Johann Georg Hamann

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Johann Georg Hamann

Johann Georg Hamann (born August 27, 1730 in Königsberg , † June 21, 1788 in Münster ) was a German philosopher and writer . He was decisively shaped by a Christian awakening experience. Hamann assumed the Socratic ignorance and interpreted this as a plea for faith. A higher unity cannot be grasped by the separating mind. He criticized the Enlightenment and emphasized that there can be no reason before language and history . According to Hamann, the ability to think is based on language. He is considered a pioneer of Sturm und Drang . Goethe called him one of the brightest minds of his time.

Live and act

Johann Georg Hamann

Origin and Studies

The father Johann Christoph Hamann (1697–1766) came from Lausitz , the mother Maria Magdalene, nee. Nuppenau (1699–1756) from Lübeck. The late Baroque writer of the same name Johann Georg Hamann (the Elder) (1697–1733) was his uncle. The father was a bather who also worked as a surgeon. Hamann was initially taught by various private tutors. In 1746 he began to study theology at the Royal Albertus University in Königsberg . He later switched to law. But he was mainly concerned with languages, literature and philosophy and also with the natural sciences and acquired an encyclopedic scholarship. Hamann stuttered and was hypochondriac. He was one of the editors of the weekly Daphne , which was published by Martin Eberhard Dorn in Königsberg from 1749 to 1750 and was published as an anonymous collaborative effort. At the time, the authors and editors saw themselves as local educators and were mainly committed to the French spirit and taste. Hamann left the university in 1752 without a degree and became court master in Livonia . During this time he continued his wide-ranging private studies. He was influenced by Giordano Bruno , Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , Baruch de Spinoza and Neoplatonism . He was friends with Immanuel Kant .

London experience

Hamann's first major publication was the translation of a trade policy paper. He was then employed in 1756 at the Berens trading house in Riga . Hamann was very familiar with the businessman Johann Christoph Berens , one of his co-editors of the weekly newspaper Daphne . He wooed his sister Catharina, but the relationship later failed. In 1757 he traveled for commercial reasons via Königsberg, Berlin, Lübeck, Hamburg and Amsterdam to London, where he stayed until early summer 1758. He failed as a business-minded man of the world, got into bad company and was plagued by financial difficulties. In a deep crisis he studied the Bible intensively. There was an awakening experience.

“A friend who was able to give me a key to my heart, the guide to my labyrinth, was often a wish that I did without properly understanding and seeing its contents. Praise God! I found this friend in my heart who sneaked into it, since I felt the emptiness and the dark and the desert of it the most. I had read the Old Testament once through to the end and the new twice, if I am not mistaken, in the time. […] The further I got, the newer it became to me, the more divine I experienced its content and effect. "

- Johann Georg Hamann

Distance to the explanation

Immanuel Kant

After Hamann's Christian awakening experience, tensions arose with the Berens circle, who now considered him to be a civically useless Christian enthusiast. Berens tried to win his old friend and colleague back to the thoughts of the Enlightenment. Kant was supposed to help and mediate in this, but he was not successful. In the context of these differences of opinion, the Socratic Memorabilia emerged as a justification against Berens and Kant. In a critical attitude to the philosophers of the Enlightenment, Hamann advocated a return to motifs such as the determination of God, creation and the divine incarnation, as well as the unity of reason and sensuality, general and single or concept and perceptible sign. In thinking he recognized the most random and abstract mode of human existence. He contrasted the understanding of reality with the understanding and belief, which inevitably obligated the whole person. Our own existence and the existence of all things outside of us must be believed and cannot be “identified in any other way”. Faith thus has a greater certainty than reason. Berens and Kant accused Hamann of unrelated enthusiasm, but he was unimpressed. He refused to translate a number of articles from Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie . He said none of the articles in question were worth translating.

Return to Königsberg

Johann Gottfried Herder

At the beginning of 1759 Hamann returned to Koenigsberg because of a serious illness of his father and took up a civil profession there, which was rather secondary for him. He was unable to preach or give lectures because of a speech impediment. His erudition and knowledge of foreign languages ​​were helpful in his extensive writing activities. He cared for the sick father and his mentally handicapped brother. Anna Regina Schumacher, the father's maid, supported him with the care. He became friends with the publisher Johann Friedrich Hartknoch . His “Essais à la Mosaique” and a collection of small writings were published by Hartknoch. In 1762 the friendship began with Johann Gottfried Herder , whom he taught and strongly influenced in English literature and language. In 1764 he traveled to Frankfurt at the invitation of Friedrich Karl von Moser , but the hope of a job as an educator was dashed. In 1765 he worked in Mitau as a lawyer's secretary. After the death of his father he returned to Königsberg. In 1767, through Kant's mediation, Hamann got a job as a translator at the Prussian customs administration. With Anna Regina Schumacher he began a marriage of conscience, which was never legalized. She gave birth to four children, whose father he was. In 1777 he was appointed pack yard manager. His job gave him enough time to write and read extensively, but his financial circumstances were always tense. From 1764 to 1779 he worked for the Königsberg scholars and political newspapers , for which he wrote many reviews.

Westphalian patrons

Princess Gallitzin with her friends, far left Bucholtz (Th. Von Oer)

Around 1782, the wealthy Franz Kaspar Bucholtz became aware of Hamann's work. Bucholtz was lord of Welbergen , a moated castle between Burgsteinfurt and Ochtrup. He decided to help Hamann and asked him to take him in as a son. In November 1784 he transferred Hamann 4,000 Reichstaler to a bank in Königsberg. With the interest, Hamann could raise his children and the economic hardship came to an end. Princess Amalie von Gallitzin (1748–1806) in Münster also became aware of Hamann through Buchholz . He wanted to visit his patrons and therefore made repeated requests for leave, which were finally answered with the transfer to retirement. Together with his son Michael and a doctor, he traveled to Münster in 1787, where he arrived sick. In the summer he visited Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi in Pempelfort , and in the winter he spent sick at the Wasserburg in Welbergen. In March 1788 he returned to Münster and became the spiritual advisor to Princess Gallitzin. Johann Georg Hamann died on June 21, 1788 in Munster when he was about to leave for the journey home to Königsberg. Hamann was buried in the princess' garden. His grave is now in the historic Überwasser cemetery in Münster.

The view of the world through language

Hamann's grave in Münster

Hell journey of self-knowledge

Because of his London crisis of meaning, Hamann embarked on a journey through hell of self-knowledge . Inspired by the story of the fratricide in the fourth chapter of the first book of Moses , the knot loosened on the evening of March 31, 1758 and he experienced the biblical word anew and directly. He did not experience this in an isolated moment, but in a context of wide-ranging reading and writing. From then on, he wished that people would hear it consciously and experience it vividly, precisely in its opacity. He feared, however, that the uncovered depth of his heart could be misused to build a “tower of reason”, “the top of which reaches up to the sky and whose bricks and slime we intend to make a name for ourselves and whose flag the erring one Crowd should serve as a landmark. "Therefore he wanted" rather not to be understood as wrong. "

Writing style of passion

Hamann's writings, which are usually quite short, are interspersed with quotations, allusions and metaphors. Hamann himself describes his style as "Emphasiology" and "The writing of passion". For him, passion is connected with the experience of transcendence , with the sacredness of feelings. For him, the path of knowledge first leads into his own self, in order to let things become evident in a second step through skillful application . For him there is a close connection between style and individual knowledge.

“The life of style consequently depends on the individuality of our concepts and passions, and on the same skillful application to the knowledge and revelation of objects by similar means. The native self-knowledge seems to be the unity which determines the measure and content of all external knowledge. "

- Johann Georg Hamann

Hamann often presents his thoughts in an incoherent and aphoristic way. “I'm not up to truths, principles, systems. Chunks, fragments, crickets, ideas. Each one according to his land. ”His associative style contrasts with the clarity of the rationalistic ideal of science. With intuition, senses and sensations he seeks to penetrate the world and to recognize the fundamental creative forces. Hamann tries to motivate the reader to read it with commitment and scrutiny. Therefore, it does not offer a finished end product that can easily be consumed. Hamann expected a reading act that "can the missing notes to supplement and so in searching, looking up and finding goes through its own process of knowledge." His writings attract many register of scholarly criticism and philology . In his correspondence he used a clearer and simpler form of presentation.

