Hamann's Ontology
This, my first post was inspired by Brian’s essay on ‘The Appropriation of the Figure of Nietzsche in Heidegger, Deleuze… and Badiou?’. I believe his explanation of the theory of the event in Badiou resonates with certain parts of Hamann’s ontology. I had hoped to reveal this similarity in more forceful terms, however, it is apparent as a result of writing this piece that an attempt to do so is not only impossible, but unhelpful in terms of understanding Hamann’s unique position. So, it seemed best not to stretch the envelope too far. Despite this concern, I have chosen to retain some of the language used in Brian’s essay so as to offer a less mystical, and thus philosophically discussable appraisal of Hamann.
Hamann’s Ontology
“What does this young person mean to make of me?” – If only I understand my hero as well as Simon the tanner! (Hamann 1995, Socratic Memorabilia, p. 65)
[1] Attempts to formulate Hamann’s philosophy according to a consistent ontological theory have been notoriously difficult. The very nature of Hamann’s project, combined with its stylistic idiosyncrasies has further confounded the task. In this paper I will attempt to bring about a clearer definition of his ontology, driven by a proposition that it is best understood according to a fundamental division. Initially I will present my understanding in language alien to Hamann’s prose. From this short elucidation I will go on to express the theory in an extended manner, drawing examples from his writing.
[2] At the heart of Hamann’s philosophy rests a paradox. Grasping the nature of this dilemma is central to an understanding of his ontological position. The problem is best summarised by two apparently incompatible premises:
i) Humanity must maintain its relation to God as the transcendental precondition of existence. This is achieved through the biblical conception of grace, which links divinity to the manifest world of beings through the process of creation. Man and, for Hamann world too, are made in God’s image.
ii) That humanity accept the directive that meaning be derived from the existential world, which is condescended as an inconsistent infinity, capable of manifesting itself through multiple situations, each with its particular axiomatic dynamic.
From these two contrary propositions there arises a fundamental division within Hamann’s ontological structure. There is a requirement made that he defend a fiercely metaphysical view, which perceives a transcendental origin for our world, and an anti-metaphysical perspective, which pictures a world, where truths are existentially derived case-by-case. This requires a simultaneous belief in a transcendent other that exists in a state of infinite consistency, and a world that is experienced as a set of speciously related situations. More confusing still is the fact that this world’s existence as a state composed of fluctuating situations is made in the image of that which is singularly consistent.
[3] In answer to this paradox the following thesis is established: divine creation does not equate to divine manifestation; there is no room for a notion of pantheism in Hamann. Contra to Spinoza a shared ontological depth does not equate to a universal communicability or order between situations. God is understood only as the giver, or existential signifier, and not as a model or embodiment of ontological consistency. The world is a condescended unity, this being an absent ground devoid of God’s will; it is in metaphysical terms a void or pure inconsistent infinity. From this circumstance there occurs the possibility of an infinite variety of situations manifesting as what Hamann calls ‘archipelagos’ (islands of concern). However, these concerns present in each situation, do not act as sites of revelation; the prospect of subjective transcendence is rendered impossible by the original inconsistency of the world.
[4] Universal consistency is unattainable, but this, rather than collapsing meaning back into the nihilistic void, opens up the possibility of holding simultaneously contradictory proofs in relation to the given parameters of a situation, precisely because individual proofs are not valued according to a meta-thesis. Thus, the void is a precondition present in every situation, but never an answer to be decanted from its particularity. This produces a realm where concerns must be founded in the dynamic of each situation: we make our judgements according to these relations. Hamann singles out the following types of judgement as principle examples of this condition: aesthetic feeling, poetic interpretation, and ultimately love. These types of engagement are only possible once it is accepted that in a given situation a number of equally sustainable yet contrary positions may be held (truth in these cases remains indiscernible).
[5] This condition of inspired feeling based upon the possibilities derived from the particular axioms of a given situation, equate in Hamann’s language to the following ontological position: Man and world imitate God, not through the consistency of design, but through their freedom to care and feel for their existent world as he does. God gave his world the freedom to internally contradict itself, so that it might maintain and inspire itself without his presence or omnipotent power; its only debt to him, was that its denizens maintain a faith in the world as something that matters. To conclude, feeling as a characteristic central to our existential-being is dependent on certain necessarily indiscernible notions of truth present in every given situation, and this relation mirrors God’s relation to his world, which remains indiscernible in its separated existence from his divine unity.
[6] Having spelt out Hamann’s ontological position, in as brief a manner as I can , I shall now try to draw this same structure from his texts. As a starting point I will examine his definition of a new methodological direction for philosophy. To achieve this, something further needs to be said regarding the intellectual climate that leads him to this turn. In Hamann’s first mature work, The Socratic Memorabilia (first published in 1759), a defence is given to Kant and Berens regarding the methodological possibility of philosophy under the conditions of his new faith. Hamann had returned in 1758 from an unsuccessful business venture undertaken on behalf of the family of his university friend Berens. The nature of this failure had had a dramatic impact upon the young scholar: for the final months of his stay in London he studied and completed an extended biblical tract. The text asserted a revised and radicalised form of empirically based Lutheranism. Hamann who had left an ardent supporter of the Aufklärung returned a religious mystic. The consequence of this was the weakening of links between himself and the Berens and more importantly a rejection of his marital aspirations towards Katerina their daughter. However, the rift was not absolute. Berens enlisted the help of his close friend, a certain Immanuel Kant, to rebuild a working relation between the two. So started a year of protracted correspondence and half-projects. Ultimately, Kant’s refusal to respond to Hamann’s letters, which expressed anxieties about the certainty of enlightenment rationality, inspired the speedy and feverish writing of The Socratic Memorabilia. The essay was written both as a defence of his position and as a challenge to Kant’s. The foundation of this challenge rested with an elucidation of Socrates as a typological vehicle for a better philosophical praxis. Two key themes need to be drawn from the text in order to understand its argument: the characteristics of ‘humility’, ‘ignorance’ and ‘faith’ required of the philosopher, and the inversion of Humean scepticism as a contemporary source for Lutherean revitalisation. I will analyse each of these in turn.
[7] The introduction to the Socratic Memorabilia begins in a manner particular to Hamann; a series of dedications are swiftly followed by a paean to its recipients, namely Kant, Berens and the anonymous academic body: “With a double dedication to NOBODY and to TWO.” (Hamann 1995, Socratic Memorabilia, p. 57) In addressing his inquisitors in this manner, he attempts to invert the subject of his tribunal, as Socrates used his trial to analyse the views of those condemning him. The faults Hamann chooses to scrutinize are pride and avarice: the false idols of the current philosophical community. In tackling pride, he raises grave concerns over the possibility of establishing truth as a known quotient or transcendental condition particular to every experience: “to dissect a body or event down to its first elements…” would in turn make Man a master of his own fictitious religion. (Ibid, p. 64) Avarice is allied to this drive through the belief that philosophical deductions are capable of calculating the relative values of conceptual systems, according to their potential mastery of experience. Hamann expresses this pact through the term alchemy: it being the rational transformation of material resources, as the highest political, and therefore theoretical project. He writes: “No aspect of criticism is more certain than that which has been invented for gold and silver. Therefore no confusion in Germany can be as great as that which has crept into all the usual text-books.” (Ibid, p. 60) A rejection of this principle is made: it is abhorrent and disrespectful to the true practice of philosophy that an economic register be applied to the process of theoretical argumentation; this control brings about an inauthentic relation to experience, best expressed by the age’s mania for productivity. Yet, the Aufklärung through figures such as Adam Smith, ironically the subject of Hamann’s only pre-conversion essay, established the legitimacy of this capitalistic enterprise. For Hamann, this is an essentially blasphemous act carried out against the complexity of God’s condescended world. In a piece of typical Hamannian prose, he suggests his words will act as sweet and irresistible cakes that will ultimately burst the belly of this idol: the perfect laxative for his age.
