Abstract

This book introduces to English readers the previously untranslated and almost unknown German philosopher and theologician, J. G. Hamann, a contemporary and friend of Kant, Herder, and Jacobi. About half of the book develops biographical details and locates Hamann in the intellectual movement of the 18th Century. Besides being a motive force behind the Sturm und Drang phase of German romanticism, he was, as Professor Smith sees him, the link between Pascal and Kierkegaard in the creation of a Christian Existentialism. The second half of the book is a representative selection from Hamann's writings. --D. D. O.