HAMANN, JOHANN GEORG. - Philosopher, b. at Königsberg on 27 Aug. 1730, d. at Münster on 21 June 1788.

After a disorderly youthful life, the reading of the Bible worked in him a "conversion" of plainly pietistic flavor (1758). This sense of mystical "illumination" then remained perpetual in his life and coexisted with the exaltation of sensuality as an "arm of virility." In an age of Enlightenment H. felt his mission (Bestimmung) in a typically anti-rationalistic way (even the most ordinary affair becomes prayer); in a mechanistic age he did not believe in the abstract concept of a God who "charges" the universe once and for all, but felt the divinity as a spirit always "present."

Indeed, in his various letters, aphorisms, and libels (among his most important or most piquant works: Gedanken über meinen Lebenslauf; Golgatha und Scheblimini; Aesthetica in nuce; Abdelardi Virbii chimicristiche Einfälle...; Des Ritters von Rosencreutz letzte Willensmynung..., etc.) there appears a conscious irrationalist: existence is by far superior to reason, history is a "sealed book" that reason itself cannot open, religion is beyond the human gnoseological attempt (at a certain point, however, faith seems to be reduced to an apprehensive organ), the "genius" of the individual surpasses abstract reason. On the political plane H. is against bureaucratic paternalism and enlightened despotism. His hermeticism then makes him discern in the unfathomable vitalities of language the unifying and determining elements of the Nation.

A restless spirit, a lover of "mystery" (he was called the "magus of the north"), H. enjoyed immense fortune among the succeeding Romantic generations: his fragmentarism and his hermeticism had in fact contributed to the crisis of geometric clarity and of the spirit of system, central elements of Enlightenment rationalism.

Bibliography15 works

BIBL.: Schriften, ed. by F. Roth, 8 vols., Berlin 1821-43; C. H. Gildemeister, J. G. H.s des Magus im Norden Leben und Schriften, 6 vols., Gotha 1857-73; Sibyllinische Blätter des Magus ausgewählt u. eingeleitet von R. Unger, Jena 1905; M. Petri, J. G. H.s Schriften u. Briefe, 4 parts, Hannover 1873-74; see also H. J. G., Tagebuch eines Christens, edited by I. Nadler, Vienna 1949. Studies: H. Weber, H. und Kant, Nördlingen 1903; J. Blum, La vie et l'oeuvre de J. G. H., Paris 1912; R. Unger, H. und die Aufklärung, Halle 1925; J. Nadler, Die Hamanunggabe, ibid. 1930; L. Bianchi, H. und Herder, Bologna 1930; A. Gerbi, La politica del romanticismo, Bari 1932, pp. 64-114; E. Metzke, J. G. H.s Stellung in der Philosophie des 18. Jahrhunderts, Halle 1934; the introduction by S. Lupi to J. G. H., Scritti e frammenti di estetica, Florence 1938; C. Antoni, La lotta contro la ragione, ibid. 1942, pp. 125-50; B. Croce, Storia dell'estetica per saggi, Bari 1942, pp. 156-60; P. Klosowski, Les méditations bibliques de H., Paris 1948.

Massimo Petrocchi

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Hamann, Johann Georg

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