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After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann
After Hamann as Post-Secular Visionary is a comprehensive introduction to the life and works of eighteenth-century German philosopher, J. G. Hamann, the founding father of what has come to be known as Radical Orthodoxy.
376 pages, Hardcover
First published November 10, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 8, 2023
My man demolished the epistemic framework of the Enlightenment, prefigured postmodernism, trolled Immanuel Kant, learned a million languages, and never had a real job to speak of.
Respect.
Respect.
February 27, 2016
Nice smooth style, well written, abundant information. Just working through the section on Biblical Writings, love his insistence on the Spirit being like David before Achish : not even wanting to be understood by man in his reason! What a lesson for the church today as they try to gain acceptance before the throne of man's reason! How this is most grossly evident in the pandering behavior manifest in the matter higher/critical methods applied to Biblical translation to make it more "accessible" to the public, when the public cannot even hope to understand it! Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost that nothing is impossible for Him!
July 14, 2021
I took a long time to read this book so my comments should be taken in that light:
Who should read this: Kant lovers (just kidding, no but really if you like Kant you probably will want to know something about the earliest criticisms of Kant), definitely Kierkegaard fans (except I’m not quite clearheaded Hamann influences Kierkegaard. I think I see connections but right now they are vague) and people interested in postmodern theology.
I would not suggest this to someone who has not done quite a bit of reading in the history of philosophy and theology. You will need to know and have read, for example, some: Augustine, Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche.
Also, be ready to pull out you Greek and latin dictionary, Betz makes you work by throwing in some Latin and Greek.
What if you don’t have time:
Read the last section of the final chapter. Then go back read 1. 4. and 6. I’m not certain that’s the best but that should save you time if you don’t want to spend 5 months on this guy like I did.
Like the other reviews Betz is a good writer and you’re in good hands stylistically. He tries to make Hamann understandable, though that might make Hamann mad.
Who should read this: Kant lovers (just kidding, no but really if you like Kant you probably will want to know something about the earliest criticisms of Kant), definitely Kierkegaard fans (except I’m not quite clearheaded Hamann influences Kierkegaard. I think I see connections but right now they are vague) and people interested in postmodern theology.
I would not suggest this to someone who has not done quite a bit of reading in the history of philosophy and theology. You will need to know and have read, for example, some: Augustine, Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche.
Also, be ready to pull out you Greek and latin dictionary, Betz makes you work by throwing in some Latin and Greek.
What if you don’t have time:
Read the last section of the final chapter. Then go back read 1. 4. and 6. I’m not certain that’s the best but that should save you time if you don’t want to spend 5 months on this guy like I did.
Like the other reviews Betz is a good writer and you’re in good hands stylistically. He tries to make Hamann understandable, though that might make Hamann mad.
July 31, 2023
Betz's book is the most substantial guide to Johann Georg Hamann's (1730-1788) life and thought in English. Along with Gwen Griffith Dickson's "Hamann's Relational Metacriticism" and James O'Flaherty's "Johann Georg Hamann," this is the one of the master guides to the "Magus" readily available to Anglophone students and scholars. Not only does Betz provide an engaging biography of the German man of letters, but he engages with specific works, providing a summary and commentary of several, including the crucial London Writings, the Socratic Memorabilia, Aesthetica in Nuce, the Metacritique, Konxompax, and others. In his conclusion Betz helpfully compares Hamann to several other philosophers of language with whom he has similarities: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. This final chapter is ripe with insights and tantalizing connections; for many it will undoubtedly pave the way for future research. Yet, substantial English-language works on Hamann's connections to Jacobi, Kierkegaard, and the so-called Personalists (Rosenzweig, Ebner, Buber, Rosenstock-Huessy) remain to be written. Also, there's ripe soil for someone to examine allegorical interpretation within early modern Lutheranism, explaining how Hamann's approach apparently carried over to Romantic thought only to get slowly get squeezed out of the Church, only for literal, historical-critical approaches to further expand in the nineteenth century, culminating in Bultmann. With the significance of the Tübingen School (especially Stuhlmacher and Bayer), is there beginning to be a return to Hamann's allegorical-Christological way of reading Scripture and therefore, a rediscovery of the worth of ancient hermeneutics?
Unlike several other of the available English works on Hamann, Betz doesn't approach Hamann one-sidedly as many critics do when they choose to ignore Hamann's Lutheranism or gloss over his important ecumenical bent at the end of his life. Betz does his best to cover all of Hamann's pursuits and all of Hamann's philosophical-theological insights. The book is organized brilliantly as it weaves commentary on specific works with substantial biographical chapters; so the reader is engaged throughout with both Hamann's brilliant works and his unique life.
It is really in the depth of theological engagement that this work shines. While Betz is more than capable in explaining Hamann's engagement with philosophers including Kant, Lessing, and Mendelssohn, the author is an outstanding guide to Hamann's theological insights and how they spring from the soil of Lutheranism along with early studies of Rapin, a Jesuit author, and several collections of patristic texts (Justin, Tertullian, Lactantius, Origen, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria). Indeed, more than any other scholar I've read, Betz is able to spell out precisely Hamann's theology of scripture, his fecund thinking around Christ's two natures, and his brilliant polemics against critical Bible scholars at the time: Michaelis, Starck, Reimarus.
After Enlightenment is a dense book, packed with information, commentary, and analysis. It is one I will be returning to many times. As I end this review, I want to point out several of the most important insights for me from the genius of Hamann:
- God condescends to His creatures. This is the single most important insight of Hamann from which all other emphases spring. Creation is a result of God's condescension. Language is a result of God's condescension. Redemption is a result of God's condescension. The Holy Scriptures are a result of God's condescension. The Father, Son, and Spirit condescend. God's condescension looks lowly and ugly, especially when it takes the form of crucifixion (1 Corinthians 1:23, 25). This 'coincidence of opposites' (which Hamann drew from Bruno/Cusanus) is the master-key to everything. The Divine becomes human, the human becomes divine; but there is not dualistic separation. At the end there is nuptial mystery, union.