[8] The problematic of the era predetermines Hamann’s choice of the first characteristic required of the philosopher. He or she must not seek to take the place, nor act as the human idolisation of God’s divine power and transcendental unity; one’s relation to the world must in contrast accept its humble condescended origin. When Hamann suggests that the philosopher comes to actively embrace the humility of his or her origin, as an existential being, he uncovers a central ontological value: that the stimulus of our existent situation provides the only reliable starting point for philosophy. Transcendent aspirations are akin to sacrilege. A biographical skit of Socrates’ upbringing secures the thesis. Learning lessons from his mother, a midwife, and father, a sculptor, Socrates establishes a particular attentiveness to the world. First as a midwife he, “merely comes to the aid of the work of the mother and her ripe fruit, and assists both.” (Ibid, p. 66) In philosophical terms, Socrates remains attentive to the pregnant moment; he helps it give birth to its particular presentations and concerns. Then as a sculptor he personifies the twin powers of critique and creation. He hews out the bad aspirations, which seek to master experience unjustly, as the sculptor removes the dead and unwanted wood, leaving a manifest image or notion derived from the axioms of the situation. The method rejected a transformation of experience into philosophical building blocks, and thus realised a humble relation to the pre-eminence of experience: “Therefore the greatest men of his time had ‘sufficient reason’ to cry that he would fell all the oaks of their woods, spoil all their logs, and could only make shavings of their timber.” (Ibid, p. 66) One’s thoughts, if they are not to amount to a deluded intellectual authority, must accept their origin amongst the concerns of the subject’s existential situation: this is what Hamann determines as humility.
[9] Despite expressing the ideal of humility, Socrates’ peculiarly sensitive character does not amount to a potential state-of-mind or stimmung from which the harmony of ontological consistency may be disclosed. By staying close to the empirical stimulus of experience, Socrates encounters at first hand the inconsistency of the existential realm. His parental influences drew him simultaneously to the beautiful and the boisterously sexual nature of experience. Between the expressions of the intellect and the lusting of the body he found his world one of irreconcilable choices – these choices being the true subject of human endeavour. Hamann raises Socrates' notoriety: “his taste for well-built youths.” (Ibid, p. 67) Rather than sweeping these aside, as many esteemed philologists did, leaving a polite figure in Socrates’ place, Hamann suggests this vice (there was no doubt for a man of Hamann’s age that homosexuality was) need not sully the intellectual validity of his actions. In this quandary lay a hidden subtext, meant specifically for Kant and Berens. Whilst in London Hamann himself had become involved with a rich lord, who housed him through several months of poverty: whether the relationship was based on love, lust or money it is impossible to decipher. Hamann found great comfort in Socrates’ struggle, and a retort to the disapproval of his peers: if confusion arose in the stimulus of the admirable form (the masculine body), which provided a number of sustainable judgements (lust being one), this dilemma had to be faced. Avoiding vice through the authority of doctrine did not attend in a solicitous manner to the actual problems of existence: these were to be felt and experienced. Neither consistent rational argument nor moral law could sustain a judgement against such actions; they could not persuade the soul, nor alleviate the feeling initiated by the situation; to do so would be a sin: “One cannot feel a lively friendship without sensuality, and a metaphysical love perhaps sins more coarsely against the nerves than an animal love against flesh and blood.” (Ibid, p.68) If the example of gender determination sits unhappily with our current liberal standpoint, the general methodological principle derived from it should not. The object of philosophy is experience, replete with contradictions; these should not be replaced with an avoidant metaphysic, but applauded. Thus, the premise that we replace existential dilemmas with consistent metaphysics, is to be supplanted by an empirical counter that attends to the possibilities of an often indiscernible world: “The pagans were accustomed to such contradictions from the clever fables of their poets; until their sophists, like ours, damned them as they would a parricide, which one commits against the basic principles of human knowledge.” (Ibid, p. 68)
[10] However, Socrates’ sensible relation to his world does not fully explain his philosophy. Without a mode of intellectual engagement, a grasp of one’s existential origin remains little more than a haphazard potential for emotional response. How does one respond to the struggle that is existence, in a manner that is authentically philosophical? Initially he tells us what this intellectual engagement must not be: sophistry as the false arguments of unification is denounced. Instead, the philosopher embraces an approach founded on the perpetual declarations of ignorance. Hamann states that to achieve intellectual expression, Socrates was condemned as a hypochondriac is plagued by the need to describe his imaginary symptoms, to decree a continual avowal of ignorance; this act determines his wisdom. (Ibid, p. 70) He expressed the symptoms of sophistry, arguing in a rhetorical fashion, whilst lacking the rational disease that afflicts theorists of this type. In Socrates’ hypochondria there stands a warning, one must not misappropriate his most quoted maxim: ‘I know nothing!’ No dialectic or sophistic trick must turn on the negation of knowledge as a first philosophical principle. Three inauthentic models are revealed; in all, a learned demonstration of ignorance is required to free philosophy of the shame of knowing nothing. First, in Descartes an inability to express certainties about the world, does allow access to a notion of self: doubt affirms ego as an irrefutable fact. Then in Shaftesbury, an inversion of the rational depth of existence for an affirmational comprehension of flux and force, establishes irrationality as a basis for human knowledge. And finally, of most import to Hamann is the stance held by the pre-critical Kant and the German Enlightenment in general: that the as yet unknown world provides itself as the subject for a project of comprehension. With relation to these historical reinterpretations of Socrates’ philosophical ignorance, Hamann spits: “The ancient and modern sceptics may swaddle themselves in the lion-skin of Socratic ignorance as much as they like; but they betray themselves by their voices and ears.” (Ibid, p. 73) Instead, Socrates being truly ignorant is not ashamed of his failings: “he is ignorant even of the shame, which haunts rational people, of seeming ignorant.” (Ibid, p. 70) But, what sort of philosophy does this mean Socrates practices?
