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

Revered by Kierkegaard as a genius, German thinker Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788), a Lutheran pietist, counterposed God's will and direct revelation to the shortcomings of science and secular liberalism. In this absorbing if unconvincing study, Berlin portrays Hamann as ``the first out-and-out opponent of the French Enlightenment,'' a forerunner of Nietzsche and the existentialists in his defense of the intuitive and the concrete against the hyperrational, generalizing, scientific West. In his opposition to reason, his anti-intellectual identification with the masses and his attacks on Jews, Hamann fueled the irrational currents that culminated in Nazi hysteria, charges Berlin. Nevertheless, the author, a distinguished historian of ideas, believes that Hamann's original views on creativity, language as a system of symbols and the hazards of abstract thought command the attention of readers willing to tackle Hamann's digressive, dense and flowery prose style. (May)