- God speaks "through the creature to the creature." God's communication is mediated, and this is a part of His condescension to human beings. The world is filled with the words of God, but the Enlightenment "Scheidekunst" (art of separation) is ultimately a satanic act that draws us away from our most natural experience of God. All our struggles, all our history is traced back to the forbidden fruit the man and the woman took for themselves. This attempt at 'self-theosis' is the root of all errors in thought and society. Humans are always attempting to make themselves gods rather than receive the divinization that God gives as a gift. The lower movement of God (anthropomorphic condescension) allows the upward movement of humans (unitive divinization).
- The theology of Christ is the matrix by which we must understand the world, God's communication, and our callings as human beings. This is the Lutheran doctrine of the 'cummunicatio idiomatum.' What is divine partakes in what is earthly and vice-versa. As Christ is divine and human simultaneously (and since nothing is destroyed or fully separated as the coincidence of opposites allows), so, too, are ordinary things of the world extraordinary at the same time. Miracles penetrate reality; nature and super-nature are unified.
- Language is the root of reason and our lens by which we apprehend and describe the world. And language is a product of myth and tradition. There is no "pure" reason or "pure" language. Philosophical purity is an illusion, and the grasping after it is modern philosophy's personal myth.
- Sexuality is revelatory. Intercourse is the means by which God continues His act of creating little images of Himself. The original, protological union of man and woman then prepares us for the heavenly, eschatological union of God and humankind. Esther, Ruth, the Song of Songs, Ephesians 5, and Revelation all relate this. Nuptial imagery is always a part of what Hamann is saying theologically.
Unlike several other of the available English works on Hamann, Betz doesn't approach Hamann one-sidedly as many critics do when they choose to ignore Hamann's Lutheranism or gloss over his important ecumenical bent at the end of his life. Betz does his best to cover all of Hamann's pursuits and all of Hamann's philosophical-theological insights. The book is organized brilliantly as it weaves commentary on specific works with substantial biographical chapters; so the reader is engaged throughout with both Hamann's brilliant works and his unique life.
It is really in the depth of theological engagement that this work shines. While Betz is more than capable in explaining Hamann's engagement with philosophers including Kant, Lessing, and Mendelssohn, the author is an outstanding guide to Hamann's theological insights and how they spring from the soil of Lutheranism along with early studies of Rapin, a Jesuit author, and several collections of patristic texts (Justin, Tertullian, Lactantius, Origen, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria). Indeed, more than any other scholar I've read, Betz is able to spell out precisely Hamann's theology of scripture, his fecund thinking around Christ's two natures, and his brilliant polemics against critical Bible scholars at the time: Michaelis, Starck, Reimarus.
After Enlightenment is a dense book, packed with information, commentary, and analysis. It is one I will be returning to many times. As I end this review, I want to point out several of the most important insights for me from the genius of Hamann:
- God condescends to His creatures. This is the single most important insight of Hamann from which all other emphases spring. Creation is a result of God's condescension. Language is a result of God's condescension. Redemption is a result of God's condescension. The Holy Scriptures are a result of God's condescension. The Father, Son, and Spirit condescend. God's condescension looks lowly and ugly, especially when it takes the form of crucifixion (1 Corinthians 1:23, 25). This 'coincidence of opposites' (which Hamann drew from Bruno/Cusanus) is the master-key to everything. The Divine becomes human, the human becomes divine; but there is not dualistic separation. At the end there is nuptial mystery, union.
- God speaks "through the creature to the creature." God's communication is mediated, and this is a part of His condescension to human beings. The world is filled with the words of God, but the Enlightenment "Scheidekunst" (art of separation) is ultimately a satanic act that draws us away from our most natural experience of God. All our struggles, all our history is traced back to the forbidden fruit the man and the woman took for themselves. This attempt at 'self-theosis' is the root of all errors in thought and society. Humans are always attempting to make themselves gods rather than receive the divinization that God gives as a gift. The lower movement of God (anthropomorphic condescension) allows the upward movement of humans (unitive divinization).
- The theology of Christ is the matrix by which we must understand the world, God's communication, and our callings as human beings. This is the Lutheran doctrine of the 'cummunicatio idiomatum.' What is divine partakes in what is earthly and vice-versa. As Christ is divine and human simultaneously (and since nothing is destroyed or fully separated as the coincidence of opposites allows), so, too, are ordinary things of the world extraordinary at the same time. Miracles penetrate reality; nature and super-nature are unified.
- Language is the root of reason and our lens by which we apprehend and describe the world. And language is a product of myth and tradition. There is no "pure" reason or "pure" language. Philosophical purity is an illusion, and the grasping after it is modern philosophy's personal myth.
- Sexuality is revelatory. Intercourse is the means by which God continues His act of creating little images of Himself. The original, protological union of man and woman then prepares us for the heavenly, eschatological union of God and humankind. Esther, Ruth, the Song of Songs, Ephesians 5, and Revelation all relate this. Nuptial imagery is always a part of what Hamann is saying theologically.
September 21, 2021
Betz has written a lucid account of the life and thought of a decidedly unlucid but radically relevant thinker for the confusion of our late post-secular, post-modernity, post-sanity age.
Reading about Hamann stirred my faith, and challenged my substandard absent knowledge of greek, Latin and German. That being said, as a gracious author, Betz often uses other words to make his meaning plain.
Reading about Hamann stirred my faith, and challenged my substandard absent knowledge of greek, Latin and German. That being said, as a gracious author, Betz often uses other words to make his meaning plain.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews