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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
The oracular writings of the “Christian Socrates” of the eighteenth century, Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788), have attracted a number of important philosophers, theologians, and men of letters since the time of Immanuel Kant. Some insist that Hamann was a profound and heroic mystic, and some conclude that he was an impossible obscurantist. A figure of conspicuous protest against prevailing Enlightenment attitudes, Hamann's own views exhibit a strange alliance between religious (Lutheran) faith and sceptical (Humean) empiricism.
1 Berlin, Isaiah, The Age of Enlightenment (Mentor, 1956), 273Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., 275.
3 Leibrecht, Walter, God and Man in the Thought of Hamann, transl. by Stam, James H. and Bertram, Martin H. (Fortress Press, 1966), 83Google Scholar.
4 Ibid., 84f
5 Ibid., 85
6 Ibid., 86
7 The most recent critical edition of Hamann's, letters is the Briefwechsel, edited by Ziesemer, Walther and Henkel, Arthur (4 vols.; Wiesbaden Insel Verlag, 1955–).Google Scholar The edition of Hamann's, works, on which the present study is based, is Johann Georg Hamann Saemtliche Werke, edited by Nadler, Josef (6 vols.; Wien: Thomas-Morus-Presse Im Verlag Herder, 1949–1958).Google Scholar Subsequent references are abbreviated: Brief I (for Briefwechsel, vol. I) and Werke I (together with the particular writing's title, for vol. I of the works).
8 These are found in the first two volumes, Werke I and II.
9 Sokratische Denkwuerdigkeiten, Werke II.
10 Thoughts about the course of my life, Werke II, 40.
11 Biblical Meditations, Werke I, 5. In a letter Hamann writes: “In the language of a people we find the history of that people. Just as when we include the gift of eloquence among the good qualities of men, so I marvel that we have not yet attempted to investigate the history of our race and our mind from this point of view.
“The invisible nature [Wesen] of our mind [Seele] is revealed by words – just as creation is a speech whose thread [Schnur] is stretched from one end of heaven to the other.… Between a single IDEE of our mind and a sound [Schall] brought forth from the mouth, there is an analogous distance between spirit [Geist] and body, heaven and earth. What sort of unknown country separates these entities, however distant from each other? Is it not humiliating for thought that, as it were, [spirit and body] are incapable of visibility apart from the crude clothing of arbitrary signs; and what a proof of divine omnipotence – and humility — that He could and would inspire the conceptions of men with the depths of His secrets, the treasure of His wisdom, in such gibberish, such confused tongues.… He created us according to His image — because we lost it, He took on our own image — flesh and blood, like His children; learned to weep – to babble — to speak — to read — to make poetry, like a true son of man; imitated us, in order to encourage us to imitate Him.” (Brief I, 393f.)
12 Biblical Meditations, Werke I, 5.
13 [God's] “speech is not the sort of insight which a Voltaire, a Bolingbroke, or a Shaftesbury would deem worthy — at most it satisfies their prejudices, their imagination, their moral, political, and epical caprices — rather, this speech of God discloses such truths that its authority, certainty, and importance must be presented to the whole world…
“Who would imagine that one would have to seek a history of the world in the Books of Moses?… How ridiculous, how unbelievable perhaps the history of the first world might have appeared… if it had been presented to us as [philosophers] wished it.…
“…That Moses should have explained nature according to the manner of Aristotelian, Cartesian, or Newtonian concepts, is as ridiculous a demand as that God should have revealed Himself in terms of a universal philosophical language, which has been the stone of the wise for so many individuals.
“That Moses wrote only for [ordinary] people is equally without sense…” Ibid., 10–12)
14 Brief I, 183.
15 Ibid., 201.
16 Ibid., 228.
17 Ibid., 262.
18 Ibid., 262.
19 Ibid., 349.
20 Ibid., 349.
21 Ibid., 353.
22 Ibid., 367.
23 Ibid., 335.
24 Ibid., 360.
25 Ibid., 369.
26 Ibid., 374.
27 Ibid., 404.
28 Ibid., 438.
29 Ibid., 396f.
30 Hamann exploits the ambiguity of the term image to mean everything from literary image and mental image to graven image and Image of God (Imago Dei). For example:
“Every biblical story is a prophecy — which is fulfilled throughout all generations — and in the soul of every man. In order to believe and to feel the omnipresence and omniscience of the Spirit of God one must rely solely upon the Bible. Every story carries the reflected image of man, a body which is earth and ashes and is perishable, the perceptible letters; but also a soul which is the breath of God and the air from His mouth.…” (Biblical Meditations, Werke I, 315) “Just as our ears cannot hear without becoming affected by the sound of the air, and all intelligible hearing depends on a vibration of the air which is neither too strong nor too weak, so it is with our representations [Vorstellungen]. They depend on corporeal images [Bildern] which, where these (images) are lacking, fail to awaken in others that which is similar to our own. We know how difficult it is to translate the figures and idioms of a language into those of another.… Thus, how can an account be written in which things are supposed to be made intelligible and sensible to us, which (things) lie so wisely separated outside of the whole sphere of our concepts [Begriffe].” (Ibid., 12)
Hamann refers with great frequency to the appropriateness of analogy (cf. Brief I, 228), hyperbole (Ibid., 321), metaphor (Ibid., 343), allegory (Ibid., 340), and the wealth of biblical imagery (Ibid., 352) which one may use of God, for purposes of communication. The images (literary) which are used by classical poets are of particular importance in the teaching of general truths (Ibid., 350, 352, 369). However, Hamann takes no pains to distinguish subtle differences in the use of these terms. Language is primarily pictorial in character, a process mysteriously paralleling thought.
