## 1. Life



Johann Georg Hamann was born in Konigsberg in 1730, the son of a
midwife and a barber-surgeon. He began study in philosophy and
theology at the age of 16, changed to law but mainly read literature,
philology, and rhetoric, but also mathematics and science. He left
university without completing his studies and became the governor to a
wealthy family on a Baltic estate. During this time he continued his
extraordinarily broad reading and private research. He took up a job
in the family firm of a friend from his Konigsberg days,
Christoph Berens, and was sent on an obscure mission to London, in
which he evidently failed. He then led a high life until he ran out of
friends, money and support. In a garret, depressed and impoverished,
he read the Bible cover to cover and experienced a religious
conversion.



He returned to the House of Berens in Riga, where they evidently
forgave him his failure. He fell in love with Christoph Berens'
sister, Katharina, but was refused permission to marry her by his
friend, on the grounds of his religious conversion; Berens was an
enthusiastic follower of the Enlightenment and was nauseated by the
more pious manifestations of Hamann's new-found religiosity.
Smarting from this blow and its motivations, Hamann returned to his
father's house in Konigsberg, where he lived for the rest
of his life until his final months.



In Konigsberg, he never held an official academic post, nor an
ecclesiastical one; this may in part have been due to his pronounced
speech impediment, which inhibited him from either lecturing or
preaching. Eventually, through the intercession of his acquaintance,
Immanuel Kant, he found employment as a low-level civil servant
working in the tax office of Frederick the Great; a ruler Hamann in
fact despised. Nevertheless his principal activity was as an editor
and a writer; he was considered one of the most widely-read scholars
of his time (greatly aided by his fluency in many languages), as well
as a notorious author. During this time, despite his committed
Christianity, he lived with a woman whom he never married but to whom
he remained devoted and faithful, having four children on whom he
doted, and who occasionally feature in his writings (principally as
unruly distractions to the author's scholarship).



At the end of his life he accepted an invitation to Munster from
one of his admirers, Princess Gallitzin. He died in Munster in
1788.



Hamann had a profound influence on the German 'Storm and
Stress' movement, and on other contemporaries such as Herder and
Jacobi; he impressed Hegel and Goethe (who called him the brightest
head of his time) and was a major influence on Kierkegaard. His
influence continued on twentieth century German thinkers, particularly
those interested in language. His popularity has increased
dramatically in the last few decades amongst philosophers,
theologians, and German studies scholars around the world.


## 2. Writings



Hamann's writings are all short; he was not given to extensive
treatises. They are also usually motivated by something very specific:
someone else's publication, or particular circumstances and
events. When responding to these, he presupposes considerable
knowledge on the part of the reader; typically his responses to the
work of others involves adoption of their terminology and style,
blending into mimicry and parody as a rhetorical and argumentative
device. Moreover, woven into these writings is an extraordinary
breadth and quantity of citations and allusions; and by no means are
these all clear and obvious. Thus, when he chooses, his essays are a
tapestry of multicolored threads of the ideas, language, and imagery
of thinkers, be they ancient, biblical, or contemporary. These are
woven across a woof of a love of irony, which as ever adds a layer of
interpretative complexity.



Hamann's writings also frequently appear under the name of
various fanciful characters: Aristobolus, the Knight of the
Rose-Cross, the Sibyl, Adelgunde. It cannot be assumed that such
characters faithfully represent Hamann's own views; The opinions
of Aristobolus, for example, are a device to deconstruct and drive to
absurdity a number of views which Hamann opposes.



These factors combine to make Hamann's writings notoriously
difficult to understand and interpret. Goethe observed that when
reading Hamann, "one must completely rule out what one normally
means by understanding" [Goethe, 550]. Even if one has -
or painfully acquires, or borrows from other current scholars -
the breadth of reference to understand the source of an allusion or
citation, it is not always clear what the citation is doing there, and
what Hamann means to suggest by referring to it. He delighted in
sporting with his reader; preferring to present a balled fist and
leave it to the reader to unroll it into a flat hand (to borrow one of
his own images; cf. the end of the "Metacritique of the Purism
of Reason", 1780).



