintessential works of the world, the kingdom of man, set against the transcendent, timeless kingdom of God. (Greenblatt 118)

The poem Bread and Wine by Hölderlin addresses Greece as “holy,” and states, “The fire of the gods drives us to set forth by day / And by night.”

The poet further commands his readers: “And seek what is ours, as distant as it may be! / One thing is certain: a standard always exists, at noon / Or at midnight, common to all of us” (Holderlin 9). The distant Greece, with its multiple gods and realistic humanism, has set a standard for Europe and has actually existed always, in spite of the intervention of a younger, institutionalized religion, he says further in the same poem ...

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Dr. S. Sridevi
Professor
Research Department of English
Chevalier T. Thomas Elizabeth College for Women
Chennai 600011
sridevisaral@gmail.com
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.