The reception of "Far East" in Siddhartha and the orientalism of Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse, after penning the Siddhartha narrative, stated that he tried to capture what transcends all national distinctions and which all individuals can adopt. Especially after the 2th. World War, the author's ideal comes true. The aim of this study is to reveal that Hesse, an orientalist writer, carried out an intellectual colonialism through the historical Buddha and Asian teachings and what mechanisms he was under the influence of while doing this. The theoretical background of the thesis is Kojin Karatani's Origins of Modern Japanese Literature. Karatani analyzed the Westernization process of Japan, through literary works and philosophical theories, during the period known as the Meiji restoration. This process, which was carried out simultaneously in all non-Western countries, has been systematically built to include all of Western literature, philosophy and belief tradition, and has spread to the world by making use of all sources of education, medicine and mass media. In this thesis, it has been argued that orientalism should not be considered independently of concepts such as speciesism, sexism and racism. In this context, the identity of the concept of the State of God and Plato's theory of ideas and the discussion of universals are mentioned. In this thesis, after the analysis of Hesse's Siddhartha narrative, quotations from Turkish, Indian,Chinese, Japanese literary and philosophical texts are given, and information is given about the origins of the traditions. In the first part, the formation process of Hermann Hesse's "Far East" image was examined. In this process, the effects of the author's family, who are Protestant missionaries, and German and other Western researchers on the process were examined. On the other hand, it was emphasized that, Christianity and the Western philosophical system cannot be considered separately from each other. In the third chapter, the concepts of self and individuation and Nietzsche's philosophy, which Hesse frequently emphasizes, are examined when taken to extremes, as in the example of Nazi racism, what kind of destructions they can cause. Siddhartha's influence on the Hippie generation and its relationship with substance abuse were analyzed, and the link between drugs and Western medicine was revealed. The contributions of Jung and psychoanalysis to the process of creating Hesse's works have been investigated. Finally, the magical atmosphere of Hesse's acceptance of Buddha and Asian teachings was dispelled by citing examples from the Zen Buddhism, Taoism and Buddha corpus with meditation practices such as Zazen, Tai Chi and Yoga, and the originals of these practices were presented to the reader's interest.