History of Islam in German Thought

This concise overview of the perception of Islam in eight of the most important German thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allows a new and fascinating investigationof how these thinkers, within their own bodies of work, often espoused contradicting ideas about Islamand their nearestMuslim neighbors. Exploring a variety of 'neat compartmentalizations' at work in the representations of Islam, as well as distinct vocabularies employed by these keyintellectuals (theological, political, philological, poetic), Ian Almondparses these vocabularies toexamine the importance of Islaminthe very historyof German thought.Almond furtherdemonstrates the ways in which Germanphilosophers such as Hegel, Kant, and Marx repeatedly ignored information about the Muslim world that did not harmonize with the particular landscapes they were trying to paint - a fact which in turn makes us reflect on what it means when a society possesses 'knowledge' of a foreign culture.