Johann Georg Hamann 1730 – 1788

Johann Georg Hamann was a German philosopher of language and religion, often called the Magus of the North. A Konigsberg contemporary and lifelong interlocutor of Kant, he combined a cryptic, allusive prose with a vehement Lutheran-Pietist critique of Enlightenment rationalism. His Socratic Memorabilia, Aesthetica in Nuce, and Metacritique on the Purism of Reason argued that reason is impossible apart from the senses and from a particular language and tradition, and that the abstraction of pure reason from these conditions is a kind of intellectual idolatry. He shaped Herder, Jacobi, the early German Romantics, and through them, Kierkegaard and much later philosophy of language.

Key facts

Nationality: German
Era: Modern
Movements: Continental

Selected quotes

Attributed to Johann Georg Hamann:

“Language is the mother of reason and revelation, their A and Omega.”
Attributed to Johann Georg Hamann:

“Reason is impossible without faith in language.”
Attributed to Johann Georg Hamann:

“All philosophy that ignores the senses is empty word-magic.”
Attributed to Johann Georg Hamann:

“Poetry is the mother tongue of the human race.”
Attributed to Johann Georg Hamann:

“Christianity is folly to the wise but wisdom to the simple.”