The position of Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) in the history of German thought is an embarrassing subject for the English-speaking scholar. For, when pressed to state the significance of the so-called “Magus of the North,” he must do so in such epic terms that his hearers may well ask: “If Hamann is so important, why has so little been said about him in English? If it is true, as literary historians maintain, that he is the father of the Storm and Stress movement in German literature, that many of Herder's best insights stem from him, that he was the author from whom Goethe learned most, that the concept of the ‘total work of art’ (Gesamtkunstwerk)in German music derives ultimately from his theory of language, that he was, as Hendrik Kraemer maintains, ‘probably the most profound Christian thinker of the eighteenth century,’ why, if all these statements are true, have we Englishspeaking people heard so little about him?”