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

Berlin, Isaiah

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9780719553127: The Magus of the North: J.G.Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0719553121 ISBN 13: 9780719553127

Publisher: John Murray Publishers Ltd, 1993

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The Konigsberg lay theologian and philosopher J. G. Hamann (1730-88) is undeniably an obscure figure. A solitary, isolated thinker inclined to mysticism, he lived all his life in poverty and neglect, despite the admiration of Herder and Goethe. Yet this neglect, Isaiah Berlin argues, is undeserved. Hamann was a man of profoundly original opinions whose importance has only become apparent in our own time. He was the first out-and-out opponent of the Enlightenment, the father of modern European irrationalism, and a crucial forerunner of romanticism and existentialism - a uniquely independent thinker who deserves to be rescued from the comparative oblivion in which, at any rate in the English-speaking world, he has languished since his death two centuries ago. Berlin's study will do much to secure this rescue. Hamann's writings are notoriously opaque: part of his rejection of all abstraction and system was to present himself as an oracular sage' the 'Magus of the North', as he liked to be called. However ' with his customary powers of empathy Berlin penetrates to the heart of Hamann's concerns and extracts a clear and convincing account of his main ideas on human knowledge on the relationship between language and thought, on creative genius and the relation of God to man. He demonstrates the power of the insights that emerge from Hamann's queer mixture of visionary pietism and sceptical empiricism. Hamann will never fully emerge from the darkness with which he surrounded himself, but this book makes plain why the effort to understand him is both important and worthwhile.

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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 K�nigsberg 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.

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