Socratic ignorance

Hamann raises the subjectivity of genius above the critically thinking head. Hamann rejects the enlightened rational autonomy. While the Enlightenment is optimistic about the knowledge, he views reality more skeptically and is at the same time more open to the mystery. Faith corresponds to it more than rational knowledge. Convinced that our emotional impulses take place in a semi-darkness, Hamann uses a language that is sometimes difficult to understand. He combines the motto of the Oracle of Delphi “ Know yourself! "With the maxim of Socrates" I know that I know nothing! "And demands the" warmth of the heart of arbitrariness " from the poet and thinker . Hamann analyzes the ignorance of Socrates as radical self-knowledge, feeling and belief. The Socratic ignorance is not a work of reason and just as little as tasting and seeing is based on reasons. The downside of Socrates' ignorance is his daimonion . Socrates could not describe his daimonion. He is gifted, but has no control over his creativity. He seduces his fellow citizens into a hidden truth. Socrates respects his daimonion as a critical authority and regards it with fear of God. Thoughts of knowledge are to be abandoned and the new life must follow the love of God. In the gracious turning of God a new creative space for freedom opens up for man. True self-knowledge and knowledge of God cannot be separated from one another.

“From this one sees how necessary our self is founded in the creator of the same, that we do not have the knowledge of ourselves in ourselves, that in order to measure the extent of it, we have to bit into the bosom of the divinity which alone can determine and dissolve the whole mystery of our essence. [...] God and my neighbor therefore belong to my self-knowledge, to my self-love. "

- Johann Georg Hamann

God as a writer

For Hamann God is a writer and God's poetry is revealed in the books of nature and history. Reason is language ( λόγος ). “Every appearance of nature was a word - the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, secret, inexpressible, but all the more intimate union, communication and community of divine energies and ideas. Everything that man heard at the beginning [...] was a living word; for God was the word. ”The poetry of God is the mother tongue of the human race. Your speech is figurative. The truth and the essence of things could only be seen by finite creatures in parables. Senses and passions understand nothing but images. The Bible is the key to the book of nature and the book of history. The books of nature and history are nothing but ciphers, hidden signs that need the key. Like those of the holy scriptures, their interpretations are only human readings of a divine text and as such are never final.

“Say that I see you! - This wish was fulfilled through creation, which is a speech to the creature through the creature; for one day tells the other, and one night tells the other. Her slogan runs across every climate to the end of the world and you can hear her voice in every dialect "

- Johann Georg Hamann

Unity of opposites

For Hamann, the unity of creation encompasses both the past and the future. He regards reality as a whole as a unity of opposites. True thinking and life are only fulfilled in the absolute , which lets the opposites and contradictions coincide and thus overcomes them. The coincidentia oppositorum , the collapse of opposites, is a fascinating thought for Hamann. He proves it in the Christian mysteries as well as in the enigmatic union of body and mind, of sensuality and reason or of fate and responsibility in human life. The secret of divine wisdom is precisely to unite things that contradict each other and seem to be annihilating. God reveals himself precisely in the mystery of the "contradiction on the stake of the cross". The coincidentia oppositorum is related to irony , which is often revived in his writings. There is a spiritual kinship with Laurence Stern's novels , whom Hamann valued.

Critique of the Enlightenment

Hamann was, like his friend Herder, an enlightened critic of the Enlightenment who wanted to work as a Christian author himself. In his Critique of Kant's Critique of Reason , Hamann rejected the strict separation between sensuality, through which objects are given, and understanding, through which they are thought. Hamann calls this critique of the critique of reason metacriticism. It is a word creation by Hamann, which appeared in 1784 in the title of his work Metakritik über die Purismum der Vernunft and then by Herder in the book Verstand und Experience. A metakritik to the criticism of the pure reason 1799 was taken up.

In language, Hamann saw the original unity of sensuality and understanding. Because the whole mind is based on language, give us "the bad breast snake of the common vernacular the most beautiful parable for the hypostatic union of sensual and understandable natures". There could be no reason before language and history. Philosophy without a story is "crickets and word clutter".

"The first purification of philosophy consisted in the partly misunderstood, partly unsuccessful attempt to make reason independent of all tradition, tradition and belief in it."

