Johann Georg Hamann
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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").
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[edit] 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 bon mots) led him to conclude that faith in God was the only solution to the vexing problems of philosophy.
[edit] 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).
[edit] 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.
[edit] External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Johann Georg Hamann |
- Entry on Hamann in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Notes on international conference on Hamann in March 2009
- Hamann Briefe Letters
[edit] 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.