31 Brief I, 396f.
32 Brief I, 378.
33 Augustine, Bk. XII, Ch. XXVI (the last part of which is quoted by Hamann in Latin). See Brief I, 344-47.
34 Brief I, asi. See 377, 378, 381, 410 on Hamann's “truth.” The description is similar to that which Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, uses. Cf. 4.002.
35 Confessions, Bk. I, Ch. VIII; Bk. X, Ch. VIII; Bk. XI. Also, see Augustine's works: On the Trinity, Bk. IX, Ch. Ill; and Concerning the Teacher, the whole.
36 Especially Ch. XXV.
37 Brief I, 393f.
38 Cf. Ibid., 335, 337.
39 In the veiled dedication to Immanuel Kant, in Hamann's famous essay Socratic Memoirs, Hamann allies himself with the Socratic spirit and hopes that Kant, in his approach to the essay, will emulate that spirit.
“Socrates… was no ordinary critic. In the writings of Heraclitus he distinguished between what he understood and what he did not understand, and on the basis of what he understood he made a very fair and modest conjecture about what he did not understand. On that occasion Socrates spoke of readers who could swim. A fusion of ideas and sentiments in that living elegy (about Heraclitus) probably explains why his propositions are like a mass of little islands to which no bridges or ferries connected.” (Werke II, 61f.; see Brief I, 354, 355, 410 431)
40 Brief I, 343, 352.
41 Presumably secular writers cannot mislead the believer who has true apprehension. Does this mean that the believer's views are in principle nonfalsifiable ? If so, there is little way of deciding religious disputes among believers. Moreover, there is little encouragement for the reverent nonbeliever, who cannot be brought to faith, according to the theory, by attention to language. Somehow he has to learn the truth by himself. Hamann simply underplays the importance of religious disputes.
42 For Hamann “prophecy” turns out to be the theological counterpart for predictable and probable knowledge (see his Fragments, Werke I, 298, 303, 304, 308). At times, in the more traditional sense, Hamann defines prophecy by reference to the Old Testament office. Most often the characteristic which he emphasizes is the unconscious or involuntary witness to God's purposes. Hamann is most intrigued by the pre- and anti-Christian figures like Saul (Brief I, 352) and his modern philosophical counterpart David Hume (“… in spite of his mistakes he is like Saul among the prophets,” Brief I, 379f.).
43 Brief I, 359.
44 Biblical Meditations, Werke I, 197–200.
45 Ibid., I2f., 47f., 67, 150, 217, 241.
46 Ibid., 8, 70f., 138, 191, 193, 204, 248, 249, 308.
47 Ibid., 9f, 18, 3gf., 216f., 241, 244, 303f; Thoughts about the course of my life, Werke II, 40.
48 Biblical meditations, Werke I, 12, 31, 116, 152, 197, 230, 302.
49 “All the perceptions of nature are dreams, visions, riddles, which have their clear meaning and their obscure sense. The book of nature and the book of history are no more than ciphers, hidden signs, which have need of the key which the Bible offers and which is the object of their inspiration.” (Ibid., 308)
50 This first encounter between Hamann and Kant is sufficiently complex and interesting to warrant a separate article. The description of their later encounters, Johann Georg Hamann: Metacritic of Kant, by Alexander, W. M., The Journal of the History of Ideas 27 (January–March, 1966), 137–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, would benefit from further clarification.
51 Brief I, 248–73; cf. 355.
62 Ibid., 355; cf. 396f.
53 Ibid., 372f.
54 Ibid., 388.
55 Ibid., 400.
56 Ibid., 404.
57 Ibid., 410. Hamann's quarrel with “the public,” the “notorious Nobody” to whom he also dedicates the “memoirs,” is reminiscent of Kierkegaard's frequent protests.
58 Ibid., 430f.; cf. 366f.
59 Socratic Memoirs, Werke II, 69; cf. PLATO'S Protagoras.
60 Brief I, 444–53.
61 Socratic Memoirs, Werke II, 69; cf. PLATO'S Protagoras.
62 Brief I, 444–53.
63 Ibid., 446.
64 Ibid., 447.
65 Ibid., 450.
66 Ibid., 451.
67 Ibid.
68 Socratic Memoirs, Werke II, 71f.
69 Ibid., 78f.
70 Ibid., 79.
71 Ibid., 80.
72 Ibid.
73 The student of Kierkegaard will wonder why, in virtue of the obvious interest which Kierkegaard had in Hamann, no one has so far dealt with the intriguing similarities between Hamann's Memoirs and Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments.
74 Socratic Memoirs, Werke II, 80.