- Johann Georg Hamann

Hamann accuses Kant of always wanting to know the range of reason in advance and thereby restricting reason to itself and making it insensitive to the new and especially to God's address. Reason must not deny their dependence and finiteness. Reason is mediated through education, experience and the senses and thus ultimately historical. That is why it is also influenced by likes and dislikes.

"The health of reason is the cheapest, most arbitrary and most insolent self-fame, through which everything is presupposed that was just to be proven, and through which all free investigation of the truth is excluded more violently than through the infallibility of the Roman Catholic Church."

- Johann Georg Hamann

According to Hamann, every knowledge is based on convictions that cannot be justified or refuted even with reason. Anyone who thinks about something and understands something at the same time bring their own requirements. This then also shapes his findings.

reception

Søren Kierkegaard

Friedrich Karl von Moser called Hamann the “Magus of the North” because of his sometimes dark language and alluding to Hamann's writing The Magi from the Orient (1760). Hamann was a pioneer of Sturm und Drang, whose prophet he has been called, and of romanticism . He influenced Herder, Jacobi, Johann Wolfgang Goethe , Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Ernst von Lasaulx . Søren Kierkegaard studied Hamann's writings intensively and developed his own philosophy from motifs he found in Hamann. There is also evidence of an influence on Ernst Jünger . Hamann's writings were also included in the philosophy of language .

In Protestant theology, Hamann's understanding of the Bible continues, for example, in the Halle tradition ( Martin Kähler , Julius Schniewind , Otto Michel ). Hamann represents the verbal inspiration of the Bible, but does not see it as inerrancy or stylistic perfection. Rather, he takes the historical conditioning of the Bible seriously, but understands it as the work of the Holy Spirit , who has chosen “that which is foolish before the world” ( 1 Cor 1.27  EU ). Thus, according to him, the Bible is thoroughly contestable from a rationalist standpoint; but with the eyes of “a friend, a confidante, a lover” one could “perceive the rays of heavenly glory”.

Friedmar Apel sees Herta Müller's poetology as being strongly influenced by Hamann and borrows the term "Turbatverse" from Hamann's Aesthetica in nuce for the dissection or for tearing up texts.

It is controversial whether one can accuse Hamann of irrationalism . Isaiah Berlin took this view . On the other hand, the objection is that Berlin overlooks the Enlightenment elements in Hamann and exaggerates irrationalism to a national German characteristic. It is undisputed that Hamann did not understand human nature as essentially rational and that what goes beyond human reason was important.

Remembrance day

June 20 in the Evangelical Name Calendar .

Works

  • Biblical Reflections , 1758
  • Thoughts on my life course , 1758/59
  • Socratic Memories , 1759 ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • Attempt on an Academic Question , 1760
  • Aesthetica in nuce , 1760 (see web links!)
  • The Magi from the Orient , 1760
  • Mixed notes on the word order of the French language , 1761
  • Clouds. A sequel to Socrat. Memories , 1761
  • Abelardi Virbii Chimera. Ideas about the tenth part of the Letters Concerning the Latest Literature , 1761
  • Crusades of the Philologist , 1762 (collection, including Aesthetica in nuce)
  • Essais à la Mosaique , 1762
  • Writer and art judge , 1762
  • Readers and Art Judges , 1762
  • The knight v. Rosencreuz last will of the göttl. u. human Origin of the Language , 1772
  • New apology of the letter h , 1773
  • Christiani Zacchaei Teleonarchae Prolegomena on the latest interpretation of the oldest document , 1774
  • Attempt by a Sibyl on Marriage , 1775
  • Konxompax. Fragments of an apocryphal. Sibylle on apocalyptic. Mysteries , 1779
  • Golgotha ​​and Sheblimini. From a preacher in the desert , 1784
  • Metacritic on the Purism of Reason , 1784

Work editions:

Letter issue

literature

  • A. Hagen: Johann Georg Hamann's tomb in Münster . In: New Prussian Provincial Papers . Volume 5, Königsberg 1848, pp. 217-225.
  • Rudolf Unger : Hamann and the Enlightenment. Studies on the prehistory of the romantic spirit in the 18th century . 2 volumes. Niemeyer, Halle / S. 1925.
  • Josef Nadler : Johann Georg Hamann 1730-1788. The witness of the corpus mysticum . Otto Müller, Salzburg 1949.
  • Georg Baudler : See in words. The linguistic thinking of Johann Georg Hamann . Bouvier, Bonn 1970.
  • Gerhard Nebel : Hamann . Klett, Stuttgart 1973.
  • Wolfgang-Dieter Baur: Johann Georg Hamann as a publicist . De Gruyter, Berlin 1991.
  • Oswald Bayer (Ed.): Johann Georg Hamann - "The brightest head of his time". Tubingen 1998.
  • Oswald Bayer: Reason is language. Hamann's meta-criticism of Kant . Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart 2002.
  • Oswald Bayer: Contemporaries in contradiction. Johann Georg Hamann as a radical enlightener . Munich 1988.
  • Knoll, Renate (Ed.): Johann Georg Hamann. 1730-1788 . Sources and Research. Catalog for the exhibitions of university libraries on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Hamann's death and the 5th International Hamann Colloquium in Münster in conjunction with the Cultural Foundation of German Expellees. Bonn, 1988. ISBN 978-3-88557-062-2 .
  • Isaiah Berlin : The Magus in the North. Johann Georg Hamann and the origin of modern irrationalism . Berlin 1995.
  • John Betz: After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of JG Hamann . Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford 2009, ISBN 978-1-4051-6246-3 .
  • Thomas Brose : Johann Georg Hamann and David Hume: Metaphysics criticism and belief in the field of tension of the Enlightenment . Frankfurt u. a. 2005, ISBN 978-3-631-54517-1 .
  • Karl Carvacchi : Biographical memories of Johann Georg Hamann, the Magus in the north . Regensberg, Münster 1855.
  • Liselotte Folkerts: A foretaste of heaven. Johann Georg Hamann in Münster and the Münsterland. Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-11337-5 .
  • Bernhard Gajek (Ed.): The presence of Johann Georg Hamann. Acta of the eighth International Hamann Colloquium at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in 2002 . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2005.
  • Bernhard Gajek: Ernst Jünger and Johann Georg Hamann. In: Etudes Germaniques . No. 51, 1996, pp. 677-692.
  • Bernhard Gajek: Ernst Jünger's Hamann experience. In: Günter Figal , Georg Knapp (Ed.): Relatives. Disciples studies. Volume 2. Attempo, Tübingen 2003, pp. 53-73.
  • Bernhard Gajek (Ed.): Johann Georg Hamann and England. Hamann and the English-language Enlightenment Acta of the Seventh International Hamann Colloquium in Marburg / Lahn 1996 . Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 1999.
  • Gwen Griffith Dickson: 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 ); De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1995. ISBN 3-11-014437-9 .
  • Heinzpeter Hempelmann : God - a writer. Johann Georg Hamann on the final utterance of God in the Word of Holy Scripture and its hermeneutic consequences . Brockhaus, Wuppertal 1988. ISBN 3-417-29341-3 .
  • International Hamann Colloquium (Ed.): Johann Georg Hamann. Acta of the International Hamann Colloquium in Lüneburg 1976 . Frankfurt 1979, ISBN 978-3-465-01319-8 .
  • Anja Kalkbrenner: Anthropology and natural law with Johann Georg Hamann . V&R Academic, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8471-0493-3 .
