Abstract
Hamann was a polemical and satirical philosopher. Two of his main targets in both respects were Kant and Herder. Hamann ridiculed Kant’s critical philosophy for its Enlightenment emphasis on cognitive universals, and its failure to recognize the importance both of spoken languages and a social community for human thought. While in many respects a “fellow traveler” with Hamann, Herder comes under satirical attack in these selections for related reasons. The argument is convoluted, but the key idea is that the sort of mental process which Herder takes to undergird the formation of “inner words” (at least in his essay On the Origin of Language) actually presupposes human freedom. But, insists Hamann, human freedom itself presupposes a social and historical context. The general lesson is that external linguistic representations, and the communities which employ them, must be prior to private inner “ideas."
Text from: Dickson, G.G. ed. 1995. Johann Georg Hamann’s Relational Metacriticism. Berlin: de Gruyter.
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Notes
- 1.
[Virgil, Aeneid 1.462 and Persius, Satire 1.1.]
- 2.
See A Treatise of Human Nature: Being An Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, vol. 1: Of the Understanding (London, 1739), p. 38. To my knowledge, this first masterpiece of the famous David Hume is said to be translated into French but not yet, like his last, into German. Also, the translation of the astute Berkeley’s philosophical works has unfortunately not progressed. The first part appeared in Leipzig in 1781 and contained only the Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, which had already appeared in Eschenbach’s Collection of Idealists (Rostock, 1756).
- 3.
[That is, Simonides. Cicero records the anecdote that when Hiero asked Simonides about the being and nature of God, Simonides repeatedly delayed giving an answer because, he said, “the longer I deliberate, the more obscure the question seems to me,” On the Nature of the Gods, 1.60. The story is also told by Philo in Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part 2.]
- 4.
[“Mene, mene, tekel” is the writing on the wall which Daniel interprets for Belshazzar, in Daniel 5. “Tekel” means “Thou art weighted in the balances, and art found wanting,” (Daniel 5:27). Jesus overthrows the tables of the money-changers in the temple at Mark 11:15.]
- 5.
[Matthew 13:33: “Another parable spake he [Jesus] unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened,” (also Luke 13:20–21). I Corinthians 5:7–8: “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened … Therefore let us keep the feast not with old leaven neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”]
- 6.
[In Aristotle the logical fallacy of establishing “the antecedent [proteron] by means of its consequents [hysteron]; for demonstration proceeds from what is more certain and is prior,” (Prior Analytics 2.16, 64b30–32).]
- 7.
[Claude-Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771), philosopher of the French Enlightenment. Of Man (1773), p. 200 (vol. 1, sect. 2, chap. 19): “When one attaches precise ideas to each expression, the scholastic who has so often confounded the world will be nothing but an impotent magician. The talisman which was the source of his power will be broken. Then all those fools who, under the name of metaphysician, have wandered such a long time in the land of chimeras and who in the windy beyond cross in every direction the depths of the infinite will no longer say that they see what they do not see and that they know what they do not know.”]
- 8.
[Samuel Heinicke (1727–1790) founded the first school for the deaf and dumb in Germany, in 1778. He wrote Observations on the mute and human language (1778) and On the thought of deaf-mutes (178), which Hamann read closely. Heinicke insisted on the priority of the spoken language for both deaf and hearing people; he argued that abstract thinking follows only after one has learned to use speech to deal with concrete objects perceived through the senses. His views on deaf education were contested by the Abbé de l’Epée, who promoted sign language. Both the Academy of Zurich (in 1783) and the University of Leipzig (in 1784) decided the question in favor of l’Epée, and his institute for deaf instruction went into decline. (See further Robert Harmon, “Samuel Heinicke,” Gallaudet Encyclopedia of Deaf People and Deafness (1987), 2:35–38).]
- 9.
[Matthew 19:6: “What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”]
- 10.
[The Tree of Diana, or Arbor Dianae, is “the dendritic amalgam precipitated by mercury from a solution of nitrate of silver,” (Oxford English Dictionary). The close resemblance of its structure to living vegetation was of great interest to investigators in the eighteenth century who were seeking a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. See Maupertuis’ Vénus physique (1756), chap. 17, p. 100 and Elizabeth B. Gasking, Investigations into Generation 1651–1828 (1967), p. 73.]
- 11.
[Luke 13:6–9: “He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.”]
- 12.
[Acts 19:35: “Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter?” (also Acts 19:27).]
- 13.
[Alludes to the communicatio idiomatum, “the interchange of the properties,” the theological doctrine that “while the human and Divine natures in Christ were separate, the attributes of the one may be predicated of the other in view of their union in the one Person of the Saviour” (Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church). See Luther’s “The Word Made Flesh,” Luther’s Works (American Edition) 38:254.]
- 14.
[In a treatise written to combat the view of the Eucharist as merely symbolic or representational, Luther argues that Christ spoke an “authoritative word,” a Machtwort, and not merely a Nachwort (an imitative word) when he instituted that sacrament: “his word is indeed not merely an imitative word but an authoritative word, which accomplishes what it expresses,” (Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, 27:181 of Luther’s Works, American Edition). Also contrast Luther’s discussion of the copula “is” (p. 308 and elsewhere) with Kant’s dismissal of it.]
- 15.
[A galimatias is “confused language, meaningless talk, nonsense,” (Oxford English Dictionary), a word Hamann found in Rabelais.]
- 16.
[Mahanaim is taken to mean “two camps” or “two hosts.” Genesis 32:1–2: “And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is God’s host: and he called the name of that place Mahanaim.” See also Song of Songs 6:13: “Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies” (for “company of two armies” Luther has “the dance to Mahanaim”).]
- 17.
[The Shulamite is the beloved of the Song of Songs. At the beginning of the Theogony, Hesiod invokes the Muses, describes their birth, and accounts for their importance to kings and singers.]
- 18.
[Arnobius, in Adversus nations 5.25, recounts the story of Ceres, who after the abduction of her daughter wanders disconsolately until she reaches Eleusis, where Baubo does what she can to comfort the goddess. Unsuccessful, Baubo changes tactics and tells coarse jokes. She then exposes her genitals, causing Ceres to laugh and providing an “unheard-of kind of solace” for the goddess.]
- 19.
[Hamann’s vocabulary is theological. “Institution” refers to the establishment or ordination of the sacrament of the Eucharist with the words spoken by Christ. “Elements” are the bread and wine that become the body and blood of Christ during the sacrament of the Eucharist. For Luther, a sacrament (baptism as well as the Eucharist) was made by the unity of the institution and elements. In the Large Catechism, Luther quotes Augustine for both sacraments: “When the Word is joined to the external element, and it becomes a sacrament … The Word must make the element a sacrament otherwise it remains a mere element” (see p. 448 of the Large Catechism in The Book of Concord, tr. Tappert 1959).]
- 20.
[From Archimedes’ boast that with a place to stand outside of the world, he would move the world.]
- 21.
[The initial false premise invalidating the later deduction; the term derives from Aristotle’s Prior Analytics 2.18 (66a).]
- 22.
[“Metagrabolize,” a word favored by Rabelais, means to puzzle, mystify, confound.]
- 23.
[Cicero’s Orator 32.113: “Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school, used to give an object lesson of the difference between the two arts; clenching his fist he said logic was like that; relaxing and extending his hand, he said eloquence was like an open palm” (tr. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library). Also in Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos 2.7.]
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Dyck, C. (2017). Johann Georg Hamann. In: Cameron, M., Hill, B., Stainton, R. (eds) Sourcebook in the History of Philosophy of Language. Springer Graduate Texts in Philosophy, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26908-5_37
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