HEGEL ON HAMANN Topics in Historical Philosophy General Editors David Kolb John McCumber Associate Editor Anthony J. Steinbock H E G E L O N H A M A N N Translated from the German and with an introduction by Lisa Marie Anderson Northwestern University Press Evanston, Illinois Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Copyright © 2008 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2008. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831. [Hamann’s Schriften. English] Hegel on Hamann/ translated from the German by Lisa Marie Anderson. p. cm.—(Topics in historical philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8101-2492-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8101-2492-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8101-2491-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8101-2491-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Hamann, Johann Georg, 1730–1788. Hamann’s Schriften. 2. Hamann, Johann Georg, 1730–1788—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831—Criticism and interpretation. 4. Germany— Intellectual life—18th century. I. Anderson, Lisa Marie. II. Title. III. Series: Northwestern University topics in historical philosophy. B2993.H4413 2008 193—dc22 2008007025 oThe paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. For Ed, who knows why words fail Contents Note on the Text ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii The Notion of Friendship in Hegel and Hamann xxi The Writings of Hamann by G. W. F. Hegel 1 Appendix: Hegel’s Notebook Entries on Hamann 55 Translator’s Notes 57 Selected Bibliography 79 Index 85 Note on the Text G.W.F. Hegel’s essay “Hamanns Schriften” (“The Writings of Hamann”) originally appeared in the Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik(Yearbooks for Scientific Criticism) in October and December 1828, nos. 77–80 and 107– 14. It was a review of J.G. Hamann’s collected works, which had appeared under the editorship of Friedrich Roth in 1821–25. The review includes two footnotes by Hegel, which stand as footnotes in the translation. My translator’s notes appear as endnotes. All translations in this volume are my own, unless I have specified otherwise either expressly or in the bibli- ographic information in the notes. For other translations of Hamann, see those by James C. O’Flaherty, Ronald Gregor Smith, Gwen Griffith Dick- son, and Kenneth Haynes, listed in the bibliography under the heading “Primary Sources in English (Translations, Commentaries).” In translating Hegel’s review, I have retained many of his textual practices, including his frequent and often idiosyncratic use of italics for emphasis. Where Hegel includes phrases in Greek, Latin, or French in his text (often in a quote from Hamann), I have left them as such, and trans- lated only the Greek phrases in the notes. In other cases, I have chosen to standardize some elements of Hegel’s text. His use of punctuation, for example, makes many long and complex sentences quite difficult to decipher, and I have tried to address this. Moreover, Hegel makes numerous references to a volume and/or page number in the Roth (R) edition of Hamann’s collected works, the edition he is reviewing. While these references stand in the translation, I have standardized and expanded them somewhat, and supplemented them in the notes with the corresponding reference in the newer and more widely accepted Nadler (N) edition or, in the case of Hamann’s let- ters, the Ziesemer/Henkel edition (ZH).As Hegel notes, the letters which make up Hamann’s extensive correspondence with F.H. Jacobi were not included in the Roth edition, so Hegel references them from Jacobi’s cor- respondence; I have retained and standardized these references. All of Hegel’s references, however, are given less than consistently, and where they are missing from his text, I have provided them, with volume and ix