  • Herbert Klauser : Hamann and the Art , Vienna 1938, OCLC 18840122 (dissertation University of Vienna 1938, 95 pages).
  • Elisabeth Leiss: Philosophy of Language. De Gruyter, Berlin, New York 2009, pp. 119–124.
  • Helgo Lindner: Hamann on the Bible and Revelation , in: ders., Biblisch…. Collected essays . Giessen 2006, pp. 75-84.
  • Helgo Lindner: JG Hamann. Departure for biblical thinking in the time of the Enlightenment . Brunnen Verlag, Giessen 1988. ISBN 3-7655-9054-1 .
  • Johannes von Lüpke : Human and divine at the same time. Johann Georg Hamann's contributions to a theological doctrine of man in conversation with Goethe and Nietzsche , habilitation thesis (mach.) Tübingen 1992.
  • Jürgen Manthey : Against the absolutism of reason (Johann Georg Hamann) , in this: Königsberg. History of a world citizenship republic . Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-423-34318-3 , pp. 171-201.
  • Ulrich Moustakas: Certificate and experiment. Modern natural science in the horizon of a hermeneutic theology of creation with Johann Georg Hamann . De Gruyter, Berlin 2003.
  • Josef Nadler: Johann Georg Hamann. The witness of the corpus mysticum. Salzburg 1949.
  • Gerhard Nebel: Hamann . Stuttgart 1973.
  • Angelo Pupi: Johann Georg Hamann . 6 vols. Vita e Pensiero, Milano 1988–2004. ISBN 8834317602 ISBN 9788834317600 ISBN 8834317734 ISBN 9788834317730 ISBN 8834300823 ISBN 9788834300824 ISBN 8834305817 ISBN 9788834305812 .
  • Christina Reuter: Authorship as condescendence. Johann Georg Hamann's exquisite dialogue (= Theological Library Töpelmann . Volume 132). De Gruyter, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-11-018380-1 (dissertation University of Zurich 2004, 311 pages).
  • Andre Rudolph: Figures of Similarity. Johann Georg Hamann's analogy thinking in the context of the 18th century . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2006.
  • Hansjörg Alfred Salmony: Johann Georg Hamann's metacritical philosophy . Zollikon 1958.
  • Susanne Schulte (Ed.): Without a word there is no reason - no world. Definitely language thinking? Writer and scientist in exchange with Johann Georg Hamann. Waxmann, Münster 2011.
  • Eckhard Schumacher: The irony of incomprehensibility. Johann Georg Hamann, Friedrich Schlegel, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2000.
  • Harry Sievers: Johann Georg Hamann's conversion. An attempt to understand them (= studies on the history of dogma and systematic theology . Volume 24.) Zurich 1969.
  • Helmut Weiß: Johann Georg Hamann's views on language. Attempt to reconstruct from the early work . Munster 1990.
  • Reiner Wild (Ed.): Johann Georg Hamann. (= Paths of Research . Volume 511) WBG, Darmstadt 1978.
  • Woth: Hamann's biographical sketch . In: Archives for patriotic interests . New series, year 1845, Marien Werden 1845, pp. 98–123.
  • Karlfried Founder :  Hamann, Johann Georg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , pp. 573-577 ( digitized version ).
  • Hugo Delff :  Hamann, Johann Georg . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, pp. 456-468.
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Hamann, Johann Georg. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 496-500.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Hans Steinacker: "I ate for free, I drank for free" . In: LEBENSLAUF 02/2018 pp. 36–39.
  • Till Kinzel : Johann Georg Hamann, To life and work . Karolinger Verlag, Vienna 2019, ISBN 9783854181910 .

