The Magus of the North: J.G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism - Hardcover

Berlin, Isaiah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374196575 ISBN 13: 9780374196578

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1994

Synopsis

Briefly traces the life of the eighteenth century German philosopher, discusses his major ideas, and looks at the relevance of his work today

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Isaiah Berlin is regarded by many as the greatest living historian of ideas. In 'The Magus of the North' he unearths with grace and elegance the radical counter-Enlightenment figure J. G. Hamann, the forgotten source of a movement that in the end engulfed the whole of European culture. Born in 1730, Hamman was a solitary and idiosyncratic thinker who lived a life of poverty and neglect in Königsberg in the north of East Prussia. Despite being admired by Herder, Goethe and Kant, he has remained largely unknown outside Germany.

Berlin, with his astonishing capacity to enter the minds of past thinkers, rescues from obscurity this self-styled oracular sage – 'the Magus of the North', as Hamman liked to be called. Hamman, Berlin argues, was profoundly original: the first secular opponent of the Enlightenment, the father of modern European irrationalism, and a crucial forerunner of romanticism and existentialism. Like all Berlin's works, 'The Magus of the North' is enlightening, quizzical, passionate and, above all, convincing.

"'[The Magus of the North]' offers us yet another remarkably vivid portrait of an important thinker, in an essay form which Berlin has perfected."
MARK LILLA, 'London Review of Books'

"Isiah Berlin is one of the most lucid and profound thinkers of our time. Whom he chooses to write about, and why, is no less interesting than what he actually writes."
ELON SALMON, 'Yorkshire Post'

"'The Magus of the North' is a delightful surprise... The prose flows powerfully, at times torrentially, richly saturated in information and ideas."
MICHAEL ROSEN, 'Times Literary Supplement'

About the Author:

Sir Isaiah Berlin is a Fellow of All Souls College at Oxford.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0374196575
• ISBN 13: 9780374196578
• Binding: Hardcover
• Editor: Hardy Henry