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Johann Georg Hamann

Johann Georg Hamann (August 27, 1730, Königsberg - June 21, 1788, Münster) was an important German philosopher, a main proponent of the Sturm und Drang movement, and associated by Isaiah Berlin with the (Counter-)Enlightenment. He was Pietist Lutheran, and a friend (while being an intellectual opponent) of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. He was also a lutenist, having studied this instrument with Timofey Belogradsky (a student of Sylvius Leopold Weiss), a Ukrainian virtuoso then living in Königsberg. He was known by the epithet Magus im Norden ("Magus of the North").

Philosophical arguments

His distrust of reason and the Enlightenment ("I look upon logical proofs the way a well-bred girl looks upon a love letter" was one of his many witicisms) led him to conclude that faith in God was the only solution to the vexing problems of philosophy.

Hamann's influences

Hamann was greatly influenced by David Hume. This is most clearly displayed in his treatment of history, rather than the natural sciences, as the model for human rationality, and his insistence that the force of concepts arises from the authority of the habits they express rather than any inherent qualities they possess. Hamann famously used the image of Socrates, who often proclaimed to know nothing, in his Socratic Memorabilia, an essay in which Hamann is critical of the Enlightenment's dependence on reason.

Hamann was one of the precipitating forces for the counter-enlightenment. He was, moreover, a mentor to Herder and an admired influence on Goethe, Jacobi, Hegel and Kierkegaard. Hans Urs von Balthasar devoted a chapter to Hamann in his volume, Studies in Theological Styles: Lay Styles (Volume III in the English language translation of The Glory of the Lord series).

The character of Hamann's Writing

Hamann's writings display two striking tendencies. The first is their brevity, in comparison with works by his contemporaries. The second is their breadth of allusion and delight in extended analogies. For example, his work Golgatha and Scheblimini! By a Preacher in the Wilderness (1784) was directed against Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem, or on Religious Might and Judaism (1782). His work was also significantly reactive and reparative: rather than advance a 'position' of his own, his principal mode of thinking was to respond to others' work.

External links

• Entry on Hamann in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Notes on international conference on Hamann in March 2009
• Hamann Briefe Letters

References

• Dickson, Gwen Griffith, Johann Georg Hamann's Relational Metacriticism (contains English translations of Socratic Memorabilia, Aesthetica in Nuce, a selection of essays on language, Essay of a Sibyl on Marriage and Metacritique of the Purism of Reason); (Walter de Gruyter), 1995. ISBN 3110144379
• James C. O'Flaherty, Unity and Language: A Study in the Philosophy of Hamann; (University of North Carolina), 1952;
• James C. O'Flaherty, Hamann's Socratic Memorabilia: A Translation and Commentary; (Johns Hopkins Press), 1967; Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 67-12424;
• James C. O'Flaherty, Johann Georg Hamann; (Twayne Publishers), 1979, ISBN 0805763716;
• James C. O'Flaherty, The Quarrel of Reason with Itself: Essays on Hamann, Michaelis, Lessing, Nietzsche; (Camden House) 1988, ISBN 0938100564
• Kenneth Haynes (ed.), Hamann: Writings on Philosophy and Language (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy); (Cambridge University Press), 2007, ISBN 9780521817417
• Isaiah Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder; (London and Princeton), 2000.

From Wikiquote

Through a vicious circle of pure reason skepsis itself becomes dogma.

Johann Georg Hamann (1730-08-27 – 1788-06-21) was a German philosopher of the Counter-Enlightenment and a main proponent of the Sturm und Drang movement.

Sourced

• Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.
  • Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (Vienna: Verlag Herder, 1949-1957), vol. II, p. 197

• Every phenomenon of nature was a word, — the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas. Everything the human being heard from the beginning, saw with its eyes, looked upon and touched with its hands was a living word; for God was the word.
  • Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (1949-1957), vol. III, p. 32

• The philosophers have always given truth a bill of divorce, by separating what nature has joined together and vice versa.
  • Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (1949-1957), vol. III, p. 40

• Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind nor bond of society.
  • Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (1949-1957), vol. III, p. 231

• Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.
  • Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (1949-1957), vol. III, p. 286

• If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times. Reason is language — Logos; I gnaw on this marrowbone and will gnaw myself to death over it. It is still always dark over these depths for me: I am still always awaiting an apocalyptic angel with a key to this abyss.
  • Briefwechsel, ed. Arthur Henkel (Wiesbaden/Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1955-1975), vol. V, p. 177

• Through a vicious circle of pure reason skepsis itself becomes dogma.
  • Briefwechsel, ed. Arthur Henkel (1955-1975), vol. V, p. 432

• Few authors understand themselves, and a proper reader must not only understand his author but also be able to see beyond him.
  • Briefwechsel, ed. Arthur Henkel (1955-1975), vol. VI, p. 22

• Self knowledge begins with the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that goes from the mirror to the matter.
  • Briefwechsel, ed. Arthur Henkel (1955-1975), vol. VI, p. 281

• Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs for understanding, not for worshipping, aids to awaken our attention, not to fetter it.
  • Briefwechsel, ed. Arthur Henkel (1955-1975), vol. VII, p. 165

Unsourced

• All idle talk about reason is mere wind; language is its organon and criterion.

• A writer who is in a hurry to be understood today or tomorrow runs the danger of being misunderstood the day after tomorrow.

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Johann Georg Hamann

• Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy entry on Johann Georg Hamann

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