Web links

Commons : Johann Georg Hamann  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Johann Georg Hamann  - Quotes
Wikisource: Johann Georg Hamann  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ From Paul Ortwin Rave: Das Geistige Deutschland im Bildnis. The century of Goethe . Berlin 1949.
  2. ^ Chancellor F. von Müller, Conversation with Goethe, December 18, 1823, documented in: Ernst Lautenbach, Lexikon Goethe-Zitate , 2004, p. 448
  3. ^ Engraving, in: Johann Caspar Lavater, Physiognomische Fragmente , 1775–1778
  4. ^ Johann Georg Hamann, Johann Gotthelf Lindner u. a. (Ed.), Daphne. Reprint of the by Johann Georg Hamann, Johann Gotthelf Lindner a. a. published Koenigsberger Zeitschrift (1749–1750) . With an afterword by Joseph Kohnen. Regensburg Contributions to German Linguistics and Literature Studies, Vol. 5. Lange, Frankfurt am Main 1991
  5. ↑ Christoph Meineke: "The advantages of our association": Hamanns Dangeuil-Beylage in the light of the debate about the trading nobility In: Beetz, Manfred / Rudolph, Andre (eds.). Johann Georg Hamann: Religion and Society (2012) , p. 46 ff.
  6. ↑ JG Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. II, reprint 1999, p. 39 f.
  7. ↑ This emerges in particular from a letter from Hamann to Kant on July 27, 1759
  8. ↑ Johann Georg Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. II, reprint 1999, p. 57 ff.
  9. ↑ JG Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. II, reprint 1999, p. 73
  10. ↑ Georg Baudler: See in words. The linguistic thinking of Johann Georg Hamann . Bouvier, Bonn 1970, p. 70 ff
  11. ^ Friedrich von Roth, Hamann's Schriften , Vol. VII, Reimer, Berlin 1821, p. 131
  12. ^ Rudolf Schmidt, German bookseller. Deutsche Buchdrucker , 1979, p. 375
  13. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from August 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ^ Rudolf Rocholl : Johann Georg Hamann. 1869, in: Reiner Wild (Ed.), Johann Georg Hamann , 1978, pp. 91–118
  15. ↑ Oswald Bayer, Hamann , article in: TRE Vol. 14, 1993, p. 395
  16. ↑ Georg Baudler: See in words. Linguistic thinking by Johann Georg Hamanns , 1970, p. 72
  17. ↑ Cf. Georg Baudler 1970, p. 75; Quote from Josef Nadler : Johann Georg Hamann. Complete Works. Historical-critical edition, Vol. I, Diary of a Christian , 1949
  18. ↑ Cf. Georg Baudler 1970, p. 75; Quote from Walther Ziesemer , Arthur Henkel (Ed.): Johann Georg Hamann. Correspondence . Vol. I, 1751-1759. Wiesbaden 1955, p. 335
  19. ^ Gerhard Nebel, Hamann , 1973, p. 57
  20. ↑ JG Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. IV, reprint 1999, p. 424
  21. ↑ Friedrich von Roth, Hamann's Schriften , Vol. I, Reimer, Berlin 1821, p. 497
  22. ↑ Wolfgang-Dieter Baur, Johann Georg Hamann as a publicist , 1991, p. 334
  23. ↑ Volker Hoffmann: Johann Georg Hamanns Philology. Hamann's philology between encyclopedic micrology and hermeneutics. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 1972, ISBN 3-17-235021-5 .
  24. ^ Johann Georg Hamann, Brocken , 1758, in: Londoner Schriften , ed. by Oswald Bayer and Bernd Weißenborn, 1993, p. 409 f.
  25. ↑ JG Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. III, reprint 1999, p. 32
  26. ↑ JG Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. II, reprint 1999, p. 198
  27. ↑ JG Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. III, reprint 1999, p. 223
  28. ↑ Bernhard Gajek, Johann Georg Hamann and England , 1999, p. 81
  29. ↑ On this self-assessment, cf. in particular his unfinished work Unclothes and Transfiguration .
  30. ↑ JG Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. III, reprint 1999, p. 287
  31. ↑ JG Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. III, reprint 1999, p. 284
  32. ↑ See O. Bayer, Hamanns Metakritik Kants , 2002, pp. 140 f.
  33. ↑ JG Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. III, reprint 1999, p. 189
  34. ↑ Lat. for magicians (Persian priests), wise men, fortune tellers. Friedrich Karl von Moser in his open letter Faithful letter from a Layen brother in the empire to the Magum in the north or at least in Europe , 1762, in: ders., Collected moral and political writings . Vol. 1, 1763, p. 503
  35. ↑ See Ernst Jünger, The Adventurous Heart , second version from 1938.
  36. ↑ Cf. JG Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. II, reprint 1999, p. 171
  37. ↑ Friedmar Apel: Turbatverse. Aesthetics, mysticism and politics at Herta Müller . In: Akzente , magazine for literature. 44th volume, issue 2 (April 1997). Hanser , Munich, pp. 113-126
  38. ↑ Isaiah Berlin, The Magus in the North. Johann Georg Hamann and the origin of modern irrationalism . Berlin 1995
  39. ↑ Timo Günther, Myth and Irrationalism. Isaiah Berlin's view of Hamann , in: R. Görner u. a. (Ed.), In the Embrace of the Swan , Berlin 2010, p. 353; see. Wolfgang-Dieter Baur 1991, p. 296, describes Hamann as not irrational: "[...] without therefore being obscure, irrational or esoteric". Reiner Wild thinks that it is a misunderstanding to interpret Hamann's criticism of the Enlightenment as irrationalism, cf. ders., Hamann , article in: Walter Killy, Literaturlexikon , Vol. 4, 1989, p. 492
  40. ↑ Johann Georg Hamann in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
personal data
SURNAME Hamann, Johann Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher and writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 27, 1730
PLACE OF BIRTH Königsberg (Prussia)
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1788
Place of death Muenster