[11] Hamann tells us that Socrates enters into rhetorical debate, in the manner a card player might, if he at first declares: “I don’t play.” (Ibid, p. 72) The statement, ‘I don’t play’, can be read in several ways, but only one displays the true wisdom of Socratic ignorance. Ignorance might equate to the refusal to play, as a lack of knowledge might equate to a genuine unawareness of the rules of the game; or it might be claimed as a refusal on moral grounds. However, these two readings do not fit Socrates; he was neither a philosophical novice, nor a moral critic. So, when he claimed in the heat of philosophical debate that he was not aligned, or even capable of expressing the meaning of existence, what was he seeking to achieve; how could he win from such a position? The answer is simple: ‘I don’t play’, means literally, ‘I don’t play to win’. The conception of play as a combative term is refuted. Socrates did not want to participate as swindlers and deceivers do; his mistress was chance, not competition. No desire drove him to impose his perception of truth; rather he sought to reintroduce the situation’s concerns to the debate. To do this he had to play the game better than all the cheating academics, only then could he rest the questions that matter from the aims of individual power. The feeling these concerns introduced was more important than their mastery. In summary, the declaration of ignorance is a philosophical argument that returns the dialogue of sophistry to the realm of experience: “The ignorance of Socrates was feeling.” (Ibid, p. 73) By speaking in this way, Socrates was able to adhere to the problems of life, without asserting a role as an explainer of existence, and by proxy drag those who had lost sight of the earthly origins of their questions, to those feelings that had first inspired them to philosophise.
[12] Reflecting on Hamann’s interpretation of Socrates’ philosophical practice as I have presented it, the following points can be summarised: humility promotes, as the true subject of philosophy, the dilemmas of existential experience over ontological consistency; declarations of ignorance maintain a discussion of experiential problems over the false resolutions of sophistic thought. By accepting these factors, Socrates’ ideological strategy cannot be sustained by the compelling force of rationalism. Hamann must suggest an alternative initiative for his praxis: the concept of faith is given. Faith operates in a manner completely different to reason: “faith arises as little from reason as tasting and feeling.” (Ibid, p. 73) By this Hamann means that thought does not require the certainty of logical proof to ‘feel’ for its subject and, that in-fact our feelings often stand in stark contrast to the reasons we use to explain them. Accordingly, he asserts the following thesis: proofs may be believed without us having faith in them or their ends.
[13] As a philosophical term faith accepts a universal depth apparent in existence; it is ‘a faith in existence’. This mode of belief differs from a belief in a particular proof: it is founded on nothing. Faith is the definition of a human ability to believe without proofs; this is something one does every time they accept the empirical stimulus of experience, as that which inspires concern. Its advantage is that it is able to access the value of a judgement according to the needs of the situation from which it is born. This worth is furthered when a situation’s needs remain indiscernible; here faith accepts the existential challenge of choice rather than seeking to close the situation’s integral axiomatic dilemma. In contrast to this positive relation, reason by accepting the unifying potential of its proofs, blinds the wisest individual, making their selection of one of many proofs, ‘the truth’: “There are proofs of truths which are as worthless as the use to which these truths can be put; indeed, one can believe the proof of a proposition without applauding the proposition itself.” (Ibid, p. 73) The philosopher like the poet must remain capable of feeling for their world, even when their model of order falters in the face of an essentially indiscernible situation – philosophy is an open-ended and creative struggle carried out by individuals who have faith in this existential task as something that universally matters. Traditionally philosophy has not been able to achieve this comprehension; without faith it requires its idol of transcendental order to impose authority, and in this way relates its project to a false-god, loosing any meaningful (existentially felt) direction for its judgements: “Fate places the greatest philosophers and poets in circumstances where they both feel; and the one renounces his reason, and reveals to us that he does not believe in the best of all possible worlds, no matter how well he can prove it, and the other finds himself robbed of his muse and his guardian angel with the death of his Meta.” (Ibid, p. 73)
[14] Socrates manifests the characteristic of faith through his daemon. He listened to what it said and found purpose in its concerns: “he had a genie on whose knowledge he could rely, whom he loved and feared as his god, whose peace mattered more to him than all the reason of the Egyptians and the Greeks, whose voice he believed…” (Ibid, p. 75) It is his ability to listen to this passionate voice, which prohibits his declarations of ignorance becoming an inert thinking. By allowing Socrates to respond to his feelings, Hamann finds his actions directed by the potential of ‘genius’. Genius is the intuitive act carried out without adherence to reasons dictates: the proactive result of faith. Arguments born in this way transform philosophy into an artistic act; by which Hamann means Socrates creates a language and form of communication that is inspiring. He relies on analogy, sensuous analysis, mockery, humour, and a total lack of respect for truth in the application of his method. This changes philosophy’s very form. Its model should no longer be the comprehension of knowledge via instruction; instead it affirms intuition. Between its conflicting proofs and propositions one feels concern for the issues it frames. The success of the philosopher is staked on his or her ability to engage their ‘public’ in a manner that gives them access to the orientation of faith. Hamann perceives the whole of Socrates’ life as an attempt to do this; he therefore imitates at a stylistic level what he deems a Socratic method. The Socratic Memorabilia, ought to arouse a feeling in its readers (Kant and Berens); clean their ‘systems’ of the false judgements by which they condemn him, and once more reveal a world of concerns.
[15] This conclusion draws together the requirements of humility, ignorance and faith in a unified philosophical approach. The disclosure as it has been presented so far has explained in some detail its functioning according to the second of my proposed premises: that meaning be derived from the existential world, which is condescended as an inconsistent infinity, capable of manifesting itself through multiple situations, each with its particular concerns. Socrates’ philosophy feels for and consequently acts as a way of disclosing these concerns to its community. But, this argument fulfils only one half of his ontological system. It cannot be forgotten that Hamann was a religious man, and that the Socratic Memorabilia also acts as a defence of this belief.
[16] Hamann’s religious conversion had resulted in a particular construal of Lutherean Christianity. Whilst in London, Hamann had read the bible for an extended period, finally drawing his notion of faith from this experience. If in relation to Socrates’ philosophical practice, faith had retained a peculiarly secular status, in its biblical derivation a theological significance is conserved. In adherence with traditional Lutherean values, Hamann considered a turn to the text over Church doctrine essential. The bible stands as the source of guidance and thus religious comprehension for Man in his condescended state. From it, the individual may recognise the authority of God, the limits of his or her freewill, and a faith that these facts are not only true, but also universally matter. However, for Hamann the nature of God’s authority is not expressed according to an unequivocal code of conduct; his authority means simply that the issues he sets before us are important and must be attended to. Therefore, the loss of freewill does not equate to a state of divine determinism, but as a relation that accepts one’s existential creation: Man is free to sin, but not free to overcome the temptations of existence. Thus, faith must be seen as a belief in God’s world, as something we belong to and cannot help but feel for. The bible acts as a stimulus to this effect: its narratives, its poetic language and allegorical form demands an engagement with the issues of existence in an interpretative manner. As a text it inspires feeling, presenting God’s relation to his world, by imitating this concern in its manifest state. Thus, for Hamann, the bible is an authority only in as much as it provides the hermeneutic subject for our feelings. Stated simply, biblical interpretation provides access to an empty, yet ameliorating metaphysical truth. In every situation, irrespective of the multiplicity of sustainable judgements we can make, God’s concern for his world is mirrored in our feelings; this truth exists as a zero degree proposition.
[17] To better understand Hamann’s affirmation of faith as the notion of belief without proof, it helps to place his argument in the context of the theological debate of his time. What disturbed the religious mind most in the eighteenth century was how God could act as the rational source of all meaning, when his world existed as its apparent antithesis; with suffering and reward arbitrarily distributed. The intellectuals of the era answered the challenge through Leibniz’s thesis: that the world existed as the best of all possible worlds, and consequently certain cases of evil had to be endured for the universal and historical good of Mankind. Hamann’s problems were twofold in relation to this theodicy. The first was purely subjective, as an individual he found it impossible to reconcile a belief in a rational God with the stoicism required of Leibniz’s logic; what he existentially felt contradicted what he could prove: “What one believes has therefore no need of proof; and a proposition can be irrefutably proven without being believed.” (Ibid, p. 72) In addition he provided a philosophical attack: how do we know that the world is created in a consistent form? It is on this thesis that the whole of Leibniz’s argument stands: God being a perfect mind produced a world in which his order was reflected in every being, and in the highest of these, the intellectually enlightened substantial form (human beings) there occurred a rational comprehension of the consistent concomitance between existent substances. Through the writings of Hume, Hamann turned this basic question into a fractious disagreement. What Hamann seeks to take from Hume’s empirical philosophy, is the notion that meaning is necessarily derived from experience. Judgements are applied a posteriori to sense perception, and are therefore the results of experience. Our only access to our world is that derived through these sensory stimuli; therefore we must remain eternally sceptical of the propositions we use to explain existence, as these too are only testable a posteriori. If this traditional attack upon rationalism is well known, Hamann’s deviation of the argument is not. He controversially inverts the sceptical result of Hume’s argument, and raises faith in its place: “The reasonings of a Hume may be convincing and their refutations clear postulates and doubts; but faith both wins and loses greatly by this most skilful pettifogger and most honourable attorney.” (Ibid, p. 72) The Hume who seeks the establishment of a scientific project based in empirical testing is a pettifogger. However, the honourable attorney, the good Hume, asserts the universal truth of faith. Empirically what we experience is inspirational, it affirms its divine creation, without the need of a priori proof. Religious faith is thus established without a need to first offer rational proof. Our world matters even when we cannot understand it; thus when if differs from our conception of how it rationally should be, we still retain a valuable relation and concern for it.
[18] To summarise Hamann’s religious stance it can be said that through the declaration of faith, one can express the value of experience as uniformly related to God, and therefore the ground, or ontological depth from which all concern arises, without defining the nature, or operation of this depth. One may have a faith in God, without having him function as a comprehensible proof or rational system. God feels for rather than manages his world – and man must therefore feel rather than try to usurp his imagined authority. Of significant import to Hamann’s thought is the fact that whilst maintaining faith in existence, one is free to accept the duplicity and non-conformity of the particular propositions drawn from each and every situation. This duality of judgement exemplifies Hamann’s ontological division that states: that indiscernible occurrences can exist within a consistent ground.
[19] To conclude this explanative exercise, I would like to draw my conclusions in relation to one of Hamann’s exemplary passages. In Aesthetica en Nuce: A Rhapsody in Kabalistic Prose (first published in 1762) there is provided what I believe to be the most lucid and succinct disclosure of Hamann’s ontological viewpoint:
[T]he book of creation has instances of universal concepts which GOD desired to reveal to the creature through the creature; the books of the covenant contains instances of the secret articles which GOD wanted to reveal to people through people. The unity of the Prime Mover is mirrored even in the dialect of his work; in all One note of immeasurable depth! A proof of the most glorious majesty and purest self-emptying! A miracle of such infinite silence, that makes GOD as nothing, that one in conscience must deny his existence or be a beast; but at the same time of such infinite power, that fulfils all in all, that one cannot flee from his ardent solicitude! (Hamann 1995, Aesthetica en Nuce: A Rhapsody in Kabalistic Prose, p. 204)
[20] The passage begins from the basis of biblical interpretation. From the book of Genesis, God discloses a need for Man to feel for his natural world in a sensuous manner. Existence brings with it the universal concept of interest in one’s existential realm. From the book of Moses, Man is given a narrative that draws him to feel for the interpersonal relations present in every existent situation. The article once more is concern, however in this case not only for one’s own sensuous nature, but also for a realm shared by all. At both sensible and social levels, as creatures, and people, we are drawn to feel concern – and this concern is not offered by a transcendent ruler, but by the creature to the creature, and by a people to a people. Concerns are condescended. This inevitable feeling speaks as a dialect in all our existential situations, mirroring the concern of the Prime Mover for his world. However, this wonder only occurs through the removal of God’s will; we may only feel for each other, if God acts out his own self-emptying from the existential realm. God’s silence protects man from his blasphemous aspirations (bestiality); it affirms the truth that the subjects of his world must draw from their existence (not an idea of God’s imposed order) the issues that best respond to their situations in a solicitous manner. Ontologically speaking, existence affirms concern as a universal zero present in every situation, so as to best attend to the subject’s application of judgments in a manner that is capable of accepting the potential indiscernablity of truth particular to each and every existential context.
Bibliography
Johann Georg Hamann (1995) Socratic Memorabilia, trans, Gwen Griffith Dickson, New York: Walter de Gruyter.
– (1995) Aesthetica en Nuce: A Rhapsody in Kabalistic Prose, trans, Gwen Griffith Dickson, New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Hamann’s Ontology
“What does this young person mean to make of me?” – If only I understand my hero as well as Simon the tanner! (Hamann 1995, Socratic Memorabilia, p. 65)
[1] Attempts to formulate Hamann’s philosophy according to a consistent ontological theory have been notoriously difficult. The very nature of Hamann’s project, combined with its stylistic idiosyncrasies has further confounded the task. In this paper I will attempt to bring about a clearer definition of his ontology, driven by a proposition that it is best understood according to a fundamental division. Initially I will present my understanding in language alien to Hamann’s prose. From this short elucidation I will go on to express the theory in an extended manner, drawing examples from his writing.
[2] At the heart of Hamann’s philosophy rests a paradox. Grasping the nature of this dilemma is central to an understanding of his ontological position. The problem is best summarised by two apparently incompatible premises:
i) Humanity must maintain its relation to God as the transcendental precondition of existence. This is achieved through the biblical conception of grace, which links divinity to the manifest world of beings through the process of creation. Man and, for Hamann world too, are made in God’s image.
ii) That humanity accept the directive that meaning be derived from the existential world, which is condescended as an inconsistent infinity, capable of manifesting itself through multiple situations, each with its particular axiomatic dynamic.
From these two contrary propositions there arises a fundamental division within Hamann’s ontological structure. There is a requirement made that he defend a fiercely metaphysical view, which perceives a transcendental origin for our world, and an anti-metaphysical perspective, which pictures a world, where truths are existentially derived case-by-case. This requires a simultaneous belief in a transcendent other that exists in a state of infinite consistency, and a world that is experienced as a set of speciously related situations. More confusing still is the fact that this world’s existence as a state composed of fluctuating situations is made in the image of that which is singularly consistent.
