Hamann, Johann Georg 1730-88
German philosopher and theologian

Born in K�nigsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), he became a friend of Immanuel Kant, and seems to have been largely self-educated and to have had a desultory early career as private tutor, merchant, commercial traveller and secretary, and eventually (1767-84) as a government employee in the excise office and custom house. After 1784 private patronage brought him a more comfortable income. His writings attempt to reconcile Christianity and philosophy, and his impatient distrust of rationalism and abstraction led him to emphasize the role of faith and develop an original form of fideism. His style is notoriously cryptic and opaque, but he was an important influence on Johann Herder, Goethe, Hegel and Kierkegaard, and interest in his work has returned.