Johann Georg Hamann
Johann Georg Hamann
Johann Georg Hamannwas a German philosopher, whose work was used by his student J. G. Herder as a main support of the Sturm und Drang movement, and associated by historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin with the Counter-Enlightenment. However, recent scholarship such as that by theologian Oswald Bayer places Hamann into a more nebulous category of theologian and philologist; he views him as less the proto-Romantic that Herder presented, and more a premodern-postmodern thinker who brought the consequences of Lutheran theology...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 August 1730
CountryGermany
Few authors understand themselves, and a proper reader must not only understand his author but also be able to see beyond him
Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind nor bond of society.
When I rest my feet my mind also ceases to function.
A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher.
The philosophers have always given truth a bill of divorce, by separating what nature has joined together and vice versa.
Hence it happens that one takes words for concepts, and concepts for the things themselves
Self knowledge begins with the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that goes from the mirror to the matter
Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.
The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone.
I look upon logical proofs the way a well-bred girl looks upon a love letter
Being, belief and reason are pure relations, which cannot be dealt with absolutely, and are not things but pure scholastic concepts, signs for understanding, not for worshipping, aids to awaken our attention, not to fetter it.
Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.
The farther reason looks the greater is the haze in which it loses itself.
Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.