[3] In answer to this paradox the following thesis is established: divine creation does not equate to divine manifestation; there is no room for a notion of pantheism in Hamann. Contra to Spinoza a shared ontological depth does not equate to a universal communicability or order between situations. God is understood only as the giver, or existential signifier, and not as a model or embodiment of ontological consistency. The world is a condescended unity, this being an absent ground devoid of God’s will; it is in metaphysical terms a void or pure inconsistent infinity. From this circumstance there occurs the possibility of an infinite variety of situations manifesting as what Hamann calls ‘archipelagos’ (islands of concern). However, these concerns present in each situation, do not act as sites of revelation; the prospect of subjective transcendence is rendered impossible by the original inconsistency of the world.
[4] Universal consistency is unattainable, but this, rather than collapsing meaning back into the nihilistic void, opens up the possibility of holding simultaneously contradictory proofs in relation to the given parameters of a situation, precisely because individual proofs are not valued according to a meta-thesis. Thus, the void is a precondition present in every situation, but never an answer to be decanted from its particularity. This produces a realm where concerns must be founded in the dynamic of each situation: we make our judgements according to these relations. Hamann singles out the following types of judgement as principle examples of this condition: aesthetic feeling, poetic interpretation, and ultimately love. These types of engagement are only possible once it is accepted that in a given situation a number of equally sustainable yet contrary positions may be held (truth in these cases remains indiscernible).
[5] This condition of inspired feeling based upon the possibilities derived from the particular axioms of a given situation, equate in Hamann’s language to the following ontological position: Man and world imitate God, not through the consistency of design, but through their freedom to care and feel for their existent world as he does. God gave his world the freedom to internally contradict itself, so that it might maintain and inspire itself without his presence or omnipotent power; its only debt to him, was that its denizens maintain a faith in the world as something that matters. To conclude, feeling as a characteristic central to our existential-being is dependent on certain necessarily indiscernible notions of truth present in every given situation, and this relation mirrors God’s relation to his world, which remains indiscernible in its separated existence from his divine unity.
[6] Having spelt out Hamann’s ontological position, in as brief a manner as I can , I shall now try to draw this same structure from his texts. As a starting point I will examine his definition of a new methodological direction for philosophy. To achieve this, something further needs to be said regarding the intellectual climate that leads him to this turn. In Hamann’s first mature work, The Socratic Memorabilia (first published in 1759), a defence is given to Kant and Berens regarding the methodological possibility of philosophy under the conditions of his new faith. Hamann had returned in 1758 from an unsuccessful business venture undertaken on behalf of the family of his university friend Berens. The nature of this failure had had a dramatic impact upon the young scholar: for the final months of his stay in London he studied and completed an extended biblical tract. The text asserted a revised and radicalised form of empirically based Lutheranism. Hamann who had left an ardent supporter of the Aufklärung returned a religious mystic. The consequence of this was the weakening of links between himself and the Berens and more importantly a rejection of his marital aspirations towards Katerina their daughter. However, the rift was not absolute. Berens enlisted the help of his close friend, a certain Immanuel Kant, to rebuild a working relation between the two. So started a year of protracted correspondence and half-projects. Ultimately, Kant’s refusal to respond to Hamann’s letters, which expressed anxieties about the certainty of enlightenment rationality, inspired the speedy and feverish writing of The Socratic Memorabilia. The essay was written both as a defence of his position and as a challenge to Kant’s. The foundation of this challenge rested with an elucidation of Socrates as a typological vehicle for a better philosophical praxis. Two key themes need to be drawn from the text in order to understand its argument: the characteristics of ‘humility’, ‘ignorance’ and ‘faith’ required of the philosopher, and the inversion of Humean scepticism as a contemporary source for Lutherean revitalisation. I will analyse each of these in turn.
[7] The introduction to the Socratic Memorabilia begins in a manner particular to Hamann; a series of dedications are swiftly followed by a paean to its recipients, namely Kant, Berens and the anonymous academic body: “With a double dedication to NOBODY and to TWO.” (Hamann 1995, Socratic Memorabilia, p. 57) In addressing his inquisitors in this manner, he attempts to invert the subject of his tribunal, as Socrates used his trial to analyse the views of those condemning him. The faults Hamann chooses to scrutinize are pride and avarice: the false idols of the current philosophical community. In tackling pride, he raises grave concerns over the possibility of establishing truth as a known quotient or transcendental condition particular to every experience: “to dissect a body or event down to its first elements…” would in turn make Man a master of his own fictitious religion. (Ibid, p. 64) Avarice is allied to this drive through the belief that philosophical deductions are capable of calculating the relative values of conceptual systems, according to their potential mastery of experience. Hamann expresses this pact through the term alchemy: it being the rational transformation of material resources, as the highest political, and therefore theoretical project. He writes: “No aspect of criticism is more certain than that which has been invented for gold and silver. Therefore no confusion in Germany can be as great as that which has crept into all the usual text-books.” (Ibid, p. 60) A rejection of this principle is made: it is abhorrent and disrespectful to the true practice of philosophy that an economic register be applied to the process of theoretical argumentation; this control brings about an inauthentic relation to experience, best expressed by the age’s mania for productivity. Yet, the Aufklärung through figures such as Adam Smith, ironically the subject of Hamann’s only pre-conversion essay, established the legitimacy of this capitalistic enterprise. For Hamann, this is an essentially blasphemous act carried out against the complexity of God’s condescended world. In a piece of typical Hamannian prose, he suggests his words will act as sweet and irresistible cakes that will ultimately burst the belly of this idol: the perfect laxative for his age.
[8] The problematic of the era predetermines Hamann’s choice of the first characteristic required of the philosopher. He or she must not seek to take the place, nor act as the human idolisation of God’s divine power and transcendental unity; one’s relation to the world must in contrast accept its humble condescended origin. When Hamann suggests that the philosopher comes to actively embrace the humility of his or her origin, as an existential being, he uncovers a central ontological value: that the stimulus of our existent situation provides the only reliable starting point for philosophy. Transcendent aspirations are akin to sacrilege. A biographical skit of Socrates’ upbringing secures the thesis. Learning lessons from his mother, a midwife, and father, a sculptor, Socrates establishes a particular attentiveness to the world. First as a midwife he, “merely comes to the aid of the work of the mother and her ripe fruit, and assists both.” (Ibid, p. 66) In philosophical terms, Socrates remains attentive to the pregnant moment; he helps it give birth to its particular presentations and concerns. Then as a sculptor he personifies the twin powers of critique and creation. He hews out the bad aspirations, which seek to master experience unjustly, as the sculptor removes the dead and unwanted wood, leaving a manifest image or notion derived from the axioms of the situation. The method rejected a transformation of experience into philosophical building blocks, and thus realised a humble relation to the pre-eminence of experience: “Therefore the greatest men of his time had ‘sufficient reason’ to cry that he would fell all the oaks of their woods, spoil all their logs, and could only make shavings of their timber.” (Ibid, p. 66) One’s thoughts, if they are not to amount to a deluded intellectual authority, must accept their origin amongst the concerns of the subject’s existential situation: this is what Hamann determines as humility.
