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Hamann Writings on Philosophy and Language'
Hamann Writings on Philosophy and Language'
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First published January 1, 1825
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About the author
Johann Georg Hamann
81Ìýbooks39ÌýfollowersJohann Georg Hamann (August 27, 1730, Königsberg â€� June 21, 1788, Münster) was an important German philosopher, a main proponent of the Sturm und Drang movement, and associated by historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin with the Counter-Enlightenment. He was Pietist Lutheran, and a friend (while being an intellectual opponent) of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. He was also a lutenist, having studied this instrument with Timofey Belogradsky (a student of Sylvius Leopold Weiss), a Ukrainian virtuoso then living in Königsberg. He was known by the epithet Magus im Norden ("Magus of the North").
His distrust of reason and the Enlightenment ("I look upon logical proofs the way a well-bred girl looks upon a love letter" was one of his many witicisms) led him to conclude that faith in God was the only solution to the vexing problems of philosophy.
His distrust of reason and the Enlightenment ("I look upon logical proofs the way a well-bred girl looks upon a love letter" was one of his many witicisms) led him to conclude that faith in God was the only solution to the vexing problems of philosophy.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 3, 2017
On the "Metacritique of Pure Reason"
Hamann infers from the work of Samuel Heinicke (1778; Oberservations on the mute and human language, 1780; On the thought of deaf-mutes) that concepts such as left and right, before and without, with and beyond, are not learned until language acquisition, and this 50 years before Humboldt and 150 years before Sapir. He extends these to Kant's categories, and then even to the intricacy of syllogisms. Hamann critiques the very notion of separating reason into a priori and a prosteriori; since reason itself is derived from language, separating reason from language separates it from its "institution" of "tradition, custom, and belief", which gives word-signs their concepts, and thus also forms our faculty of reason and our experience, echoing a proto-Foucaultian sentiment that reason and truth change with tradition -- change with language.
Hamann insists that the Kantian "ideal" intuitions of space and time are not the most basic elements of our understanding, but that language is. Reaching back to the geneology of language, Hamann says that we first aquired a primitive intuition of time from the oldest language "music, and along with the palpable rhythm of the pulse and of the breath in the nostrils, the original image of all temporal measures and intervals". We aquired our first primitive intuition of space from our oldest writing - pictures and drawing - "and therefore was occupied as early as then with the economy of space, its limitation and determination by figures."
He implies, echoing the sentiments of Julian Jaynes, that language predates and gives rise to types of experience itself. Now, once we have the intuitions of space and time after aquiring them through language, we can then have an experience of the world in which we are conscious of space and time. By determining that there can be some kind of experience prior to this aquisition, and experience in which space and time do not partake, he makes Kant's statements tautologies- "The conscious experience of space firstly requires the consciousness of space" and "The conscious experience of time firtly requires the consciousness of time".
Now by putting Kant's logic into terms of language he demonstrates what he sees as the absurdities of transcendental idealism. I quote him below in full.
"Is it possible, idealism asks from one side, to discover the concept of a word from the intuition alone of a word? Is it possible from the matter of the word "reason", from its 6 letters and 2 syllables - is it possible from its form which determines the order of these letters and syllables - to elicit something of the concept of the word "reason"? Here the Critique answers with both sides balanced.
Is it furthermore posible, idealism asks from the other side, to find the emperical intuition of a word from the understanding? Is it possible to find from the concept of "reason" the matter of its name, that is, the 6 letters and 2 syllables? Here one scale of the Critique indicates a decisive No! But should it not be possible to derive from the concept of reason the form of its emperical intuition in the word, the form by virtue of which one of the two syllables stands a priori and the other a posteriori and the six letters are intuited in a definite ordered relation? Here Idealism snores Yes!
Now this last possibility of obtaining, from the pure and empty quality of our outward and inward sense, the form of the emperical intuition with neither an object nor sign of an emperical intuition is the very first falsehood, the whole cornerstone of critical idealism and its tower and logde of pure reason."
Hamann may not be correct on all accounts but he seems to mystically catch ideas from the far future and surprises you at every turn.
