Letter to Christian Jacob Kraus
Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788) was one of the most complex and influential figures in eighteenth-century German thought. Born In Königsberg and, for a time, a student of law and theology at its university, he traveled to London in 1757 on a business trip for the family firm of his friend Johann Christoph Berens. When the negotiations entrusted to him collapsed, he remained in London, falling into what he later characterized as a state of “inner desolation” before a reading of the Bible prompted his famous conversion. When Hamann returned to Germany in 1759, Berens enlisted Immanuel Kant in efforts to return Hamann to Enlightenment ideals, but while Hamann remained on friendly terms with Kant for the rest of his life, he was steadfast in his new convictions. Over the next three decades he produced works on philosophy, religion, aesthetics, and language that are remarkable for both their anticipation of later developments in scholarship and their intensely hermetic style. Hamann's letter to Kraus of 18 December 1784 examines Kant's recently published essay on the question “What is enlightenment?” It reveals Hamann at his most enigmatic and erudite—hence the extensive body of explanatory notes appended to the translation.
CLARISSIME DOMINE POLITICE!1
Because my stiff old bones are hardly capable any longer of peripatetic philosophy, and my moments for labyrinthine strolls do not always occur before meals but also occasionally between courses ab ovis ad poma, 2 I must now take refuge in a macaronic quill,3 in order to convey my thanks to you for the enclosed Berlinsche Christmonath4 in the cant style, which the comic historian of comic literature5 has rendered as “Kantian style” per e, 6 like an asmus cum puncto.7
To the “Sapere aude!” there belongs also from the very same source the “Noli admirari!”8 Clarissime Domine Politice! You know how much I love our Plato9 and with what pleasure I read him; I will also gladly yield myself up to his guardianship for the guidance of my own understanding, though cum grano salis, 10 without incurring any guilt11 through lack of heart
Hamann's letter was written in Königsberg on 18 December 1784. It was published in Johann Georg Hamann, Briefwechsel, vol. 5 (1783-1785), edited by Arthur Henkel (Frankfurt, 1965), 289-292. Some of the notes appended to this translation have been adapted from Ehrhard Bahr's edition of the letter in his Was ist Aufklärung? Thesen und Definitionen (Stuttgart, 1974).
To remind a professor of logic & critic of pure reason of the rules of definition [Erklärung] would be virtual high treason; since, moreover, you have taken your Hutchinson away from me without returning his Morals, 121 possess no other organon in my paltry supply of books. I am just as little able to account for [mir aufzuklären] the coincidence of Jewish and Christian agreement13 in guardianlike [vormundschaftliche] freedom of thought, because the royal librarian in a most merciless manner has refused me the second volume;14 irrespective of how much I have contributed with all my powers to assisting at the birth of the cosmopoliticoplatonic chiliasm15 by means of wishes, reminders, intercession, and thanksgiving.
Therefore I can gladly tolerate seeing enlightenment, if not defined, at least elucidated and expanded more aesthetically than dialectically, through the analogy of immaturity and guardianship. Except that for me the proton pseudos16 (a very significant coinage that can hardly be translated unclumsily17 into our German mother tongue) lies in that accursed adjective self-incurred.18
Inability is really no fault, as our Plato himself recognizes; and it only becomes a fault through the will and its lack of resolution and courage—or as a consequence of pretended faults.19
But who is the indeterminate other, who twice appears anonymously?20 Observe, Domine Politice, how the metaphysicians hate to call their persons by their right names, and prowl like cats around the hot broth.21 I, however, see the enlightenment of our century not with cats' eyes but with pure & healthy human eyes, which to be sure have become somewhat dull through years and lucubrations22 and sweets, but which I find ten times preferable to the moonlight-enlightened eyes of an 
.23
I ask, therefore, yet a second time with catechetical freedom: who is the other of whom the cosmopolitical chiliast prophesies? Who is the other layabout24 or guide that the author has in mind but has not the heart to utter? Answer: the tiresome guardian who must be implicitly understood as the correlate of those who are immature. This is the man of death.25 The self-incurred guardianship and not immaturity—
Why does the chiliast deal so fastidiously with this lad Absalom?26 Because he reckons himself to the class of guardians and wishes thereby to attain a high reputation before immature readers.—The immaturity is thus self-incurred only insofar as it surrenders to the guidance of a blind or invisible (as that Pomeranian catechism pupil bellowed at his country pastor)27 guardian and leader. This is the true man of death—
So wherein lies the inability or fault of the falsely accused immature one? In his own laziness and cowardice? No, it lies in the blindness of his guardian, who purports to be able to see, and for that very reason must bear the whole responsibility for the fault.
With what kind of conscience can a reasoner [Raisonneur] & speculator by the stove and in a nightcap28 accuse the immature ones of cowardice, when their blind guardian has a large, well-disciplined army29 to guarantee his infallibility and orthodoxy? How can one mock the laziness of such immature persons, when their enlightened and self-thinking guardian—as the emancipated gaper30 at the whole spectacle declares him to be—sees them not even as machines but as mere shadows of his grandeur,31 of which he need have no fear at all, since they are his ministering spirits and the only ones in whose existence he believes?32
So doesn't it all come to the same thing?—believe, march, pay,33 if the d[evil] is not to take you. Is it not sottise des trois parts?34 And which is the greatest and most difficult? An army of priests [Pfaffen] or of thugs, henchmen, and purse snatchers? According to the strange, unexpected pattern in human affairs in which on the whole nearly everything is paradoxical,35 believing seems harder for me than moving mountains,36 doing tactical exercises37—and the financial exploitation of immature persons, donec reddant novissimum quadrantem38—
The enlightenment of our century is therefore a mere northern light, from which can be prophesied no cosmopolitical chiliasm except in a nightcap & by the stove. All prattle and reasoning [Raisonniren] of the emancipated immature ones, who set themselves up as guardians of those who are themselves immature, but guardians equipped with couteaux de chasse?9 and daggers—all this is a cold, unfruitful moonlight without enlightenment for the lazy understanding and without warmth for the cowardly will—and the entire response to the question which has been posed is a blind illumination for every immature one who walks at noon, 40
Written on the holy evening of the fourth and final Sunday of Advent ‘84 entre chien et loup.41
By the Magus in telonio42
bound to Clarissimi Domini Politici and Morczinimastix,43
and released from his ex- and esoteric freedom,
misunderstood by poets and statisticians.
Even in the darkness there are divinely beautiful duties
And doing them unnoticed—44
Matt. 11: II45
P.S.
My transfiguration [Verklärung] of the Kantian definition [Erklärung], therefore, comes to this: true enlightenment [Aufklärung] consists in an emergence of the immature person from a supremely self-incurred guardianship. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom46—and this wisdom makes us cowardly at lying and lazy at inventing—but all the more courageous against guardians who at most can kill the body and suck the purse empty—all the more merciful to our immature brethren and more fruitful in good works of immortality. The distinction between the public and private service of reason is as comical as Flögel’s being worthy of laughing at and laughing about.47 It is a matter, to be sure, of unifying the two natures of an immature person 
guardian, but making both into self-contradictory hypocrites is no arcanum that needs first to be preached; rather, here lies precisely the nub of the whole political problem. What good to me is the festive garment of freedom when I am in a slave's smock at home?48 Does Plato too belong to the fair sex?—which he slanders like an old bachelor.49 Women should keep silent in the congregation50—and si tacuissent, philosophi mansissent.51 At home (i.e., at the lectern and on the stage and in the pulpit) they may chatter to their hearts' content. There they speak as guardians and must forget everything & contradict everything as soon as, in their own self-incurred immaturity, they are to do indentured labor for the state. Thus the public use of reason & freedom is nothing but a dessert, a sumptuous dessert. The private use is the daily bread that we should give up for its sake. The self-incurred immaturity is just such a sneer as he makes at the whole fair sex, and which my three daughters will not put up with. Anch'io sono tutore!52 and no lip- or wage-servant [Maul- noch Lohndiener] of an overseer—but prefer immature innocence. