Johann Georg Hamann Quotes on Mind
Johann Georg Hamann, the German thinker known as the Magus of the North, mounted a profound challenge to the Enlightenment's confidence in reason, and the quotes gathered here state it. For Hamann the mind is never a pure, self-standing faculty: reason is inseparable from language, indeed reason is language, and without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, nor mind nor bond of society. Because thought depends on a particular inherited tongue, the attempt to abstract a pure reason from language and tradition was, in his view, an illusion, and he warned that such a reason, turned on itself, makes even skepsis itself become dogma. A Konigsberg contemporary of Kant, Hamann gnawed, as he put it, on the marrowbone of this insight all his life. Drawn from his letters and his cryptic published works, these passages present the mind as bound to language, history, and faith.
Quotes
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Attributed to Johann Georg Hamann:
“Reason is impossible without faith in language.”
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“Without language we would have no reason , without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind nor bond of society.”
Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (1949-1957), vol. III, p. 231. -
“Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.”
Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (1949-1957), vol. III, p. 286. -
“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.”
Briefwechsel, ed. Arthur Henkel (Wiesbaden/Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1955-1975), vol. V, p. 177. -
“A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher.”
Socratic Memorabilia , J. Flaherty, trans. (Baltimore: 1967), p. 147. -
“Through a vicious circle of pure reason skepsis itself becomes dogma.”
Briefwechsel, ed. Arthur Henkel (1955-1975), vol. V, p. 432. -
“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.”
Briefwechsel, ed. Arthur Henkel (1955-1975), vol. VII, p. 165.