Hamann Studies

The eighteenth-century author and literary critic, Johann Georg Hamann (1730-88), otherwise known as the “Magus of the North,” is arguably the most inscrutable and enigmatic author in the history of German literature. Yet, ironically, the very one known for his darkness and obscurity was widely regarded as a source of light and wisdom.

His “disciples” Herder and Jacobi revered him; Goethe regarded him as “the brightest mind of his time”; Hegel pored over his writings and admired his “penetrating genius”; Kierkegaard regarded him as “the greatest humourist in Christendom”; and, to any number of German Romantics, from Friedrich Schlegel to Jean Paul, he stood above his age, the so-called age of reason and enlightenment, as a genuinely enlightened prophet. But who really was this mysterious “wise man,” and what motivated his idiosyncratic campaign against the rationalism of his day – a campaign that made him seem to critics in his day and our own needlessly obscure and downright irrational? In short, what is it that makes Hamann so controversial – even to the point of eliciting a debate in the New York Review of Books? And what, if anything, does Hamann have to say to us today about reason, revelation, language, poetry, religion, and their connection?

The studies collected here, which will be of interest to students of philosophy, literature, and theology, are intended to answer some of these questions. They also constitute a necessary supplement to the author’s previous work on Hamann, After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J.G. Hamann.