Hamann infers from the work of Samuel Heinicke (1778; Oberservations on the mute and human language, 1780; On the thought of deaf-mutes) that concepts such as left and right, before and without, with and beyond, are not learned until language acquisition, and this 50 years before Humboldt and 150 years before Sapir. He extends these to Kant's categories, and then even to the intricacy of syllogisms. Hamann critiques the very notion of separating reason into a priori and a prosteriori; since reason itself is derived from language, separating reason from language separates it from its "institution" of "tradition, custom, and belief", which gives word-signs their concepts, and thus also forms our faculty of reason and our experience, echoing a proto-Foucaultian sentiment that reason and truth change with tradition -- change with language.
Hamann insists that the Kantian "ideal" intuitions of space and time are not the most basic elements of our understanding, but that language is. Reaching back to the geneology of language, Hamann says that we first aquired a primitive intuition of time from the oldest language "music, and along with the palpable rhythm of the pulse and of the breath in the nostrils, the original image of all temporal measures and intervals". We aquired our first primitive intuition of space from our oldest writing - pictures and drawing - "and therefore was occupied as early as then with the economy of space, its limitation and determination by figures."
He implies, echoing the sentiments of Julian Jaynes, that language predates and gives rise to types of experience itself. Now, once we have the intuitions of space and time after aquiring them through language, we can then have an experience of the world in which we are conscious of space and time. By determining that there can be some kind of experience prior to this aquisition, and experience in which space and time do not partake, he makes Kant's statements tautologies- "The conscious experience of space firstly requires the consciousness of space" and "The conscious experience of time firtly requires the consciousness of time".
Now by putting Kant's logic into terms of language he demonstrates what he sees as the absurdities of transcendental idealism. I quote him below in full.
"Is it possible, idealism asks from one side, to discover the concept of a word from the intuition alone of a word? Is it possible from the matter of the word "reason", from its 6 letters and 2 syllables - is it possible from its form which determines the order of these letters and syllables - to elicit something of the concept of the word "reason"? Here the Critique answers with both sides balanced.
Is it furthermore posible, idealism asks from the other side, to find the emperical intuition of a word from the understanding? Is it possible to find from the concept of "reason" the matter of its name, that is, the 6 letters and 2 syllables? Here one scale of the Critique indicates a decisive No! But should it not be possible to derive from the concept of reason the form of its emperical intuition in the word, the form by virtue of which one of the two syllables stands a priori and the other a posteriori and the six letters are intuited in a definite ordered relation? Here Idealism snores Yes!
Now this last possibility of obtaining, from the pure and empty quality of our outward and inward sense, the form of the emperical intuition with neither an object nor sign of an emperical intuition is the very first falsehood, the whole cornerstone of critical idealism and its tower and logde of pure reason."
Hamann may not be correct on all accounts but he seems to mystically catch ideas from the far future and surprises you at every turn.
December 27, 2023
Writings on Philosophy and Language
Hamann is very much the “German Kierkegaard.� I can see the parallels between the writing styles of Kierkegaard and Hamaan in their use of parables, irony, Scripture, and engaging rhetoric. Hamaan, however, can make his point more clearly, even in the more obscure moments of his text.
This book is a good collection of writing to introduce the reader to Hamaan. He has a very interesting writing style, with prose that is an amalgam of Bible verses and classical references that flow well and full of irony and sarcasm. Hamaan is most famous for being an early thinker in the philosophy of language who was an early critic of Herder and Kant.
Nature of Language
"There exists a relationship and a connection between our soul's faculty of knowledge and our body's faculty of ostension is a rather familiar perception, but little has yet been attempted about the nature and limits of that relationship and connection. There must be similarities among all human languages based on the uniformity of our nature and similarities that are necessary within small spheres of society." (12)
"The wealth of all human knowledge rests on the exchange of words; and it was a theologian of penetrating wit who pronounced theology, - the oldest sister of the higher sciences, - to be a grammar of the language of Holy Writ." (22)
"Man learns to use and to govern all his limbs and senses, and therefore also the ear and tongue, because he can learn, must learn, and equally wants to learn. Consequently the origin of language is as natural and human as the origin of all our deeds, skills, and crafts. But notwithstanding the fact that every apprentice contributes to his instruction to learn in keeping with his inclination, talent, and opportunities, learning in the true understanding is not invention any more than sheer recollection is.� (119)
Criticisms of Kant
Hamaan rejects Kant's division of knowledge between the nomenal/phenomenal realms due to its arbitrariness as: "Receptivity of language and spontaneity of concepts- From this double source of ambiguity pure reason draws all the elements of its doctrinairism, doubt, and connoisseurship. Through an analysis just as arbirary as the synthesis of the thrice old leave (208)"
There is also an issue with thinking and understanding concepts before any experience without language. You cannot get behind language, and as language is a natural faculty of humans, it is necessary in understanding the concepts Kant wishes to divorce from experience.
"How is the faculty of thought possible? The faculty to think right and left, before and without, with and beyond experience? - then no deduction is needed to demonstrate the genealogical priority of language, and its heraldry, over the seven holy functions of logical propositions and inferences...Sounds and letters are therefore pure forms a priori, in which nothing belonging to the sensation or concept of an object is found; they are the true, aesthetic elements of all human knowledge and reason. The oldest language was music, and along with the palpable rhythm of the pulse and of the breath in the nostrils, it was the original bodily image of all temporal measures and intervals." (211)
"Words, therefore, have an aesthetic and logical faculty. As visible and audible objects they belong with their elements to the sensibility and intuition; however, by the spirit of their institution and meaning, they belong to the understanding and concepts. Consequently, words are pure and empirical intuitions as much as pure and empirical concepts. Empirical, because the sensation of vision or hearing is effected through them; pure, inasmuch as their meaning is determined by nothing that belongs to those sensations. " (215)
Conclusion
Hamaan is an interesting and engaging writer as far as German idealist philosophers go. He has value in polemical use in his criticisms of Kant as well as ideas in the philosophy of language preceding Wittgenstein. Reading Hamaan helps me see the similarities to Kierkegaard and how the later imitated Hamaan's writing style.
4/5 A very engaging writer exploring the philosophy and nature of language.
Hamann is very much the “German Kierkegaard.� I can see the parallels between the writing styles of Kierkegaard and Hamaan in their use of parables, irony, Scripture, and engaging rhetoric. Hamaan, however, can make his point more clearly, even in the more obscure moments of his text.
This book is a good collection of writing to introduce the reader to Hamaan. He has a very interesting writing style, with prose that is an amalgam of Bible verses and classical references that flow well and full of irony and sarcasm. Hamaan is most famous for being an early thinker in the philosophy of language who was an early critic of Herder and Kant.
Nature of Language
"There exists a relationship and a connection between our soul's faculty of knowledge and our body's faculty of ostension is a rather familiar perception, but little has yet been attempted about the nature and limits of that relationship and connection. There must be similarities among all human languages based on the uniformity of our nature and similarities that are necessary within small spheres of society." (12)
"The wealth of all human knowledge rests on the exchange of words; and it was a theologian of penetrating wit who pronounced theology, - the oldest sister of the higher sciences, - to be a grammar of the language of Holy Writ." (22)
"Man learns to use and to govern all his limbs and senses, and therefore also the ear and tongue, because he can learn, must learn, and equally wants to learn. Consequently the origin of language is as natural and human as the origin of all our deeds, skills, and crafts. But notwithstanding the fact that every apprentice contributes to his instruction to learn in keeping with his inclination, talent, and opportunities, learning in the true understanding is not invention any more than sheer recollection is.� (119)
Criticisms of Kant
Hamaan rejects Kant's division of knowledge between the nomenal/phenomenal realms due to its arbitrariness as: "Receptivity of language and spontaneity of concepts- From this double source of ambiguity pure reason draws all the elements of its doctrinairism, doubt, and connoisseurship. Through an analysis just as arbirary as the synthesis of the thrice old leave (208)"
There is also an issue with thinking and understanding concepts before any experience without language. You cannot get behind language, and as language is a natural faculty of humans, it is necessary in understanding the concepts Kant wishes to divorce from experience.
"How is the faculty of thought possible? The faculty to think right and left, before and without, with and beyond experience? - then no deduction is needed to demonstrate the genealogical priority of language, and its heraldry, over the seven holy functions of logical propositions and inferences...Sounds and letters are therefore pure forms a priori, in which nothing belonging to the sensation or concept of an object is found; they are the true, aesthetic elements of all human knowledge and reason. The oldest language was music, and along with the palpable rhythm of the pulse and of the breath in the nostrils, it was the original bodily image of all temporal measures and intervals." (211)
"Words, therefore, have an aesthetic and logical faculty. As visible and audible objects they belong with their elements to the sensibility and intuition; however, by the spirit of their institution and meaning, they belong to the understanding and concepts. Consequently, words are pure and empirical intuitions as much as pure and empirical concepts. Empirical, because the sensation of vision or hearing is effected through them; pure, inasmuch as their meaning is determined by nothing that belongs to those sensations. " (215)
Conclusion
Hamaan is an interesting and engaging writer as far as German idealist philosophers go. He has value in polemical use in his criticisms of Kant as well as ideas in the philosophy of language preceding Wittgenstein. Reading Hamaan helps me see the similarities to Kierkegaard and how the later imitated Hamaan's writing style.