This impenetrability has been taken by some to signify an incapacity
for clear expression on Hamann's part. Hegel remarked:
"The French have a saying: *Le stile c'est
l'homme meme* ('The style is the man himself');
Hamann's writings do not *have* a particular style but
rather *are* style through and through" [Hegel, 209].
Others, however, have pointed to the clarity and concision of his
letters, in contrast to the puzzling style he uses to address the
public. They suggest that Hamann's challenging style forms are
an important part of Hamann's hermeneutics and his understanding
of the relationship between the writer and reader: two halves of a
whole who must relate themselves to one another and unite for a common
goal ("Reader and Critic", 1762). The reader cannot be
passive and must work to reconstruct Hamann's meaning. As Hamann
observed, "A writer who is in a hurry to be understood today or
tomorrow runs the danger of being misunderstood the day after
tomorrow."



Consequently, Hamann is highly susceptible to misinterpretation. For
example, one can find in recent English-language treatments the
understanding of Hamann as an 'irrationalist', and one who
simply opposed the Enlightenment with all his might; this however is
not supported by the majority of Hamann scholars and is seen as a
failure to understand the complexity of his thinking.



His principal writings include: *Biblische Betrachtungen*
[Biblical Reflections], *Gedanken uber meinen Lebenslauf*
[Thoughts on the Course of my Life], *Brocken* [Fragments],
*Sokratische Denkwurdigkeiten* [Socratic Memorabilia],
*Wolken* [Clouds], *Kreuzzuge des Philologen*
[Crusades of the Philologian], a collection of essays including
Aesthetica in Nuce, *Versuch uber eine akademische Frage*
[Essay on an academic question], and *Kleeblatt Hellenistischer
Briefe* [Cloverleaf of Hellenistic Letters]; *Schriftsteller
und Kunstrichter* [Author and Critic], *Leser und
Kunstrichter* [Reader and Critic], *Funf Hirtenbriefe*
[Five Pastoral Letters], *Des Ritters von Rosencreuz letzte
Willensmeynung uber den gottlichen und menschlichen Urprung
der Sprache* [The Knight of the Rose-Cross' Last Will and
Testament on the divine and human origin of language],
*Philologische Einfalle und Zweifel* [Philological Ideas
and Doubts], *Hierophantische Briefe* [Hierophantic Letters],
*Versuch einer Sibylle uber die Ehe* [Essay of a Sibyl on
Marriage], *Konxompax, Metakritik uber den Purismum der
Vernunft* [Metacritique of the Purism of Reason], *Golgotha und
Scheblimini* [Golgotha and Scheblimini], *Fliegender Brief*
[Flying Letter].


## 3. Metacritique



At the end of his life, Hamann chose to designate his authorship as
"Metacritique", a word he coined for his engagement with
Kant's *Critique of Pure Reason*. Instead of creating a
systematic theology, or an epistemology, he seems to have seen his
work as one that examines the foundations and nature of philosophical
and theological critique itself. Rather like the late Wittgenstein,
his work was deconstructive; he belongs in the camp of philosophers
whom Richard Rorty has described as "edifying and
therapeutic" rather than "constructive and
systematic" (Rorty, 5-6). He brings to any issue in
philosophy not a constructive account, but an approach, a set of
convictions, something akin to ethical principles. He anticipated
Rorty's emphasis on the curative aspects of this task; at the
end of his life, he wanted his collected works to be published under
the title "Curative Baths"
("*Saalbadereyen*" -- a reference to healing
practices of the time and an allusion to his father's
profession.) Each volume was to be called a 'Tub'. This
project was sadly never realized, not even under a more conventional
title.



One abiding characteristic of Hamann's many responses to the
philosophy of his time, therefore, is this 'metacritical'
instinct: not to construct a rival account, but to go for the jugular;
not to set up a rival critique, but to insist that critique itself
must be subject to meta-critique, which concerns itself with the
issues that must be attended to in relation to the act of
philosophical reflection itself. It consists of attention to the
fundamental stance or position on issues or insights that must
underlie any work on philosophy or theology. According to Hamann,
often "the difficulties lie in womb of the concepts" (N
III, 31, 21). Hamann's writing therefore is not so much
'unsystematic' as is sometimes said, but
'presystematic'. He addresses issues that must be
recognized in any self-critical reflection, matters that must be
presuppositions for any system. Thus one of the most salient features
of his "Metacritique of the Purism of Reason", his
unpublished response to Kant's *Critique of Pure Reason*,
was to focus on the question of language. Through a tissue of imagery,
he suggests that a proper view of language implies that the alleged
'purity' of *a priori* reason is untenable.



These metacritical issues, for Hamann, principally include language,
knowledge, and the nature of the human person. Hamann also, most
urgently and most controversially (then as now), did not believe that
any of these issues can be answered outside a theological perspective;
that is, without reference to God as humanity's creator and
dialogue partner.


## 4. Relation



A second feature of Hamann's approach is a tendency which Goethe
saw as holism. This is perhaps not the best way to describe
Hamann's insight, as Hamann characteristically emphasised the
brokenness of human experience, and fragmentariness of human
knowledge: "Gaps and lacks ... is the highest and deepest
knowledge of human nature, through which we must climb our way up to
the ideal -- ideas and doubts -- the *summum bonum*
of our reason" (ZH 3, 34:33-35). Hamann essentially
disliked attempts to isolate the phenomenon under consideration from
other aspects with which he felt it to be intimately connected; this
precludes a deep and true understanding of our existence. Taken as far
as he did, this means that philosophy of language must include a
discussion of God, and a discussion of God must make reference to
sexuality and *vice versa*.



Thus in "Essay of a Sibyl on Marriage", which he takes as
an opportunity to write about sex, a proper understanding of human
sexuality and erotic enjoyment cannot be understood without seeing
humanity as the creature of God, made in God's image. He plays
with the Christian idea of God as a Trinity to depict a trinity of
woman-man-God in the moment of lovemaking; and reworks the account of
the creation of Adam in Genesis to describe the act of coitus itself.
The woman on perceiving her lover in his excitement sees 'that
rib' and cries out in enthusiastic appropriation, 'That is
bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!' The man then
'fills the hole of the place with flesh' (as Genesis
describes God doing with Adam after the creation of Eve). In doing so
the lover also acknowledges that the origin of a man is in
woman's body: the 'Sibyl' describes this moment of
lovemaking as "he entered in whence he once came forth."
Indeed, as Christ was born of a woman, the salvation of humanity
proceeds from a woman's sexual body; the vagina is also
described as the place that the Saviour came forth as the body's
healer (the German language permits Hamann here to pun on
'healer' and 'saviour'). This inclination to
combine topics more often kept separate (such as 'the concept of
God' and 'having sex') is salient throughout his
work.


## 5. The Union of Opposites



Hamann's tool for conceiving the interrelation of these
dimensions of human life increasingly was the Principle of the Union
of Opposites. He writes approvingly of this principle to his friends;
particularly after his encounter with Kant's new epistemology,
claiming to value it more than the principles of contradiction and of
sufficient reason, and indeed more than the whole Kantian Critique (ZH
5, 327:12ff; ZH 4, 462:7-8). Contradictions and apparent
oppositions fill our experience:



> 
> Yes, daily at home I have the experience that one must always
> contradict oneself from two viewpoints, [which] never can agree, and
> that it is impossible to change these viewpoints into the other
> without doing the greatest violence to them. Our knowledge is
> piecemeal -- no dogmatist is in a position to feel this great
> truth, if he is to play his role and play it well; and through a
> vicious circle of pure reason skepsis itself becomes dogma (ZH 5,
> 432:29-36). (This is in the context of a discussion of
> Kant.)



Far from being a pre-condition for truth, the absence of contradiction
is in Hamann's eyes a pre-condition for dogmatism. Knowledge
must not proceed on the basis of unanimity and the absence of
contradiction, but must proceed through the dialogue and relation of
these different voices. (Hamann does not think in terms of
Hegel's later dialectical synthesis.) When Hamann speaks of
'opposition' and contradictions, however, he does so in an
ironic tone; for it is clearly his conviction that there is a
fundamental unity in things, and the oppositions and contradictions
that we perceive are chiefly of our own making. He insists that his
perception is 'without Manichaeism' (ZH 5,
327:16-17). Body and mind, senses and reason, reason and passion
are not truly opposed. These are contrasting elements of the same
unified -- unified but not homogenous -- reality. Hamann
tries to steer a course between Scylla and Charybdis: between the
dogmatic, even tyrannical extermination of opposition and
contradiction; and the elimination of contradiction through a false
synthesis or fusion achieved by an apparent acceptance of antithetical
realities.



The Principle of the Union of Opposites as a tactical tool, therefore,
does not imply that Hamann sees the world in terms of divisions and
dualism. It is his strategy for coping with the schematic antitheses
abundant in Enlightenment philosophy.



> 
> Nothing seems easier than the leap from one extreme to the other, and
> nothing so difficult as the union to a center. ... [The Union of
> Opposites] always seems to me to be the one sufficient reason of all
> contradictions -- and the true process of their resolution and
> mediation, that makes an end to all feuds of healthy reason and pure
> unreason. (ZH 4, 287:5-17)
> 


## 6. 'Prosopopoeia'



Hamann used the notion of 'Prosopopoeia', or
personification, as an image of what can happen in philosophical
reflection. In a medieval morality or mystery play, the experience of
being chaste or being lustful is transformed from a way of acting or
feeling into a dramatic character who then speaks and acts as a
personification of that quality. So too in philosophy, Hamann
suggests. The philosopher distinguishes differing aspects in the
phenomenon under scrutiny and exaggerates their difference. These
aspects are ennobled into faculties, and through
'prosopopoeia' are hypostasized into entities. Thus in the
act of reflecting on something, 'reasoning' is
distinguished from 'feeling', and turned from a verb or
gerund into a noun -- 'reason'--which is then
named as a constituent of our being. Reason then becomes a thing to
which we can ascribe properties. (This shows perhaps a streak
bordering on nominalism in Hamann.)



The best example of this, and of Hamann's response, is his
treatment of the word 'reason'. Since he handles it with a
kind of skepticism or even distaste, he is often called an
'irrationalist'. It is clear however that Hamann puts a
high value on certain ways of being reasonable and of reasoning
activity. "Without *language* we would have no reason,
without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects
of our nature, neither mind *[Geist]* nor bond of
society" (N III, 231, 10-12).



Hamann's treatment of reason instead is a deconstruction, both
of the prosopopoeic use of the word and the Enlightenment valuation of
it. There is no such thing as reason -- there is only reasoning.
Reasoning, as something we do, is as fallible as we are, and as such
is subject to our position in history, or own personality, or the
circumstances of the moment. 'It' is therefore not a
universal, healthy and infallible 'faculty' as
Hamann's Enlightenment contemporaries often maintained:



> 
> *Being, belief and reason* are pure relations, which cannot be
> dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic
> concepts, *signs* for understanding, not for worshipping, aids
> to awaken our attention, not to fetter it. (ZH 7, 165:7-11)
> 


## 7. Enlightenment



Hamann is sometimes portrayed simply as an opponent of "the
Enlightenment". This presupposes of course that "the
Enlightenment" constitutes a unified stance on a number of
philosophical issues, an assumption which is questionable. The
majority of Hamann scholars today see his position in a more complex
way. Hamann opposed many of the popular convictions of his time.
However, Hamann fought his contemporaries on many fronts; therefore
there were often areas of considerable agreement with some of his
opponents. One example would be the way that he deployed Hume as a
weapon against Enlightenment rationalism, not least against Kant
(although Hamann was the one who introduced Kant to Hume's
writings in the first place). Although Hamann, as a Christian, had
profound disagreements with Hume's thought in its atheistic
aspects, nevertheless he used Humean skepticism in his own
deconstructive writings. Hume's doubts about the reliability and
self-sufficiency of reason were grist to Hamann's mill.
Hume's insistence that "belief" underlies much of
our thinking and reasoning was adopted and deployed by Hamann, often
with a linguistic sleight of hand. By using the word
"*Glaube*" (which in German includes both
"belief" in an epistemic sense and "faith" in
a religious sense), Hamann could assert that "faith", not
rational grounds, underlies his contemporaries' high valuation
of reason. Thus even the enthusiastic advocates of impartiality and
"reason", who are also skeptics about "blind
faith", have ultimately only faith as the ground for their
convictions.



