Johann Georg Hamann

Hamann, Johann Georg (1730–88)

Hamann was one of the most important critics of the German Enlightenment or Aufklärung. He attacked the Aufklärung chiefly because it gave reason undue authority over faith. It misunderstood faith, which consists in an immediate personal experience, inaccessible to reason. The main fallacy of the Aufklärung was hypostasis, the reification of ideas, the artificial abstraction of reason from its social and historical context. Hamann stressed the social and historical dimension of reason, that it must be embodied in society, history and language. He also emphasized the pivotal role of language in the development of reason. The instrument and criterion of reason was language, whose only sanction was tradition and use.

Hamann was a sharp critic of Kant, whose philosophy exemplified all the sins of the Aufklärung. Hamann attacked the critical philosophy for its purification of reason from experience, language and tradition. He also strongly objected to all its dualisms, which seemed arbitrary and artificial. The task of philosophy was to unify all the various functions of the mind, seeing reason, will and feeling as an indivisible whole.

Although he was original and unorthodox, Hamann’s critique of reason should be placed within the tradition of Protestant nominalism. Hamann saw himself as a defender of Luther, whose reputation was on the wane in late eighteenth-century Germany.

Hamann was also a founder of the Sturm und Drang, the late eighteenth-century literary movement which celebrated personal freedom and revolt. His aesthetics defended creative genius and the metaphysical powers of art. It marked a sharp break with the rationalism of the classical tradition and the empiricism of late eighteenth-century aesthetics.

Hamann was a seminal influence upon Herder, Goethe, Jacobi, Friedrich Schlegel and Kierkegaard.

1 Critique of reason

Born into a middle class family, Hamann spent almost all of his life in Königsberg, Prussia. He formulated many of his ideas in exchanges with his friend and neighbour, Immanuel Kant. From 1762 to 1764 he was the tutor of Johann Herder, who was profoundly influenced by him. For most of his life Hamann was a minor official in the Prussian bureaucracy, a position procured for him by Kant. Because of his mysticism and sibylline style he earned the sobriquet ‘The Magus of the North’.

The starting point of Hamann’s philosophy was his mystical experience and conversion, which took place in London in March 1758. Hamann went through a deep personal crisis that shattered his earlier allegiance to the Aufklärung. The solution to his crisis was a mystical experience, a rebirth through faith in Christ. During his experience Hamann had a vision of the divine omnipresence, of God dwelling within him and speaking to him through all the events of nature and history. The creation was the secret language of God, the symbolism by which he communicated his message of redemption to human beings. All of nature consisted in hieroglyphs, secret symbols and puzzles, which could be interpreted through Scriptures alone. Hamann wrote down his experiences and reflections upon them in several early manuscripts, Biblische Betrachtungen (Scriptural Meditations), Brocken (Fragments), Gedanken ueber meinen Lebenslauf (Thoughts on My Life’s Path), and Gedanken ueber Kirchenliedern (Thoughts on Hymns), which were all composed from March to May, 1758. Although it was deeply personal, Hamann’s vision had its roots in a commonplace of the pietist tradition: that all the events portrayed in the Bible are a spiritual allegory, a metaphor for the soul’s struggle for salvation (see Pietism).

Hamann’s reaction to the Aufklärung began with his defence of his new faith, which he set forth in his short tract Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten (Socratic Memorabilia) (1759). This work was dedicated to Christoph Berens, Hamann’s employer, and Immanuel Kant, who attempted to reconvert him to the cause of the Aufklärung. Its central thesis is that reason does not have the power to criticize faith. The jurisdiction of reason, Hamann argues, is limited to the assessment of the truth-value of propositions. Its task is to determine whether we have sufficient evidence for some statement. Faith therefore falls outside the sphere of reason, because faith consists in a living experience, which cannot be expressed in any proposition or statement. Just as reason cannot criticize our ordinary sensations, whose qualities are just given and indescribable, so it cannot detract from a mystical experience, whose qualities are no less present and ineffable.