[9] Despite expressing the ideal of humility, Socrates’ peculiarly sensitive character does not amount to a potential state-of-mind or stimmung from which the harmony of ontological consistency may be disclosed. By staying close to the empirical stimulus of experience, Socrates encounters at first hand the inconsistency of the existential realm. His parental influences drew him simultaneously to the beautiful and the boisterously sexual nature of experience. Between the expressions of the intellect and the lusting of the body he found his world one of irreconcilable choices – these choices being the true subject of human endeavour. Hamann raises Socrates' notoriety: “his taste for well-built youths.” (Ibid, p. 67) Rather than sweeping these aside, as many esteemed philologists did, leaving a polite figure in Socrates’ place, Hamann suggests this vice (there was no doubt for a man of Hamann’s age that homosexuality was) need not sully the intellectual validity of his actions. In this quandary lay a hidden subtext, meant specifically for Kant and Berens. Whilst in London Hamann himself had become involved with a rich lord, who housed him through several months of poverty: whether the relationship was based on love, lust or money it is impossible to decipher. Hamann found great comfort in Socrates’ struggle, and a retort to the disapproval of his peers: if confusion arose in the stimulus of the admirable form (the masculine body), which provided a number of sustainable judgements (lust being one), this dilemma had to be faced. Avoiding vice through the authority of doctrine did not attend in a solicitous manner to the actual problems of existence: these were to be felt and experienced. Neither consistent rational argument nor moral law could sustain a judgement against such actions; they could not persuade the soul, nor alleviate the feeling initiated by the situation; to do so would be a sin: “One cannot feel a lively friendship without sensuality, and a metaphysical love perhaps sins more coarsely against the nerves than an animal love against flesh and blood.” (Ibid, p.68) If the example of gender determination sits unhappily with our current liberal standpoint, the general methodological principle derived from it should not. The object of philosophy is experience, replete with contradictions; these should not be replaced with an avoidant metaphysic, but applauded. Thus, the premise that we replace existential dilemmas with consistent metaphysics, is to be supplanted by an empirical counter that attends to the possibilities of an often indiscernible world: “The pagans were accustomed to such contradictions from the clever fables of their poets; until their sophists, like ours, damned them as they would a parricide, which one commits against the basic principles of human knowledge.” (Ibid, p. 68)
[10] However, Socrates’ sensible relation to his world does not fully explain his philosophy. Without a mode of intellectual engagement, a grasp of one’s existential origin remains little more than a haphazard potential for emotional response. How does one respond to the struggle that is existence, in a manner that is authentically philosophical? Initially he tells us what this intellectual engagement must not be: sophistry as the false arguments of unification is denounced. Instead, the philosopher embraces an approach founded on the perpetual declarations of ignorance. Hamann states that to achieve intellectual expression, Socrates was condemned as a hypochondriac is plagued by the need to describe his imaginary symptoms, to decree a continual avowal of ignorance; this act determines his wisdom. (Ibid, p. 70) He expressed the symptoms of sophistry, arguing in a rhetorical fashion, whilst lacking the rational disease that afflicts theorists of this type. In Socrates’ hypochondria there stands a warning, one must not misappropriate his most quoted maxim: ‘I know nothing!’ No dialectic or sophistic trick must turn on the negation of knowledge as a first philosophical principle. Three inauthentic models are revealed; in all, a learned demonstration of ignorance is required to free philosophy of the shame of knowing nothing. First, in Descartes an inability to express certainties about the world, does allow access to a notion of self: doubt affirms ego as an irrefutable fact. Then in Shaftesbury, an inversion of the rational depth of existence for an affirmational comprehension of flux and force, establishes irrationality as a basis for human knowledge. And finally, of most import to Hamann is the stance held by the pre-critical Kant and the German Enlightenment in general: that the as yet unknown world provides itself as the subject for a project of comprehension. With relation to these historical reinterpretations of Socrates’ philosophical ignorance, Hamann spits: “The ancient and modern sceptics may swaddle themselves in the lion-skin of Socratic ignorance as much as they like; but they betray themselves by their voices and ears.” (Ibid, p. 73) Instead, Socrates being truly ignorant is not ashamed of his failings: “he is ignorant even of the shame, which haunts rational people, of seeming ignorant.” (Ibid, p. 70) But, what sort of philosophy does this mean Socrates practices?
[11] Hamann tells us that Socrates enters into rhetorical debate, in the manner a card player might, if he at first declares: “I don’t play.” (Ibid, p. 72) The statement, ‘I don’t play’, can be read in several ways, but only one displays the true wisdom of Socratic ignorance. Ignorance might equate to the refusal to play, as a lack of knowledge might equate to a genuine unawareness of the rules of the game; or it might be claimed as a refusal on moral grounds. However, these two readings do not fit Socrates; he was neither a philosophical novice, nor a moral critic. So, when he claimed in the heat of philosophical debate that he was not aligned, or even capable of expressing the meaning of existence, what was he seeking to achieve; how could he win from such a position? The answer is simple: ‘I don’t play’, means literally, ‘I don’t play to win’. The conception of play as a combative term is refuted. Socrates did not want to participate as swindlers and deceivers do; his mistress was chance, not competition. No desire drove him to impose his perception of truth; rather he sought to reintroduce the situation’s concerns to the debate. To do this he had to play the game better than all the cheating academics, only then could he rest the questions that matter from the aims of individual power. The feeling these concerns introduced was more important than their mastery. In summary, the declaration of ignorance is a philosophical argument that returns the dialogue of sophistry to the realm of experience: “The ignorance of Socrates was feeling.” (Ibid, p. 73) By speaking in this way, Socrates was able to adhere to the problems of life, without asserting a role as an explainer of existence, and by proxy drag those who had lost sight of the earthly origins of their questions, to those feelings that had first inspired them to philosophise.
[12] Reflecting on Hamann’s interpretation of Socrates’ philosophical practice as I have presented it, the following points can be summarised: humility promotes, as the true subject of philosophy, the dilemmas of existential experience over ontological consistency; declarations of ignorance maintain a discussion of experiential problems over the false resolutions of sophistic thought. By accepting these factors, Socrates’ ideological strategy cannot be sustained by the compelling force of rationalism. Hamann must suggest an alternative initiative for his praxis: the concept of faith is given. Faith operates in a manner completely different to reason: “faith arises as little from reason as tasting and feeling.” (Ibid, p. 73) By this Hamann means that thought does not require the certainty of logical proof to ‘feel’ for its subject and, that in-fact our feelings often stand in stark contrast to the reasons we use to explain them. Accordingly, he asserts the following thesis: proofs may be believed without us having faith in them or their ends.
