The Religious Attitudes of the Indo-Europeans

by Hans F.K. Günther

Religious beliefs have profound effects upon our lives and upon the race and civilization to which we belong. Religions produce not only cultural artifacts but they also constitute a controlling influence over what men think, and therefore also over what men do, thus influencing the shape of the future. Professor Gunther examines here the innate religiosity of the European peoples.

Genres: History, Race, Anthropology, Philosophy, Mythology, Religion, Essays

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1933

About the author

a German race researcher and eugenicist known as Race Günther (Rassengünther) or Race Pope (Rassenpapst) in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.

Reviews

[Ancient Weaver · Rating 2 out of 5]

A meandering, unfocused essay in which the author seeks to identify a religiousity/philosophy common to all the various Indo-European peoples and their descendants.

The fatal flaw of the author's arguments are that they are subjective to the point where the facts become meaningless.

For example, the author decides that true Indo-European religion/philosophy is always noble and brave, and then proceeds to cherry pick whatever Indo-European literary evidence would support that idea, while explaining away any evidence that would suggest anything otherwise as "foreign influence" distorting the supposed "true" character of the Indo-European religion/philosophy. You end up with a case of circular reasoning - whatever is inconvenient to the author's premises is simply ignored and explained away. One can also discern an unfortunate, not so subtle undercurrent of Aryan race theory that lie behind the author's premises.

There are interesting citations and fragments of ideas here, but an overeager, apologetical approach undermines the credibility of the conclusions.

[rgrazie1]

L!k