In his defence of faith Hamann appealed to the scepticism of David Hume. According to Hamann, the Scottish philosopher had shown that reason cannot demonstrate or refute the existence of anything, and that we need faith to sustain us even in our ordinary life. Contrary to Hume’s intentions, though, Hamann used his scepticism to defend religious belief itself. If reason cannot prove or disprove the existence of ordinary things, then a fortiori it cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. If we need faith in ordinary life, then why cannot we have it in religion too? In general, Hamann proved to be an important transmitter of Hume’s ideas in Germany. His July 1759 letter to Kant refers to Hume, providing Kant with his first knowledge of the philosopher who would later awaken him from his ‘dogmatic slumber’.

In many of his later writings – especially his Kreuzzüge des Philologen (Crusades of the Philologist) (1762) Philologische Einfälle und Zweifel (Philological Whimsys and Doubt) (1772) and Metakritik ueber den Purismus der Vernunft (Metacritique of the Purism of Reason) (1781) – Hamann deepened and broadened his attack upon the faith in reason of the Aufklärung. The chief target of Hamann’s critique was the tendency of the Aufklärung to abstract reason from its social, historical and linguistic context. The Aufklärer treated reason as if it were a selfsufficient, autonomous faculty, operating independently of political interests, cultural traditions or subconscious desires. If, however, we are to avoid hypostasis, then we must raise the questions ‘Where is reason?’, ‘In what particular things does it exist?’ We can answer these questions, Hamann argues, only by identifying the embodiment or manifestation of reason in language, custom and action. Reason then proves to be not a special kind of faculty existing in some Platonic or noumenal realm but only a specific manner of speaking, writing and acting in concrete cultural circumstances. Accordingly, Hamann stressed the social and cultural dimension of reason, which had been much neglected in the eighteenth century. In this regard his teaching was influential upon Herder and anticipates the historicism of the nineteenth century.

When Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason appeared in 1781, Hamann attacked it as a perfect example of the Aufklärung’s hypostasis of reason. The main fallacy of the Critique, as he described it, is ‘the purism of pure reason’, the abstraction of reason from its embodiment in language, tradition and experience. According to Hamann, Kant hypostasized reason by postulating a selfsufficient noumenal realm that exists apart from the phenomenal realms of language, history and experience. Kant commits a threefold hypostasis or purification of reason. He abstracts it from sense perception, tradition or custom, and – worst of all – language. What remains after all this abstraction is nothing but the purely formal transcendental subject =X, ‘the talisman and rosary of a transcendental superstition which believes in all ens rationis’. In general, Hamann deplored Kant’s dualisms in all their forms –noumena/phenomena, understanding/sensibility, concept/intuition – since they were nothing more than arbitrary and artificial abstractions. The central task of the philosophy of mind, in his view, is not to divide but to unite the various powers, showing how they stem from a single source. This single source, Hamann suggested, lay in words, the embodiment of thought in sensible marks and sounds. The central task for the critique of reason therefore lay in the examination and criticism of language itself.

Although Hamann’s critique of reason made him a rebel against the prevailing ideology of the Aufklärung, it was not entirely new or original. To say that Hamann is without any known debt to anyone else is to ignore his broader intellectual context. Hamann’s critique of reason should be placed firmly within the Protestant tradition, which had always insisted upon a sharp distinction between realms of faith and reason. It was Hamann’s aim to defend this distinction, the integrity of the sphere of faith, against the incursions of the Aufklärung. His critique of hypostasis, his emphasis upon concrete experience, his insistence upon the linguistic embodiment of reason, and his claim that language consists only in convention and custom, all show his debt to the nominalism so characteristic of the Protestant tradition. It is indeed important that Hamann saw himself as the defender of Luther, whose reputation had waned at the close of the eighteenth century. Although Hamann’s critique of reason moves within the broad contours of the Protestant tradition, it would be a mistake to regard him as an orthodox Lutheran or typical pietist. In the famous dispute between Lessing and Goeze, Hamann refused to side with the orthodox pastor, who had defended the literal truth of the Bible. Hamann’s ultimate authority was mystical experience more than the Bible, which required a more metaphoric and spiritual interpretation. It is more accurate to place Hamann within the spiritualist tradition of Protestantism, among such radical reformers as Gottfried Arnold, Valentin Weigel, Jakob Boehme, Hans Denck and Sebastian Franck. Like Hamann, these thinkers stressed the importance of personal freedom and mystical experience.

