Two Gentlemen of Königsberg

by Paul A. Schons

Originally published by the Germanic-American Institute in September of 1999

The Age of Reason a.k.a. the Enlightenment (Aufklärung) enveloped Europe and the emerging United States in the late 18th century. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who was featured in the G.A.I. August newsletter, emerged from the same tradition of optimism and confidence in the human spirit as the founders of the new American republic. There was widespread enthusiasm as the capacity of human reason was explored, expanded and exploited. Self-government, new freedoms of speech, press and religion, new capacities of problem solving and a new promise of human ability to control nature and to define the quality of human life signaled a final break with the limitations of the Middle Ages. The "New World" was not only across the Atlantic but could encompass all of humanity through reliance on the fully released capacity to use the human mind.

In Germany the "hotbed" of the Enlightenment was in Berlin where Lessing, Mendelssohn, Baumgarten, Engel, Nicolai, Eberhard, Spalding, Zöllner and Biester dominated the thinking of the new age. Kant, clearly the most powerful mind in the German Enlightenment, was largely alone far off to the east in Königsberg. Yet in one of those interesting quirks of history, Kant was not completely alone in the eastern provinces. Another native of Königsberg, born only a few years later, Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) would become one of the greatest detractors of the Enlightenment and, in the next generation in Germany, exert more influence than any of the Enlightenment figures. Hamann, the originator of a pattern of thinking later known as "Sturm und Drang", would become the guiding light to the new generation of thinkers and writers including in their ranks, most notably, the young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller.

Hamann, as most intellectual young people of that time, matured in intoxicated excitement with the promises and freedoms of the new age of reason. Applying his life to one of the practical pursuits of the new age, international business, he found employment with a wealthy family of Riga and departed to conduct the family's affairs in London. London soon overwhelmed the young man. He failed in his business affairs and the sensual temptations of the big city soon drew him down into the depths of depravity and debauchery. Having lost his money, his pride and his health, the 28 year old turned to the Bible and on March 31, 1758 had a mystical experience which changed his life. From that time on he devoted his energies and his life to the service of God. He returned to Königsberg where he would spend the remainder of his life. In the pursuit of his new sense of God he would find himself increasingly at odds with Immanuel Kant, the devotee of reason.

At about the time that Hamann had his mystical experience in London, Kant was beginning his logical investigations concerning the proofs of the existence of God. The Christian proofs of the existence of God and the immortality of the human soul had been quite nicely accepted for centuries. Now Kant subjected those proofs to the tests of Enlightenment reasoning. He published his Enquiry into the Proofs for the Existence of God in 1763. He then continued his reasoning and with the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 found that the traditional proofs were not valid. Now, Kant made it quite clear, even in this first critique, that he was not defending atheism; in fact he emphasized that he denied certain kinds of metaphysical knowledge to make room for faith. And he later went on to articulate what has been called his moral arguments for the existence of God in his Metaphysical Principles of Virture in 1797. But his questioning of the traditional proofs threw a large segment of society into a frenzy opposed to the dangers of Enlightenment thinking. Hamann, who had spent those years developing his mystical approach to life, found himself a leader of the new pietism. Hamann's Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten of 1759 had established his position rejecting reason as the ultimate capacity of humanity. With that beginning he had developed his perception of a direct communication with God which is "felt" (Empfindsamkeit) as opposed to reasoned. He came to feel that faith is a special kind of knowledge unattainable through the use of reason.

Hamann published his Aesthetica in Nuce in 1762. In that work he continued the development of the primacy of feeling over reason. He further developed the notion that the expression of truth is to be found not in philosophical tracts, but rather in poetry. Further, in that poetry, the artist should not be bound by rules, convention nor authority, but rather by inspiration. Such poetry he proclaimed was the true kind of knowledge he sought, one vastly above logic. Nature he felt was the secret language of God and nature was translated to human terms through poetry. Such ideas gave Hamann the claim to leadership of the following generation of artists both in the "Sturm und Drang" and the Romantic periods.

Hamann and Kant conversed frequently in Königsberg but agreed seldom. It was Hamann who introduced Kant to the writings of Rousseau who, indeed, had a major impact on Kant, but quite a different impact than on Hamann. When Kant's monumental work, The Critique of Pure Reason, was published in 1781, Hamann was the first to write a critique of the critique, his Metakritik über den Purismum der reinen Vernunft. In it he laid the groundwork for a method of criticizing Kant's very method of thought, meta-criticism, as he called it. Hamann went on to develop a theory of the nature of language which would have its full impact on the world only many years after his death.

Hamann died in 1788 while on a trip to Münster. Kant continued his life of reason and duty until his death in Königsberg in 1804.