Johann Georg Hamann

Quotes

• “Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.”
• “Every phenomenon of nature was a word, — the sign, symbol and pledge of a new, mysterious, inexpressible but all the more intimate union, participation and community of divine energies and ideas. Everything the human being heard from the beginning, saw with its eyes, looked upon and touched with its hands was a living word; for God was the word.”
• “The philosophers have always given truth a bill of divorce, by separating what nature has joined together and vice versa.”
• “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.”
• “Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.”
• “If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times. Reason is language — Logos; I gnaw on this marrowbone and will gnaw myself to death over it. It is still always dark over these depths for me: I am still always awaiting an apocalyptic angel with a key to this abyss.”

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Key facts

Born

( 1730-08-27 ) 27 August 1730, Königsberg , Kingdom of Prussia

Died

21 June 1788 (1788-06-21) (aged 57), Münster , Prince-Bishopric of Münster , Holy Roman Empire

Alma mater

University of Königsberg , (1746–1752; no degree)

Era

18th-century philosophy

Region

Western philosophy

School

Post-Kantian , Counter-Enlightenment , Sturm und Drang

Main interests

Aesthetics Epistemology Philosophy of language Philosophy of mind Philosophy of history Political philosophy

Notable ideas

"Reason is language" ("Vernunft ist Sprache")

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788).jpg

via Wikidata · CC0