It would be a mistake, too, to describe Hamann’s critique of reason as a form of ‘irrationalism’, as if he were strongly prejudiced against reason and the sciences. Hamann frequently insisted that his critique was directed against only the illegitimate extension of reason beyond experience, and that reason had a perfectly valid use within the boundaries of ordinary experience. If we use the term ‘irrationalism’ strictly and accurately, then it applies to the acceptance of beliefs that are contrary to evidence, the attitude typified by Tertullian’s famous maxim credo quia absurdam (I believe because it is absurd). But Hamann rejected any such ‘leap of faith’. In this regard he was only keeping with the traditional Lutheran distinction between the heavenly and earthly realms, where the supernatural heavenly realm was the object of faith, the empirical earthly realm the domain of reason.

2 Philosophy of language

The most important aspect of Hamann’s critique of reason was his philosophy of language, which he first sketched in his Kreuzzüge and then developed in many writings throughout his life. Hamann is one of the first thinkers in the modern tradition to stress the importance of language for thought. He denies the prevalent eighteenth-century view – common to both the empiricist and rationalist traditions – that there are clear and distinct ideas apart from their embodiment in language. Words are not just arbitrary signs for already formed ideas but the very medium by which ideas come into existence. Thinking is nothing more than the use of symbols. To talk about ideas or concepts apart from words is again to lapse into that old fallacy of the Aufklärung: hypostasis.

Hamann takes a very radical stand on the connection between ideas and signs, thoughts and words. It is not only that signs are the medium of existence of reason; they are also the criterion of its truth. True to the nominalism of the Protestant tradition, Hamann denies that a proposition is true because it corresponds to some special kind of entity, such as facts, universals or states of affairs. All that exists are particulars, which can be explained and classified in all kinds of ways, depending upon our interests. The main criterion for truth is only the correct use of language, which is determined by nothing more than convention and tradition. In making language the criterion of reason and use the sanction of language, Hamann flirted with relativism, though he never explicitly avowed it.

In 1772 Hamann became involved in the famous eighteenth-century controversy regarding the origin of language (see Herder, J. §3). This debate, launched by Condillac in 1746, concerned whether language had a merely human or a divine origin. Hamann criticized his erstwhile pupil, Herder, for his view that the origin of language could be explained purely naturalistically, as a product of human need and skill. Although Hamann is generally regarded as a defender of the divine origin view, his theory is much more complex and obscure. On at least one reading, Hamann does not deny that the origin of language can be explained naturalistically. Rather, he holds that language has both a divine and human, a supernatural and natural, source. Although language is created through natural means, by the use of native human powers, God is also coactive in the use of these powers. Since God acts through man, what man creates through his natural capacities is also what God creates through him. Sometimes, however, Hamann resorts to mystical and metaphorical expressions, as if God directly taught Adam how to use language after the creation.

3 Aesthetics

Hamann’s historical significance lies in his aesthetics no less than his critique of reason. His main work in aesthetics is his Aesthetica in nuce, which appeared as part of his Kreuzzüge des Philologen. Its defence of artistic creativity and the metaphysical significance of art had a great influence upon the Sturm und Drang and ultimately Romanticism itself (see Romanticism, German).