Judging from letters late in his life, Hamann preferred to be seen as
a "metacritic" of the Enlightenment. His dissatisfactions
with what he viewed as a certain Enlightenment program began early,
following his conversion to Christianity; and his challenge could be
seen not as a blunt, unreasoning opposition to rationality, but as a
deeper (and more disruptive) challenge to what rationality and
Enlightenment actually consist in. Often these are seen in his
resonses to his friend Immanuel Kant. An early challenge came in his
first public essay, "Socratic Memorabilia" (1759), which
was dedicated to Kant and their mutual friend Christoph Berens. Kant
and Berens had sought to cast him as a campaigner on behalf of the
Enlightenment. In the essay he portrays Socrates, the hero of the
Enlightenment, as a Christ-figure rather than a champion of secular
reason. Hamann's abreaction to what he viewed as a misguided
deification and purification of reason reaches a climax in 1784, in
his unpublished response to Kant -- "Metacritique of the
Purism of Reason" (1984) and in an inflamed private letter to
Christian Jacob Kraus in the same year. This letter takes issue with
Kant's famous essay "An Answer to the Question: What is
Enlightenment?" (1984). Here he argues that what Kant describes
as the intellectual "self-incurred minority" (minority in
the sense of being a minor, immaturity, tutelage) of the general
public, an (alleged) need to be told what to think, is not
self-imposed. Rather, it is imposed, Hamann suggests, on the one hand
by a politically authoritarian regime hostile to dissent and political
free-thinking, while encouraging religious free-thinking; and on the
other hand by professional experts: the "prattle and reasoning
of those emancipated immature ones, who set themselves up as
guardians". "True enlightenment," Hamann concludes
sarcastically, "consists in an emergence of the immature person
from a supremely self-incurred guardianship."


## 8. Language



Language is one of Hamann's most abiding philosophical concerns.
From the beginning of his work, Hamann championed the priority which
expression and communication, passion and symbol possess over
abstraction, analysis and logic in matters of language. Neither logic
nor even representation (in Rorty's sense) possesses the rights
of the first-born. Representation is secondary and derivative rather
than the whole function of language. Symbolism, imagery, metaphor have
primacy; "Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race"
(N II, 197). To think that language is essentially a passive system of
signs for communicating thoughts is to deal a deathblow to true
language.



For all Hamann's emphasis in his earlier writings on passion and
emotion, he does not equate language with emotional expression. This
became clear in his engagement with the writing of his younger friend
Herder on the origin of language. Language has a mediating
relationship between our reflection, one another, and our world; and
as it is not simply the cries of emotion of an animal, so too it is
not a smothering curtain between us and the rest of reality. Language
also has a mediating role between God and us. Hamann's answer to
a debate of his time, the origin of language -- divine or
human?--is that its origin is found in the relationship between
God and humanity. Typically he has the 'Knight of the
Rose-Cross' express this in the form of a 'myth',
rather than attempting to work out such a claim logically and
systematically. Rewriting the story of the Garden of Eden, he
describes this paradise as:



> 
> Every phenomenon of nature was a word,--the sign, symbol and
> pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate
> union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas.
> Everything the human being heard from the beginning, saw with its
> eyes, looked upon and touched with its hands was a living word; for
> God was the word. (NIII, 32: 21-30)
> 



This makes the origin of language as easy and natural as child's
play.



By the end of his life, because of his engagement with Kant, the most
urgent question among the relationships that constitute language is
the relationship of language to thinking or 'reason'. In
his view, the central question of Kant's first
*Critique*, the very possibility of *a priori* knowledge
and of pure reason, depends on the nature of language. In a passage
full of subtle allusions to Kantian passages and terms, he writes:



> 
> Indeed, if a chief question does remain: *how is the power to think
> possible?*--The power to think *right* and *left,
> before* and *without, with* and *above* experience?
> then it does not take a deduction to prove the genealogical priority
> of language.... Not only the entire ability to think rests on
> language... but language is also the *crux of the misunderstanding
> of reason with itself*. (N III, 286:1-10)
> 



Language is forced to take part in the 'purification of
philosophy', as he describes it in his Metacritique of Kant: the
attempt to expunge experience and tradition from rational reflection.
Language itself is the final victim in this threefold
'purification'. It is for this reason however that
language can constitute the cure for philosophy. Language is the
embodiment of experience and tradition; as long as the ability to
think rests on language, neither 'reason' nor
'philosophy' can be pure of the empirical, of experience,
and of the experience of the others to whom we relate. It itself, for
Hamann, embodies a relation: it itself is a 'union of
opposites', of the aesthetic and the logical, the bodily and the
intellectual; it unites the divisions Kant's *Critique*
creates.



