Yesterday I posted about the new Lexham edition of J. G. Hamann’s London Writings. I need to tell you more about this book and its author and why they are such a big deal. So here are some brief treatments of:
The context and contents of the London Writings. A summary of Hamann’s thought. And links to more on Hamann and the London Writings.
The Context and Contents of the London Writings
This is from what I wrote about the Ballast Press edition in 2022:
Hamann was part of a circle of young Enlightenment rationalists, including Kant. The father of one of them in Riga hired the 28-year-old Hamann to go to London to arrange some business negotiations. But his mission was a failure, Hamann fell in with dissolute company, and he was soon destitute. At this low point in his life, he picked up an English Bible and started to read it. The Law and the Gospel had their full effect on this bright but troubled young man, and he was transformed into a fervent follower of Christ and a rapturous lover of Scripture.
The “London Writings” were written during this period in the midst of his spiritual awakening, which also proved to be a catalyst for ideas about the physical world, language, reason, and faith that he would develop for the rest of his life. They consist of nine works:
(1) “On the Interpretation of Sacred Scriptures.” A brief summary, with statements like this: “The inspiration of this book is as great an act of self-effacement and condescension as the creation of the world by the Father and the incarnation of the Son.”
(2) “Biblical Meditations of a Christian.” Hamann’s notes as he read the Bible from beginning to end, amounting to a Christo-centric Bible commentary that is electric with unexpected insights.
(3) “Thoughts on the Course of My Life.” The account of his life and his dramatic conversion.
(4) “Thoughts on Church Hymns.” Hamann would later say that his spiritual life centers in the Bible, Luther’s Small Catechism, and his church’s hymnal. Here he meditates on the lyrics of classic hymns, some of which we still sing today, culminating in his own ecstatic joy in the Ascension of Christ and in our union with Him.
(5) “Deuteronomy 30:11-14 together with Romans 10:4-10.” Tying together two texts that say, “the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart.” Thoughts on connection between the Word and Faith.
(6) “Fragments.” Our thoughts, Hamann says, are fragments, which we must gather together into baskets, as the Disciples did after the feeding of the 5,000. A collection of brief thoughts on a variety of topics, some of which Hamann would continue to develop.
(7) “Meditations on Newton’s Essay on Prophecies.” Not Isaac Newton the scientist, nor John Newton the hymn writer, but Thomas Newton the Anglican theologian. Here Hamann writes about the Holy Spirit.
(8) “Further Thoughts on the Course of My Life.” Hamann picks up his life story after he leaves London and goes back home. We see how his rationally Enlightened friends now reject him and trace the course of his ill-fated courtship of Katherina Berens.
(9) “Prayer.” A wide-ranging prayer that Hamann would continue to use in his morning and evening devotions.
A Summary of Hamann’s Thought
From my post Why Hamann Is Important Today, quoting from my book Post-Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture:
Hamann’s objection to the Enlightenment view of Reason is, first of all, that it reduces reality—including tangible, physical things—to mental abstractions. Actual human beings become abstracted into a collective “humanity.” What we experience with our senses in the fields, the mountains, and the arts cannot be understood, we are led to believe, unless we can turn them into abstractions. Even God becomes a philosophical concept rather than the highly specific, highly personal Holy One of Israel. The Rationalists of the Enlightenment thus use reason, ironically, to distance themselves from existence.
Hamann also notes the Rationalists’ obsession with certainty. They are not content unless their knowledge is absolutely certain, beyond the shadow of a doubt, and they are convinced that reason can give them this assurance. We see this most explicitly with Descartes, who systematically doubted everything until he found the one thing upon which he could be absolutely certain; namely, his own existence. Note the irony: Reason’s quest for certainty tends to manifest itself in the opposite of certainty; namely, skepticism and doubt.
Then Hamann critiques his good friend Immanuel Kant, who had laid the groundwork for postmodern constructivism. Again, I quote myself in Post-Christian:
Kant took reason, including empirical reason, about as far as it could go, to the point of reasoning about reasoning and exploring how the mind makes sense of empirical sense impressions. But his project comes to the conclusion that all we can know is the “phenomena” as the mind perceives them and that we cannot know anything about the “thing in itself.” Kant’s achievement of rational certainty makes everything uncertain!
Hamann criticizes Kant for problematizing ordinary experience. We go through a day interacting with the world, including innumerable physical “things”—breaking an egg for breakfast, working with tools, talking with friends, walking through the garden, enjoying the sunset. Are you saying, Immanuel, that we are not really experiencing these things? Yes, when you reason about them so closely, simple perceptions become mind-bogglingly complex, but what good is a philosophy that makes ordinary life, in effect, disappear?
Kant and other Enlightenment figures who insisted on “reason and reason alone” neglect three things that are necessary to the way human thought works: history, experience, and language, all of which bring culture and tradition into our reasoning.
Hamann showed that, in fact, reason cannot give certainty. Even reason at its best. “The system of today, which provides the proof of your presuppositions,” he observed, “will be the fairytale of tomorrow.” One philosopher, ideology, and school of thought succeeds another. Even scientific empiricism, which Hamann would appreciate for its attention to the physical realm, cannot provide total certainty once the data is processed through an intellectual hypothesis and then a more abstract theory. One scientific theory gives way to another, as more and more data are discovered.
But this lack of absolute certainty does not mean that science, the various schools of thought, and reason itself cannot give us reliable knowledge and even truth. All knowledge, according to Hamann, including the knowledge disclosed by reason, depends on faith.
Faith has to do with trust, acceptance, and reliance. Faith gives a different kind of knowledge than the discursive process of reasoning. It is more like perception. Hamann describes faith as being similar to tasting and seeing.
Reason itself rests on assumptions that elude rational proof, but that are taken on faith. Reasoning requires accepting the validity of logic, the correspondence of thought to the world, the consistent order of the universe, the laws of mathematics, and trusting the contributions of others.
For Hamann, faith ultimately points to faith in Christ, just as language points to the Word of God, to the incarnate Logos. Thus, for Hamann, reason and language are grounded, though not for unbelievers.
This only scratches the surface of Hamann’s analysis, which contemporary thinkers are finding so exciting. He would also make provocative contributions to aesthetics–influencing the rise of German romanticism–and to social criticism, writing devastating satires against Frederick the Great, the King of Prussia, the Father of German militarism, and patron of the Enlightenment (arguing that Enlightenment rationalism leads inevitably to tyranny). Also, to theology, which we will discuss next time.
But what his thought amounted to was simply very sophisticated applications of his Lutheran theology, with its understandings of limitations of reason, the necessity of faith, the centrality of God’s Word, and the spiritual importance of the physical realm in creation, incarnation, and sacraments.
Links to More on Hamann and the London Writings
For more, I have taken all of my posts about the Ballast Press edition of John Kleinig’s translation of the London Writings out from behind the paywall:
Then buy Hamann’s London Writings and spread the word to your friends, colleagues, and pastors, and libraries. Better yet, give it as a Christmas present!
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