One of the main aims of Hamann’s text is to liberate the artist from the shackles of conventions and norms. Aesthetica in nuce is a manifesto on behalf of artistic creativity, a paean to the genius who dares to break all the rules. Rather than aspiring to portray archetypes or models, the artist should dare to express his passions and reveal his personal vision. What makes a work of art beautiful, Hamann suggests, is its expression, the revelation of the personality of the artist.

Another objective of the Aesthetica is to reaffirm the metaphysical significance of art, the classical equation of truth and beauty. This significance had been denied or depreciated by most eighteenth-century aestheticians, who usually regarded aesthetic experience as little more than a pleasant sensation or an amusing illusion. According to Hamann, however, art is nothing less than the purest medium of truth. Our knowledge of life and reality comes through immediate experience, and only a non-discursive medium such as art reproduces such sensations and feelings. While philosophers must resign themselves to concepts, which are only artificial and arbitrary abstractions, artists deal with images, which capture all the vividness and richness of experience.

In defending the equation of truth and beauty, Hamann appears to return to the classical aesthetics of the seventeenth century. Indeed, he even retains the doctrine of imitation, so important for that tradition. But Hamann retained this doctrine in his own manner and for his own purposes. He reformulated it in accord with his empiricist and mystical epistemology, and so at odds with the more rationalist epistemology of classicism. He broke with classicism with regard to both the object and manner of imitation. What the artist should imitate, Hamann thinks, is the secret language of God, not the eternal archetypes of things, as in classicism; and he imitates this language not by following classical rules or norms but by creating images and symbols.

The Aesthetica appears to consist in two conflicting doctrines: an extreme subjectivism, which encourages artists to express their personal feelings and visions; and an extreme objectivism, which demands that they imitate nature and reveal the presence of God. What is central to, and characteristic of, Hamann’s aesthetics, however, is precisely the synthesis of these doctrines. They come together in Hamann’s mystical vision of the omnipresence of God. Since God is inside man, dwelling in man’s inner heart, artists have only to reveal their innermost feelings to reveal God himself. Their personal symbols and images then become nothing less than the language of God.

4 Politics

Although not primarily a political thinker, Hamann made some important criticisms of the political doctrines of the Aufklärung. In Golgotha und Scheblimini (1784), a critique of Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem, he criticized the prevalent natural law doctrine (see Mendelssohn, M.). Since reason becomes determinate only in a specific cultural context, it is a false abstraction, Hamann argues, to seek some universal and eternal norm true for any culture. Natural law doctrine also assumes that people are rational outside society; yet it is only through society that they learn the use of language, restrain their appetites and conduct themselves according to rules.

In Kreuzzüge des Philologen Hamann attacked the individualism prevalent in the modern political tradition. He explicitly appealed to Aristotle’s conception of man as a political animal to refute the notion that the individual is selfsufficient and born with natural needs. Freedom and reason are not properties inherent in each individual apart from society, Hamann contended, but only their manner of acting and speaking within it.

Because of his critique of the Aufklärung and the liberal values associated with it, Hamann has sometimes been portrayed as a reactionary, indeed as a founding father of the modern alliance of irrationalism and conservatism. But this interpretation is anachronistic, failing to consider the context in which Hamann lived and wrote. All his mature life Hamann was a passionate critic of the reigning Prussian monarch, Friedrich II, ‘the philosopher king’. But his critique of Friedrich and the Aufklärer in Berlin is not a rejection of their liberal principles – toleration, freedom of press, equality before the law – but of the paternalism and authoritarianism of the absolutist Prussian state. Hamann too embraced these principles, and his critique of the Aufklärung is indeed motivated by them. He argued, however, that the Aufklärer had betrayed them through their intolerance toward revealed religion and through their alliance with the autocratic Prussian monarch. In his critical review of Kant’s essay on enlightenment, Hamann attacked Kant not because he advocated emancipation – the right to think for oneself – but because he restricted it to the public sphere. By denying the people a right to think for themselves in their official duties, Kant had virtually sanctioned Friedrich’s despotism, the old maxim ‘Say what you like but obey’.