4/5 A very engaging writer exploring the philosophy and nature of language.
September 28, 2023
To get to the bottom of Hamann sounds simple in principle; take the condescension of the God of the universe as a starting place, and then radically apply it personally to every moment of one's life and broadly to every movement in one's society. In Luther's words, this foundation of condescension is the "Theology of the Cross." Much is at stake here; God always sets His own terms in His own way, and in the eyes of the world His way is detestable. So, the temptation is the same one from the garden, and each generation decides to pluck the fruit for themselves to become like God, and in so doing, to reject the One who stoops down to walk and talk, and then eventually to sweat and bleed.
Hamann takes God's condescension as his starting point, but in his savage deconstruction of his age's Theologies of Glory, he is continually shocking us, confusing us, and challenging us. His jokes seem too intolerant, his insults too bawdy, his pacing too quick, his learning too vast, his arguments too dense, and his style too singular. To read Hamann is to engage with Horace and Cicero, Augustine and Cyril, and a host of 17th and 18th century writers unknown to our age. To read him is to interact with Kant's new method and Mendelssohn's Jewish humanism and Reimarus's biblical critique. A single page of Hamann can take us fifty seconds to read, fifty minutes to look up the references, and fifty years to wrestle with! There is no other writer, Christian or not, like him, and what is so fascinating and infuriating is that there is no "easy" way to engage with him. To dip into Hamann is to dip into the elements and arguments for one's own deeply cherished beliefs (and idols).
As I wrote at the beginning, Hamann has that principle (the Theology of the Cross) which he applies to everything; so, one might think his works would be predictable and understandable. And in a certain way they are! He will always conclude with the radical message of the Cross, and he will always finish with a prophet's call to repentance and transformation. Yet, where I think one buckles under the weight of Hamann, is in reaching Hamann's own heart, his own faith, his own convictions. This was not a man writing to amuse himself and others; this was a man writing to kill and to make alive! To disrobe and transfigure! He was not, as Evelyn Underhill's poem puts it, a man merely "playing at godliness," but a servant of God who wished to become nothing - a mere sign post, a mere madman crying out at the city gates - in order that God might speak through him to a twisted, heretical age that was his own.
I would say that Hamann's writing is certainly unique, brilliant, singular, but that it is also almost shockingly theological. There is not one phrase that Hamann doesn't either take from Scripture or use to point at Scripture, which he regarded as the living, active voice of God. But Hamann's radical theologizing is hidden under the veil of allusions, jokes, and all the rest. He is doing through his writing what God is doing through His writing (!), which is speaking to lost people to help them find the light again (which is Christ). The more I read of Hamann, the more I see Christ, the Logos of God, the Son of Man (a title which humbles him and elevates us). And, the more I read of him the more I realize how Hamann is never interested in simply critiquing or rebutting his opponents; he honestly thinks he can proclaim the Law of God to them (and to their systems) and demolish them so that they can be rebuilt by Christ. There is no messing around with Hamann; he goes straight to the very heart and soul of the matter, the controversy, the person himself. He's Socrates, buzzing in the ears of the Athenians and destroying their precious, false opinions. He is also John the Baptist, proclaiming Immanuel in the wilderness. From Socratic Memorabilia to his Flying Letter he is doing the same, radical, and almost unbelievably consistent thing: philosophically refuting his age's errors, prophetically calling to repentance, and philologically pointing to the Christ.
