Johann Georg Hamann

Johann Georg Hamann (August 27, 1730, Königsberg - June 21, 1788, Münster) was an important philosopher of the German (Counter-)Enlightenment and a main proponent of the Sturm und Drang movement. 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.

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. Hamann was greatly influenced by Hume's writings, and he 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. Also known by the epithet Magus im Norden ("Magus of the North"), he 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).

His writings were known to be allusive, extremely difficult and heavily involved. 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). Brevity and responsive writing to others' works colored the pamphletary form of all his writings.

External links

• Entry on Hamann in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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

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