Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten

by Johann Georg Hamann

Die Schrift Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten wurde von Johann Georg Hamann im Jahre 1759 verfasst. Der Essay ist eine der ersten schriftstellerischen Arbeiten Hamanns überhaupt und entstand nach einem religiösen Erweckungserlebnis. Hamann setzt sich in seinem Aufsatz mit dem Rationalismus der europäischen Aufklärung auseinander, adressiert ist er an seinen früheren Studienkollegen Johann Christoph Berens und an Kant in Königsberg, der damals bereits als Dozent an der dortigen Universität lehrte. Die Schrift war, wohl auch wegen Hamanns dunkler und verklausulierter Sprache, kein Publikumserfolg, wurde aber von den Literaten des Sturms und Drang bis zur Romantik rezipiert. Hamann fand sich im Leben nicht zurecht und bei einem Aufenthalt in London flüchtete er sich in das Studium der Bibel. Im Frühling 1758 erfuhr er beim Lesen eine erschütternde Begegnung mit Gott, die ihn vom Aufklärer zum Gläubigen machte.

Genres: Philosophy, Romanticism, Essays, Christian

44 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1759

About the author

Johann Georg Hamann (August 27, 1730, Königsberg – June 21, 1788, Münster) was an important German philosopher, a main proponent of the Sturm und Drang movement, and associated by historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin with the Counter-Enlightenment. He was Pietist Lutheran, and a friend (while being an intellectual opponent) of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. He was also a lutenist, having studied this instrument with Timofey Belogradsky (a student of Sylvius Leopold Weiss), a Ukrainian virtuoso then living in Königsberg. He was known by the epithet Magus im Norden ("Magus of the North").

His distrust of reason and the Enlightenment ("I look upon logical proofs the way a well-bred girl looks upon a love letter" was one of his many witicisms) led him to conclude that faith in God was the only solution to the vexing problems of philosophy.

Reviews

[Erick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've wanted to read Johann Hamann for a while and I finally got around to it. I was very impressed with this work and I hope to read more in the near future.
Johann Georg Hamann was a German Romantic prose writer; a leader of the so-called "sturm und drang", or "storm and stress" movement, which was really the quintessential German romantic movement. He was opposed to much that passed for enlightenment ideals in the late 18th and early 19th century. He was a committed Lutheran Christian with a strong poetic sense; although, he wrote mostly prose as far as I am aware. He was friends with Kant, but obviously they didn't see eye to eye when it came to the primacy of reason. Hamann influenced quite a number of German writers at the time: Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and, later, influenced the Dane, Soren Kierkegaard. One definitely can see some echoes in Kierkegaard. It can probably be safely assumed that as far as writers go, Hamann may have been one of the favorites of Kierkegaard.
This is one of Hamann's primary works. It is actually more of an essay. It is sort of a commentary on the enlightenment with Socrates as Hamann and the enlightenment philosophers as the sophists. The work itself is fairly short, but the thought is dense enough, with numerous literary allusions, that it warranted a treatment like you have here. O'Flaherty has provided plenty of notes and an ample introduction to make this work more accessible for a first time reader of Hamann. Cambridge has an anthology of Hamann's writings that I intend to read next; one should note that this work is not included in that anthology and that is why I purchased and read this first.

[Adam Carnehl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume is a critical introduction to Johann Georg Hamann's life and philosophy, a commentary on his Sokratische Denkwuerdigkeiten, and an annotated translation of that entire work. It's written by the late James O'Flaherty (♰ 2002), professor of German at Wake Forest University, who was the dean of all American J. G. Hamann research in the latter half of the 20th century, as Ronald Gregor Smith (♰ 1968) was in the United Kingdom and Oswald Bayer (b. 1938) is today in continental Europe. Currently this book (published 1967, Johns Hopkins Press) is quite rare and expensive, but with the resurgence of interest in the "Magus of the North," I expect to see it come back into print eventually. In the meantime, readers who want an introduction to Hamann should consult John Betz's outstanding book, and those who want to dip into the Magus's writings should get the volume of Hamann's writings edited by Kenneth Haynes in the Cambridge Texts series.