[13] As a philosophical term faith accepts a universal depth apparent in existence; it is ‘a faith in existence’. This mode of belief differs from a belief in a particular proof: it is founded on nothing. Faith is the definition of a human ability to believe without proofs; this is something one does every time they accept the empirical stimulus of experience, as that which inspires concern. Its advantage is that it is able to access the value of a judgement according to the needs of the situation from which it is born. This worth is furthered when a situation’s needs remain indiscernible; here faith accepts the existential challenge of choice rather than seeking to close the situation’s integral axiomatic dilemma. In contrast to this positive relation, reason by accepting the unifying potential of its proofs, blinds the wisest individual, making their selection of one of many proofs, ‘the truth’: “There are proofs of truths which are as worthless as the use to which these truths can be put; indeed, one can believe the proof of a proposition without applauding the proposition itself.” (Ibid, p. 73) The philosopher like the poet must remain capable of feeling for their world, even when their model of order falters in the face of an essentially indiscernible situation – philosophy is an open-ended and creative struggle carried out by individuals who have faith in this existential task as something that universally matters. Traditionally philosophy has not been able to achieve this comprehension; without faith it requires its idol of transcendental order to impose authority, and in this way relates its project to a false-god, loosing any meaningful (existentially felt) direction for its judgements: “Fate places the greatest philosophers and poets in circumstances where they both feel; and the one renounces his reason, and reveals to us that he does not believe in the best of all possible worlds, no matter how well he can prove it, and the other finds himself robbed of his muse and his guardian angel with the death of his Meta.” (Ibid, p. 73)
[14] Socrates manifests the characteristic of faith through his daemon. He listened to what it said and found purpose in its concerns: “he had a genie on whose knowledge he could rely, whom he loved and feared as his god, whose peace mattered more to him than all the reason of the Egyptians and the Greeks, whose voice he believed…” (Ibid, p. 75) It is his ability to listen to this passionate voice, which prohibits his declarations of ignorance becoming an inert thinking. By allowing Socrates to respond to his feelings, Hamann finds his actions directed by the potential of ‘genius’. Genius is the intuitive act carried out without adherence to reasons dictates: the proactive result of faith. Arguments born in this way transform philosophy into an artistic act; by which Hamann means Socrates creates a language and form of communication that is inspiring. He relies on analogy, sensuous analysis, mockery, humour, and a total lack of respect for truth in the application of his method. This changes philosophy’s very form. Its model should no longer be the comprehension of knowledge via instruction; instead it affirms intuition. Between its conflicting proofs and propositions one feels concern for the issues it frames. The success of the philosopher is staked on his or her ability to engage their ‘public’ in a manner that gives them access to the orientation of faith. Hamann perceives the whole of Socrates’ life as an attempt to do this; he therefore imitates at a stylistic level what he deems a Socratic method. The Socratic Memorabilia, ought to arouse a feeling in its readers (Kant and Berens); clean their ‘systems’ of the false judgements by which they condemn him, and once more reveal a world of concerns.
[15] This conclusion draws together the requirements of humility, ignorance and faith in a unified philosophical approach. The disclosure as it has been presented so far has explained in some detail its functioning according to the second of my proposed premises: that meaning be derived from the existential world, which is condescended as an inconsistent infinity, capable of manifesting itself through multiple situations, each with its particular concerns. Socrates’ philosophy feels for and consequently acts as a way of disclosing these concerns to its community. But, this argument fulfils only one half of his ontological system. It cannot be forgotten that Hamann was a religious man, and that the Socratic Memorabilia also acts as a defence of this belief.
[16] Hamann’s religious conversion had resulted in a particular construal of Lutherean Christianity. Whilst in London, Hamann had read the bible for an extended period, finally drawing his notion of faith from this experience. If in relation to Socrates’ philosophical practice, faith had retained a peculiarly secular status, in its biblical derivation a theological significance is conserved. In adherence with traditional Lutherean values, Hamann considered a turn to the text over Church doctrine essential. The bible stands as the source of guidance and thus religious comprehension for Man in his condescended state. From it, the individual may recognise the authority of God, the limits of his or her freewill, and a faith that these facts are not only true, but also universally matter. However, for Hamann the nature of God’s authority is not expressed according to an unequivocal code of conduct; his authority means simply that the issues he sets before us are important and must be attended to. Therefore, the loss of freewill does not equate to a state of divine determinism, but as a relation that accepts one’s existential creation: Man is free to sin, but not free to overcome the temptations of existence. Thus, faith must be seen as a belief in God’s world, as something we belong to and cannot help but feel for. The bible acts as a stimulus to this effect: its narratives, its poetic language and allegorical form demands an engagement with the issues of existence in an interpretative manner. As a text it inspires feeling, presenting God’s relation to his world, by imitating this concern in its manifest state. Thus, for Hamann, the bible is an authority only in as much as it provides the hermeneutic subject for our feelings. Stated simply, biblical interpretation provides access to an empty, yet ameliorating metaphysical truth. In every situation, irrespective of the multiplicity of sustainable judgements we can make, God’s concern for his world is mirrored in our feelings; this truth exists as a zero degree proposition.
[17] To better understand Hamann’s affirmation of faith as the notion of belief without proof, it helps to place his argument in the context of the theological debate of his time. What disturbed the religious mind most in the eighteenth century was how God could act as the rational source of all meaning, when his world existed as its apparent antithesis; with suffering and reward arbitrarily distributed. The intellectuals of the era answered the challenge through Leibniz’s thesis: that the world existed as the best of all possible worlds, and consequently certain cases of evil had to be endured for the universal and historical good of Mankind. Hamann’s problems were twofold in relation to this theodicy. The first was purely subjective, as an individual he found it impossible to reconcile a belief in a rational God with the stoicism required of Leibniz’s logic; what he existentially felt contradicted what he could prove: “What one believes has therefore no need of proof; and a proposition can be irrefutably proven without being believed.” (Ibid, p. 72) In addition he provided a philosophical attack: how do we know that the world is created in a consistent form? It is on this thesis that the whole of Leibniz’s argument stands: God being a perfect mind produced a world in which his order was reflected in every being, and in the highest of these, the intellectually enlightened substantial form (human beings) there occurred a rational comprehension of the consistent concomitance between existent substances. Through the writings of Hume, Hamann turned this basic question into a fractious disagreement. What Hamann seeks to take from Hume’s empirical philosophy, is the notion that meaning is necessarily derived from experience. Judgements are applied a posteriori to sense perception, and are therefore the results of experience. Our only access to our world is that derived through these sensory stimuli; therefore we must remain eternally sceptical of the propositions we use to explain existence, as these too are only testable a posteriori. If this traditional attack upon rationalism is well known, Hamann’s deviation of the argument is not. He controversially inverts the sceptical result of Hume’s argument, and raises faith in its place: “The reasonings of a Hume may be convincing and their refutations clear postulates and doubts; but faith both wins and loses greatly by this most skilful pettifogger and most honourable attorney.” (Ibid, p. 72) The Hume who seeks the establishment of a scientific project based in empirical testing is a pettifogger. However, the honourable attorney, the good Hume, asserts the universal truth of faith. Empirically what we experience is inspirational, it affirms its divine creation, without the need of a priori proof. Religious faith is thus established without a need to first offer rational proof. Our world matters even when we cannot understand it; thus when if differs from our conception of how it rationally should be, we still retain a valuable relation and concern for it.
[18] To summarise Hamann’s religious stance it can be said that through the declaration of faith, one can express the value of experience as uniformly related to God, and therefore the ground, or ontological depth from which all concern arises, without defining the nature, or operation of this depth. One may have a faith in God, without having him function as a comprehensible proof or rational system. God feels for rather than manages his world – and man must therefore feel rather than try to usurp his imagined authority. Of significant import to Hamann’s thought is the fact that whilst maintaining faith in existence, one is free to accept the duplicity and non-conformity of the particular propositions drawn from each and every situation. This duality of judgement exemplifies Hamann’s ontological division that states: that indiscernible occurrences can exist within a consistent ground.
[19] To conclude this explanative exercise, I would like to draw my conclusions in relation to one of Hamann’s exemplary passages. In Aesthetica en Nuce: A Rhapsody in Kabalistic Prose (first published in 1762) there is provided what I believe to be the most lucid and succinct disclosure of Hamann’s ontological viewpoint:
[T]he book of creation has instances of universal concepts which GOD desired to reveal to the creature through the creature; the books of the covenant contains instances of the secret articles which GOD wanted to reveal to people through people. The unity of the Prime Mover is mirrored even in the dialect of his work; in all One note of immeasurable depth! A proof of the most glorious majesty and purest self-emptying! A miracle of such infinite silence, that makes GOD as nothing, that one in conscience must deny his existence or be a beast; but at the same time of such infinite power, that fulfils all in all, that one cannot flee from his ardent solicitude! (Hamann 1995, Aesthetica en Nuce: A Rhapsody in Kabalistic Prose, p. 204)
[20] The passage begins from the basis of biblical interpretation. From the book of Genesis, God discloses a need for Man to feel for his natural world in a sensuous manner. Existence brings with it the universal concept of interest in one’s existential realm. From the book of Moses, Man is given a narrative that draws him to feel for the interpersonal relations present in every existent situation. The article once more is concern, however in this case not only for one’s own sensuous nature, but also for a realm shared by all. At both sensible and social levels, as creatures, and people, we are drawn to feel concern – and this concern is not offered by a transcendent ruler, but by the creature to the creature, and by a people to a people. Concerns are condescended. This inevitable feeling speaks as a dialect in all our existential situations, mirroring the concern of the Prime Mover for his world. However, this wonder only occurs through the removal of God’s will; we may only feel for each other, if God acts out his own self-emptying from the existential realm. God’s silence protects man from his blasphemous aspirations (bestiality); it affirms the truth that the subjects of his world must draw from their existence (not an idea of God’s imposed order) the issues that best respond to their situations in a solicitous manner. Ontologically speaking, existence affirms concern as a universal zero present in every situation, so as to best attend to the subject’s application of judgments in a manner that is capable of accepting the potential indiscernablity of truth particular to each and every existential context.
Bibliography
Johann Georg Hamann (1995) Socratic Memorabilia, trans, Gwen Griffith Dickson, New York: Walter de Gruyter.
– (1995) Aesthetica en Nuce: A Rhapsody in Kabalistic Prose, trans, Gwen Griffith Dickson, New York: Walter de Gruyter.
posted by David at 9:14 AM
4 Comments:
Just finished reading your post whilst sitting on a cliff, facing out onto the Severn estuary. I found it very interesting, but I see why there can be little colaboration between Hamann and Badiou. I see where you were coming from though. The description of a faith based adherence to truths, which are essentially indescerniable analytically from within a situation, is strikingly similar to Badiou's notion of the site of an event and the subsequent fidelatiy of a subject to a truth. Also the recognition (especially [3])that these concerns have nothing to do with a recognition of the ontological ground or totalising unity of multiple situations is also very Badiouian. But for Badiou the event, or concern, itself would be sufficient to motivate the individual into becoming a subject by taking that event up as a truth and beginning a truth procedure to enact it. What I think you are suggesting with Hamann is that this concern can only be acted on because man is made in God's image. So the impetus to act arises from man's mirroring not God's image but his concern with creation. Therefore this transcendent one of infinite consistency is required, via the action grace, to allow man to be able to act on concerns that he encounters. Anyway, any longer response deserves to be a post in its own right. I just thought I'd see if this was the conclusion you came to, and hence dropped the strong Badiou tie in. But the structure of the event does look quite close. I was also reminded of Deleuze a little, but my stalled studies in this area do not allow me to say more at present.
Thanks Brian, I fully agree with the distinction you draw between Hamann and Badiou. I too find the Man-God relation in Hamann a frustrating bind, and one that ultimately stops a thorough metaphysical development of his work. Its impact on the subject’s capacity to act in relation to the situation is most worrying. How to intentionally respond to the dilemma of existential indiscernability is sidestepped through the concept of style: it isn’t how one acts or what one proclaims, but how its playful form is spoken, which authenticates action. The question of truth, as you suggest Badiou expresses it, would therefore be unattainable to the Hamannian subject, precisely because the particularity of the situations truth is unimportant, as long as one mirrors divine concern in response to it. Truth always remains a degree zero proposition; something felt and understood at a mystical level. I see this as a dead-end without reprieve in Hamann’s work. However, if we shift emphasis away from the subject and onto the product of his or her creativity, then there may be room for thinking Hamann in a positive way. This is where my research is leading me: by remodelling the concept of style, as a positive way of unifying the form-content-context debate prevalent in the art world, can we think of art (through Hamann) as something that matters without a valuation procedure that elevates truth disclosure? However, to do this one has to remove, or disable the onto-theological aspects of his thinking. I couldn’t approach this possibility without first fully realising Hamann’s ontology; something I believe has not yet been attempted (perhaps O’Flaherty does, although language seems the real concern of his studies). I won’t say more here, as I hope (although probably not in my next post) to look at the various appropriations/critiques of Hamann (Goethe’s, Hegel’s and Kierkegaard’s) as a way of spelling out this possibility. Hopefully this will open my insular research up to other voices in the campaign.
David, you write so well I'm envious. A very interesting read - I particularly like all these chunks of "wood" and "timber" floating around, sculptors doing away with dead wood, cakes bursting bellies. You've cheered me up. J
Joe your comments are too kind; I’m sure my writing is lacking in many ways, and certainly not the subject of envy. Anyway, I appreciate the compliment. I thought, seeing as you mentioned your interest in the sweet cakes quote, that I might clarify Hamann’s use of the phrase. The reference is to Socrates’ statement in Plato’s Gorgias, that rhetoric that argues through pleasant or persuasive means is akin to our taste for delicious pastries; they may be tempting, but are often anything but healthy! Hamann is hoping to overdose Kant and Berens with an excess of seductive reason, so much so, that it will in fact purge their ‘systems’ (digestive connotations being imposed from the cake metaphor). Thus, the overuse of rational deduction leads to duplicitous proofs, and with it the eventual rejection of reason’s authority and idolised status. Hamann’s style, this being a prime case, must therefore manifest itself in multiple ways, employing analogy, metaphor, literary reference and paradox, if it is to function as a reason-laxative.
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