Jean Blum characterized Hamann’s thought as follows: “Hamann’s thought is what those who do not normally think would think if they did think.” That gets it pretty well, as does Berlin’s comment that Hamann “was a major force in transforming the ideas which hitherto had lived in small, self-isolated religious communities, remote from and opposed to the great world, into weapons in the public arena.” (Berlin’s following sentence, “His was the first great shot in the battle of the romantic... Read more

In a proto-Wittgensteinian vein, Hamann wrote to Jacobi: “Metaphysics has its own school and court languages . . . and I am incapable of either understanding or making use of them. Hence I am close to suspecting that the whole of our philosophy consists more of language than of reason, and the misunderstandings of countless words, the personification of arbitrary abstractions . . . have generated an entire world of problems which it is as vain to try to solve... Read more

In the Berlin-doesn’t-get-Hamann department, there’s also Berlin’s claim that for Hamann “existence logically precedes reason” and “there exists a pre-rational reality.” Not exactly. The world is there before we start reflecting on it; it’s got to be there for us to reflect on it. But for Hamann the real is supremely rational, for it is the expression of the eternal Logos and it itself logoi . Berlin made the fateful mistake from the outset, telling us in the introduction that... Read more

Isaiah Berlin’s book on Hamann is lively engaging, but Berlin doesn’t get Hamann. For instance: “Hamann’s constantly repeated point is that revelation is direct contact between one spirit and another, God and ourselves.” Not. The opposite is the case: His constantly repeated point is that God speaks to the creature through the creature (as Berlin earlier recognizes). It’s the bid for “direct contact” that Hamann detests, because it bypasses Scripture, history, bodies, and all the rest of empirical creation. Read more