Hamann's Socratic Memorabilia were written in response to two of Hamann's friends: Immanuel Kant, who needs no introduction, and J. C. Berens, a well-to-do merchant of Riga. The Magus's life is marked by his rich and intense friendships with various people, and quite often, as is the case with his Socratic Memorabilia, fascinating letters and other writings would be Hamann's contribution to these many continuing conversations with people. After Hamann's dramatic return to Christ in London in 1758, Berens and Kant were, apparently, attempting to 'de-Christianize' him and return him to their freethinking Enlightenment mindset. Hamann's response to this attempt is this puzzling 25-page document, this reflection on Socrates' life, death, and style of philosophy.

For Hamann, Socrates is in one camp, along with the Hebrew prophets, all holy fools, and Christ (his anti-type). In the other camp are the Sophists which include the French "encyclopedists," all systematicians, and Kant and Berens themselves. The camps are roughly divided by how one situates the place of human reason. Hamann understands that the Enlightenment tendency to enthrone reason above all other human powers leads to hubristic desires for immortality, system building, and, ultimately, idolatry (apostasy). The Memorabilia points out that there is a paradox at the heart of all human striving which Socrates embodied: the son of a sculptor and midwife, the wisest man according to the oracle at Delphi who was self-described as the most ignorant of all, the man married to two women who was also a homosexual, the greatest of all Greeks who also left not a shred of writing . . . It is he, the destroyer of the sophistic spirit, who gave a bitter pill to the self-assured Greeks to swallow. It was for this that they killed him. Hamann brilliantly demonstrates, via his usual methods and devices ("metaschematism," irony, paradox, allusion, typology, antonomasia, periphrasis, etc.), that he now follows Socrates and will give a bitter pill (which he calls a "laxative"!) to Kant, Berens, and the sophistic spirit of the eighteenth century. Hamann will expose their errors and idolatries; he will expose their follies and their foolishness. The Socrates (or prophet, or Christ) of the age will always speak in riddles, like Hamann, and be misunderstood, like Hamann. But this is his little attempt at being the signpost that points to truth.

In a letter to a friend, Hamann once wrote, "[All] my opuscula taken together comprise an Alcibiadean shell." Like Alcibiades, the young friend of Socrates who loved him, Hamann is attempting to "clothe" his ideas via his literary constructions and then give them to the public, which probably won't understand them at all. But for those who do understand, for those who do grasp the love Alcibiades has for his teacher and admirer, they, too, will be led to embrace him and learn from him. In everything Hamann is pointing to Christ, the One to whom Socrates and the prophets pointed, the One in whom the paradoxes of total fulness and total emptiness coincide, who also left no system, no writings, no arguments, but rather, men and women who loved him.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't read all of O'Flaherty's commentary, just his biographical overview of Hamann. The rest seemed excessive given the short length of Hamann's essay. However, the critical apparatus was very useful for understanding Hamann's obscure & caustic references to his contemporaries.

Hamann is responding to a rationalistic portrait of Socrates that was emerging, especially due to Brucker's 1742 Critical History of Philosophy. For Brucker, Socrates' infamous daemon was merely "the divine power of reason", with the supernatural aspects of this daemon being a misunderstanding due to the superstitions of his followers. Hamann takes the opposite approach, arguing that Socrates' daemon, and Socrates' famous "ignorance", was something like belief/faith/sensibility, not reason. He then argues that Socrates was an "Idiot", basically a holy fool, and a prefiguration of Christ.

There's more going on, notably a bit of Hamann's philosophy of language, emphasizing the multiplicity of meaning a phrase like "I know nothing" can take. Hamann also makes a great deal out of the fact that Socrates was the son of a sculptor, but it was too cryptic for me to say with any confidence what he intended.