Johann Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project / / Robert Alan Sparling.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Sparling, Robert Alan,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2017]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 1 table

Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) was a German philosopher who offered in his writings a radical critique of the Enlightenment's reverence for reason. A pivotal figure in the Sturm und Drang movement, his thought influenced such writers as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gottfried Herder. As a friend of Immanuel Kant, Hamann was the first writer to comment on the Critique of Pure Reason, and his work foreshadows the linguistic turn in philosophy as well as numerous elements of twentieth century hermeneutics and existentialism.Johann Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project addresses Hamann's oeuvre from the perspective of political philosophy, focusing on his views concerning the public use of reason, social contract theory, autonomy, aesthetic morality and the politics of 'taste,' and the technocratic ideal of enlightened despotism. Robert Alan Sparling situates Hamann's work historically, elucidates his somewhat difficult writing, and argues for his relevance in the ongoing culture wars over the merits of the Enlightenment project.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Citation -- Part One. Enlightenment and Hamann's Reaction -- 1. Introduction: The Enlightenment as a Historical Movement and Political Project -- 2. Transfiguring the Enlightenment: Hamann and the Problem of Public Reason -- Part Two. The Politics of Metacritique: Hamann contra Kant -- 3. Critique and Metacritique: Kant and Hamann -- 4. Varieties of Copernican Turn -- 5. The Ideas of God and the Person -- Part Three. Language and the City in Modern Natural Law: Hamann's Controversy with Moses Mendelssohn -- 6. Leviathan and Jerusalem: Rights and 'the Laws of Wisdom and Goodness' -- 7. Faith, Inside and Out: Convictions versus Actions, Eternity versus History -- 8. Language and Society -- Part Four. Practical Reflections of an Impractical Man: Hamann contra Frederick II -- 9. The Language of Enlightenment and the Practice of Despotism: J.G. Hamann's Polemics against Frederick the Great -- Part Five. Aesthetics: Hamann's Anti-Artistic Aestheticism -- 10. Aesthetic, All Too Aesthetic: Hamann on the Battle between Poetry and Philosophy -- 11. Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index