For Hamann, in contrast to Kant, the question is therefore not so much
'what is reason?' as 'what is language?', as
he writes in a letter. This is the ground of the paralogisms and
antinomies that Kant raises in his Critique. Sharing Hume's
empiricism and Berkeley's suspicion of universals and abstract
terms, he concludes: "Hence it happens that one takes
*words* for *concepts*, and *concepts* for the
*things themselves*" (ZH 5, 264:34-265:1). Language
then has a fundamental role to play in unmasking the
philosopher's tendency to 'prosopopoeia'. The
relation of language to reason he certainly did not feel had solved,
however, as he wrote to a friend:



> 
> If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more
> than repeat a single word three times. Reason is language--Logos;
> I gnaw on this marrowbone and will gnaw myself to death over it. It is
> still always dark over these depths for me: I am still always awaiting
> an apocalyptic angel with a key to this abyss. (ZH 5, 177:16-21)
> 


## 9. Knowledge



For Hamann, knowledge is inseparable from self-knowledge, and
self-knowledge inseparable from knowledge of the other. We are
visible, as in a mirror, in each other; "God and my neighbor are
therefore a part of my self-knowledge, my self-love" (N I,
302:16-23). He writes in a letter: "Self knowledge begins with
the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that
goes from the mirror to the matter" (ZH 6, 281:16-17).
Sometimes this exploration of self-knowledge through interpersonal
intimacy takes a sexual form, as in the Sibyl's Essay on
Marriage (already discussed).



All forms of knowledge, of learning and development even of the most
natural functions, require the help of another. (The 'Knight of
the Rose Cross', while jesting with Hume, tells us ironically
that even eating and drinking, and indeed excretion, are not
instinctual or innate but require teaching.) (N III, 28:26-28; N
III, 29:7-10) This is conceived not only in such immediately
interpersonal ways, but also more widely in the context of the
community. The indispensability of 'the other' for
knowledge is also the reason that Hamann gives the importance he does
to tradition in the formation of knowledge. "Our reason arises,
at the very least, from this twofold lesson of sensuous revelations
and human testimonies" (N III 29:28-30). Years before
Kant's first *Critique*, Hamann attempts to relate the
senses and the understanding and their roles in knowledge, using a
characteristically concrete metaphor: the senses are like the stomach,
the understanding like blood vessels. Not only do the blood vessels
need the stomach to receive the nourishment that they distribute; the
stomach also needs the blood vessels to function. This insistence on
the mutual dependency and interrelation of sense experience and
understanding (as opposed to many Enlightenment views that plumped for
either reason or the senses as the dominant party) was refined in his
engagement with Kant's critique. Throughout his life, he was
neither materialist, purely empiricist or positivist, nor idealist,
rationalist or intellectualist in his epistemology. Rather, he is
firmly against dividing knowledge or ways of knowing into different
kinds. "The philosophers have always given truth a bill of
divorce, by separating what nature has joined together and vice
versa" (N III, 40: 3-5). With Kant's critique, the
problem becomes still more urgent; Kant's treatment of the issue
is a "violent, unwarranted, obstinate divorce of what nature has
joined together". Revising Kant's metaphor of sensibility
and understanding as two stems of human knowledge, he suggests we see
knowledge as a single stem with two roots. Thus he rejects the
division of what can be known *a priori* from what can be known
a posteriori, and many of the consequences of such a stance. Here
again he reaches for the 'Principle of the Union of
Opposites' in his deployment of imagery to suggest a different
approach. The relation of the senses and understanding is a
'hypostatic union', a '*communicatio
idiomatum*' (phrases borrowed from Christian theological
discussion of how the two natures of divine and human are united in
Christ). This mysterious union can only be revealed and understood by
'ordinary language'. (In suggesting that the problems in
philosophy can be cured by attending to 'ordinary
language', he clearly anticipates the late Wittgenstein).



In this engagement with Kant, Hamann returns and deepens the lesson he
had learnt much earlier in his reading of Hume: that belief or faith
is an essential precursor for knowledge. Everything is dependent or
grounded on faith; there is no privileged position for any kind or
form of knowledge (a priori, scientific, etc.) In Hamann's
epistemology, the hard division between 'knowledge' and
'belief' or 'faith' becomes eroded. Both
knowledge and faith rest on a foundation of trust; neither rest on a
foundation of indubitability. "Every philosophy consists of
certain and uncertain knowledge, of idealism and realism, of
sensuousness and deductions. Why should only the uncertain be called
belief? What then are--*rational grounds?*" (ZH 7,
165:33-37) 'Sensuousness' translates
*Sinnlichkeit* (Kant's 'sensibility'). Belief
and reason both need each other; idealism and realism are a fantasized
opposition, of which the authentic use of reason knows nothing. The
unity that lies in the nature of things should lie at the foundation
of all our concepts and reflection (ZH 7, 165:7-17).