Hamann takes God's condescension as his starting point, but in his savage deconstruction of his age's Theologies of Glory, he is continually shocking us, confusing us, and challenging us. His jokes seem too intolerant, his insults too bawdy, his pacing too quick, his learning too vast, his arguments too dense, and his style too singular. To read Hamann is to engage with Horace and Cicero, Augustine and Cyril, and a host of 17th and 18th century writers unknown to our age. To read him is to interact with Kant's new method and Mendelssohn's Jewish humanism and Reimarus's biblical critique. A single page of Hamann can take us fifty seconds to read, fifty minutes to look up the references, and fifty years to wrestle with! There is no other writer, Christian or not, like him, and what is so fascinating and infuriating is that there is no "easy" way to engage with him. To dip into Hamann is to dip into the elements and arguments for one's own deeply cherished beliefs (and idols).
As I wrote at the beginning, Hamann has that principle (the Theology of the Cross) which he applies to everything; so, one might think his works would be predictable and understandable. And in a certain way they are! He will always conclude with the radical message of the Cross, and he will always finish with a prophet's call to repentance and transformation. Yet, where I think one buckles under the weight of Hamann, is in reaching Hamann's own heart, his own faith, his own convictions. This was not a man writing to amuse himself and others; this was a man writing to kill and to make alive! To disrobe and transfigure! He was not, as Evelyn Underhill's poem puts it, a man merely "playing at godliness," but a servant of God who wished to become nothing - a mere sign post, a mere madman crying out at the city gates - in order that God might speak through him to a twisted, heretical age that was his own.
I would say that Hamann's writing is certainly unique, brilliant, singular, but that it is also almost shockingly theological. There is not one phrase that Hamann doesn't either take from Scripture or use to point at Scripture, which he regarded as the living, active voice of God. But Hamann's radical theologizing is hidden under the veil of allusions, jokes, and all the rest. He is doing through his writing what God is doing through His writing (!), which is speaking to lost people to help them find the light again (which is Christ). The more I read of Hamann, the more I see Christ, the Logos of God, the Son of Man (a title which humbles him and elevates us). And, the more I read of him the more I realize how Hamann is never interested in simply critiquing or rebutting his opponents; he honestly thinks he can proclaim the Law of God to them (and to their systems) and demolish them so that they can be rebuilt by Christ. There is no messing around with Hamann; he goes straight to the very heart and soul of the matter, the controversy, the person himself. He's Socrates, buzzing in the ears of the Athenians and destroying their precious, false opinions. He is also John the Baptist, proclaiming Immanuel in the wilderness. From Socratic Memorabilia to his Flying Letter he is doing the same, radical, and almost unbelievably consistent thing: philosophically refuting his age's errors, prophetically calling to repentance, and philologically pointing to the Christ.
December 16, 2022
Obscure and playful is part of the style and its appeal, though it's also so deeply rooted in its own time that it becomes twice as obscure and esoteric to the contemporary reader. Difficult but I vibe with what he's doing in theory.
May 24, 2023
Hamann was a formidable thinker, and a whimsical dialectician. just about the most pleasurable romp available in the annals of German idealism. Chummy sniping at Kant, but the real bludgeoning was posthumous
December 24, 2022
Writings on Philosophy and Language is a collection of works by Johann Georg Hamann, an 18th-century philosopher and writer who is considered one of the key figures of the German Enlightenment. The collection includes a wide range of writings, including essays, letters, and other texts, on a variety of topics in philosophy and language. In these writings, Hamann discusses issues such as the nature of knowledge, the relationship between language and thought, the role of religion in society, and the nature of cultural and intellectual exchange. He also critiques the ideas of other philosophers and intellectuals, including Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and suggests that their ideas are flawed and have dangerous implications for society. Writings on Philosophy and Language is considered an important resource for understanding the ideas and influence of Hamann and is widely regarded as a classic work of philosophical thought.
GPTl
GPTl
October 3, 2009
Great
Le style est l'homme. Hamann is notoriously obscure (in style and history), and infamously enjoyable (in style and axiom). This book is a cogregation of his writings, cinched together by Haynes very good introduction. Most of the reading takes a hearty stack of footnotes, but it is worth it. Here is the great speech thinker in all his oddity and glory.
Le style est l'homme. Hamann is notoriously obscure (in style and history), and infamously enjoyable (in style and axiom). This book is a cogregation of his writings, cinched together by Haynes very good introduction. Most of the reading takes a hearty stack of footnotes, but it is worth it. Here is the great speech thinker in all his oddity and glory.
February 21, 2013
Entertaining and enlightening. The Kindle version helps with all those footnotes.
March 21, 2009
amazing over and over
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