HAMANN, JOHANN GEORG German writer on philosophy and theology, was born at Konigsberg, Prussia on Aug. 27, 1730, of poor parents. During his restless life he experienced poverty and profound mental struggles. In 1767 he was made translator in the .Konigsberg office, and ten years later became a storekeeper in a mercantile house. In 1784 the failure of some commercial speculations reduced his means, and about the same time he was dismissed with a small pension from his situation. The kindness of friends, however, enabled him to spend some time with Jacobi at Pempelfort and with Buchholz at Walbergen where he was seized with illness, and died on June 21, 1788.
Hamann's works resemble his life and character. His hatred of system, incapacity for abstract thinking, and intense personality rendered it impossible for him to do more than utter the dis jointed, oracular, obscure dicta which gained for him the name of "Magus of the North." His fundamental thought is the un satisf actoriness of abstraction. Attacking his friend, Kant, for separating matter and form, and sense and understanding, he contends that reason, apart from tradition, belief and experience, only exhibits the contradictions in life. Belief is the groundwork of knowledge and life should be taken as a whole. Hamann used to refer to Bruno's conception of the identity of contraries as representing his own thought.