## 10. Interpretation and Understanding



From his 'debut' work, *Socratic Memorabilia*,
Hamann began to promulgate a particular view of what it means to
understand something. From the beginning of that essay he emphasized
the importance of passion and commitment in interpretation;
undermining the more conventional assumption that objectivity and
detachment are prerequisites of philosophical reflection and
understanding. In *Aesthetica in Nuce*, wearing the authorial
mask of the 'kabbalistic philologian', he provocatively
maintained that initiation into orgies were necessary before the
interpreter could safely begin the hermeneutical act. The idea that
one must rid oneself of presuppositions, prejudices, and predilections
in order to do justice to the subject matter he characterizes as
'monastic rules'--i.e. an excessive asceticism and
abstinence. He goes so far as to compare such individuals to
self-castrating eunuchs (N II, 207:10-20).



Hamann's skepticism about neutrality and objectivity does not
make him a 'subjectivist', however. The stance and
disposition of the interpreter is integral, helpful, indeed,
indispensable and must be acknowledged; but limitless subjectivity
arouses Hamann's scorn. Those who 'flood the text'
with glosses and marginalia, "dreaming up one's own
inspiration and interpretation," Hamann likens to the blind
leading the blind (N II, 208:3ff).



The constraints which Hamann places on the interpreter's
subjectivity are not those usually advocated, therefore: an avoidance
of prejudice and pre-conceptions; an amnesia for one's own
history, tradition and culture; an obedience to exegetical rules. The
first restraint on subjective distortion is the interpreter's
own common sense; the last is the reaction of the text itself:
"what are you trying to make of me?" The
interpreter's freedom is inextricable from the
interpreter's respect and responsibility, in Hamann's
view.



The responsible interpreter is conscious of standing within something
larger than oneself: a tradition. The wise interpreter is a kabbalist,
one who interprets an ancient text, and a rhapsodist--the
original meaning of the latter being one who stitches something
together from pre-existing materials. (In Ancient Greece the
'rhapsodist' was one who recited poems cobbled together
from prior sources, usually bits of Homer.) In creating
interpretations, the interpreter enjoys the freedom to create anew, as
Hamann created his characteristic prose from pre-existing texts, while
creating a new meaningful piece. Hamann's use of this genre
itself makes the point: the demand that only one meaning may exist for
a text arises from an impoverished notion of meaning and creativity;
one that misunderstands the nature of composition and the nature of
interpretation alike.



Hamann's rejected both exegetical 'materialism' and
'idealism', as he called them -- literalism and
excessive flights of fancy. In thus insisting on the integrity of
'the letter *and* the spirit', he means to preserve
the place of author, text and reader alike. Both meaning and
interpretation rest in a three-way relationship.



For Hamann, the depth and meaning of a text go beyond the
author's own contribution, and are the responsibility of the
interpreter: "Few authors understand themselves, and a proper
reader must not only *understand* his author but also be able
to *see beyond him*" (ZH 6, 22:10-12). And yet this
recognition that the author's opinions and intentions do not
exhaust the possibilities of the text does not annihilate the place of
the author. At the very least, the 'beyond' of the text
includes a territory which, if unknown to the author, is not
unrelated: that is, the author's own unconscious workings and
meanings. It is not accidental that Hamann observes *not* that
few authors understand their own *text,* but that few authors
understand *themselves*. This suggests a picture of creation in
which more of the author is expressed in a text and entrusted to the
interpreter than the author's conscious intentions and opinions.
This in turn suggests a picture of interpretation--of
"understanding one's hero" as Hamann put it when
writing about Socrates--in which greater sensitivity, insight,
and fidelity is demanded of the interpreter than would otherwise be
the case. Above all, the interpreter must have the courage to be a
kabbalist; that is, to say more than the text does, not to express
oneself but to say what the author left unsaid. The fruits of such
faithful creativity may be impossible to 'justify' or
'verify' to the demands of the objectivist, however.



Fundamentally, for Hamann hermeneutics consists in perceiving the
underlying relationship beneath the phenomenon in question; at the
least, of course, the relationship between the author and the
interpreter which requires such fidelity. Given Hamann's
religious views, this at once introduces a theological dimension.
Ultimately, this means that for Hamann proper hermeneutics rests on
one thing: perceiving God revealed within the phenomenon, whether that
be nature or history (cf. *Socratic Memorabilia* and
*Aesthetica in Nuce* for examples). Even the interpretation of
ourselves is a revelation of God; a recognition of whose image solves
all the most complicated knots and riddles of our nature (N II,
206:32-207:2; 198:3-5).


## 11. Humanity



The topics examined so far all have their anthropological
implications. Hamann's critique of the socio-political
implications of Kant's vision of 'enlightenment'
rests on a conviction about our social and political destiny. Hamann
sees our socio-political vocation as consisting firstly in
'criticism' (or 'critique')--recognizing
and appropriating, or hating and rejecting, the true vs. the false,
good vs. evil, beautiful vs. ugly; and secondly in
'politics', which is increasing or reducing them. This is
not the prerogative of the ruler; every one is at once their own
'king', their own 'legislator'; but also the
'first-born of their subjects'. It is our
"republican privilege" to contribute to this destiny,
"the critical and magisterial office of a political
animal" (N III, 38-39).



The concepts of knowledge and language and their many facets also
imply a particular anthropology: the diversity yet integration of the
human being. For Hamann, the truest picture of humanity is of
diversity in unity; a number of different, often contrasting aspects
and features together composing the human person. Hamann consequently
did not confine his attention to epistemology and reason when
considering what human beings are, and passion, the thirst for
vengeance, and sexual ecstasy form a part of his picture as well. (In
response to the Enlightenment aesthetic of art as the imitation of
'beautiful nature', Hamann's ironic observation was:
"The thirst for vengeance was the beautiful nature which Homer
imitated" (ZH 2, 157:12).)



The theme of interdependence between human beings, which was
emphasized in his epistemology, also has its roots in his
understanding of what it is to be human. We are not self-sufficient;
but for Hamann, even our lacks and failings have a positive thrust,
this signifier of dependency making us all the more suited for the
enjoyment of nature and one another.



If there is a fundamental key to his thinking on humanity, it is the
idea that the human being is the image of God. This is admittedly more
theological than philosophical, but is essential for understanding
Hamann's philosophical anthropology. Hamann's treatment of
this perennial theme is hardly conventional in the history of
Christian thinking. While the experience of sinfulness and wickedness
is a powerful theme, particularly in his earlier, post-conversion
writing, the fundamental thrust of his thinking is the easy exchange
between the human and the divine. In this exchange, language is
"the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible
but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine
energies and ideas" (N III, 32:21-24). Despite his
reputation for being an irrationalist, reasoning too relates us to
God; God, nature and reason are described as having the same relation
as light, the eye and what we see, or as author, text and reader (ZH
5, 272:14-16).



One must also remember that Hamann confessed that he could not
conceive of a Creative Spirit without genitalia; indeed, he was quite
happy to assert that the genitals are the unique bond between creature
and Creator. So sexuality in divine-human relations has two aspects.
First, as paradigm of creativity, it is the way in which our
God-likeness can most strikingly be seen. Secondly, as the point of
the most profound unity, it is the locus for our union both with
another human being and with the divine. Provocatively, Hamann sees
original sin and its rebellion as embodied not in sexuality, but in
reason. Overweening reason is our attempt to be like God; meanwhile,
prudery is the rejection of God's image, while trying to be like
God in the wrong sense (bodilessness). (See Essay of a Sibyl on
Marriage and Konxompax.) One should therefore distinguish
'likeness to God' from 'being equal to God'.
In the Sibyl's essay, the male version of grasping at equality
with God (cf. Phil. 2:6) is the attempt to be self-sufficient, to be
the God of monotheism: the sole ruler, who possesses self-existence.
Instead, the encounter with the opposite sex should engender in the
man an attitude of profound respect towards the woman's body, as
the source of his own existence, from his mother. As the source of his
own joy, lovemaking also is an acknowledgement of his own dependence,
his lack of self-sufficiency and autonomy. But this dependence on
another paradoxically is the Godlikeness of the Creator, the father,
the one who humbles himself in self-giving (a favourite Hamannian
theme in his discussion of God). Meanwhile, the woman's
temptation is to an artificial innocence; a secret envy of God's
incorporeality and impassibility. The defence of one's virginity
is another cryptic attempt at self-sufficiency. Instead, the woman
must brave the 'tongues of fire' in a 'sacrifical
offering of innocence', in order to realize her Godlikeness;
which is not to be found in bodilessness and the absence of passion,
but in passionate creativity; in the willingness to be incarnate.
Thus, if human beings are in the image of God, it is a trinitarian
image of God, a mutual relation of love of 'Father',
'Son' and 'Spirit'; found in creating, in
saving, and in tongues of fire.