PRIMARY SOURCES
Haynes, Kenneth, Hamann: Writings on Philosophy and Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. [Includes Socratic Memorabilia (excerpt), Essay on An Academic Question, Miscellaneous Notes on Word Order, Cloverleaf of Hellenistic Letters, Aesthetica in Nuce, The Last Will and Testament of the Knight of the Rose-Cross, Philological Ideas and Doubts, To the Solomon of Prussia, New Apology of the letter h, Golgotha and Sheblimini, Metacritique of the Purism of Reason, and Disrobing and Transfiguration (excerpt).]
Dickson, Gwen Griffith [Gwen Griffith-Dickson], Johann Georg Hamann’s Relational Metacriticism, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995. (Socratic Memorabilia, Aesthetica in Nuce, a selection of essays on language, “Essay of a Sibyl on Marriage,” Metacritique of the Purism of Reason)
Schmidt, James (ed.), What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. (“Letter to Kraus,” translated by Garrett Green and Metacritique of the Purism of Reason, translated by Kenneth Haynes)
SECONDARY SOURCES
Anderson, Lisa Marie (ed.), 2012, Hamann and the Tradition, Evanston (Illinois): Northwestern University Press.
As interest in Hamann rises in recent years, this book sets out to create a baseline for new readers of Hamann. Placing Hamann’s ideas in dialogue with thinkers that people are more familiar with or those he has directly influenced, Anderson creates a better understanding of the revival of Hamann’s philosophy. The book covers his impact on romanticism and theology to his thoughts on sexuality.
Wessel, Leonard P., 1969, “Hamann’s Philosophy of Aesthetics: its meaning for the Storm & Stress Period”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 27 (Summer): 433–443.
This paper tries to delineate Hamann’s philosophy of aesthetics as it related to other philosophers of his time. In this comparison, Wessel outlines how Hamann’s ideas detracted from the general ideas of the enlightenment. The paper finally goes on to portray his importance to the German Romanticism movement called the Storm and Stress movement.
–––, 2016, “Johann Georg Hamann: Metacritique and Poesis in Counter-Enlightenment”, in The Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism, Paul Hamilton (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This chapter focuses on Hamann’s tradition of thought that stemmed from his misgivings of the kantian tradition and of poetical thinking. The chapter shows Hamann’s unique views of modernity and the enlightenment using his connection of language and thought as a prime example. What is ultimately portrayed in the chapter is the radical rethinking of the assumptions of the enlightenment that Hamann brought about.
Forster, Michael N. “KANT’S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE?” Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie, vol. 74, no. 3, 2012, pp. 485–511. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23530293. Accessed 15 Nov. 2022.
This paper goes in depth in Kant’s philosophy of language and whether he truly had one or not. It really delineates an interesting relationship between Kant and Hamann that reveals both of their beliefs and through their clashes but also in Kant’s possible private acceptance of Hamann’s philosophy. It provides a view on the dominant philosophy at the time and Hamann’s contrasting influence to it.