Johann Georg Hamann

He introduced Kant, also from Königsberg, to the works of both David Hume – which Kant credited with waking him from his "dogmatic slumber" – and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Hamann was influenced by Hume, but he used his views to argue for rather than against Christianity. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Søren Kierkegaard were among those who considered him to be the finest mind of his time. He was also a key influence on G. Hegel and Friedrich Jacobi. Long before the linguistic turn, Hamann believed epistemology should be replaced by the philosophy of language.

• Region — Western philosophy • Era — 18th-century philosophy • Name — Johann Georg Hamann • Born — 27 August 1730 • Birthplace — Königsberg, Kingdom of Prussia • Died — 21 June 1788 • Place of death — Münster, Prince-Bishopric of Münster, Holy Roman Empire • Alma Mater — University of Königsberg (1746–1752; no degree) • School Tradition — Post-Kantian Counter-Enlightenment Sturm und Drang • Main Interests — * Aesthetics • Epistemology • Philosophy of language • Philosophy of mind • Philosophy of history • Political philosophy • Notable Ideas — "Reason is language" ("Vernunft ist Sprache")

• Illustration — Johann Georg Hamann (20th century drawing) Hamann was born on 27 August 1730 in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). Initially he studied theology at the University of Königsberg, but became a clerk in a mercantile house and afterward held many small public offices, devoting his leisure to reading philosophy. His first publication was a study in political economy about a dispute on nobility and trade. He wrote under the pen name of "the Magus of the North" (Magus im Norden). Hamann was a believer in the Enlightenment until a mystical experience in London in 1758. There, he underwent a profound Christian conversion, reorienting his whole life and philosophy around the prophetic illuminating power of the Bible. This shift influenced all his subsequent work, shaping his views of nature, reason, and human identity. His translation of David Hume into German is considered by most scholars to be the one that Hamann's friend Immanuel Kant, also from Königsberg, credited with awakening him from his "dogmatic slumber". Hamann and Kant held each other in mutual respect, although Hamann once declined an invitation by Kant to co-write a physics textbook for children. Hamann also introduced Kant to the work of Rousseau.

Hamann was a lutenist, having studied this instrument with Timofiy Bilohradsky (a student of Sylvius Leopold Weiss), a Ukrainian virtuoso then living in Königsberg.

Hamann's writings consist of small essays. They display two striking tendencies. The first is their brevity, in comparison with works by his contemporaries. The second is their breadth of allusion and delight in extended analogies. His work was also significantly reactive; rather than advance a "position" of his own, his principal mode of thinking was to respond to others' work. For example, his work Golgotha and Scheblimini! By a Preacher in the Wilderness (1784) was directed against Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem, or on Religious Might and Judaism (1782). Hamann famously used the image of Socrates, who often proclaimed to know nothing, in his Socratic Memorabilia, an essay in which Hamann critiques the Enlightenment's dependence on reason. In Aesthetica in nuce, Hamann counters the Enlightenment by emphasizing the importance of aesthetic experience and the role of genius in intuiting nature.

Hamann argued that the communicatio idiomatum, namely, the communication of divine messages through material embodiments, applies not just to Christ, but should be generalised to cover all human action: "This communicatio of divine and human idiomatum is a fundamental law and the master-key of all our knowledge and of the whole visible economy." Hamann believed all of creation were signs from God for us to interpret.

His most notable contributions to philosophy were his thoughts on language, which have often been considered as a forerunner to the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy such as Wittgenstein's. He famously said that "Reason is language" ("Vernunft ist Sprache"). Hamann thought the bridge between Kant's noumenal and phenomenal realms was language, with its noumenal meaning and phenomenal letters.

The authorities additionally record the heading Johann G. His recorded language was German. His recorded confession was Lutheranism. 3 children are recorded: Johann Michael Hamann, Magdalena Katharina Rosenberger and Marianna Sophie Nicolovius. Recorded as philosopher, writer, lutenist, theologian and art historian.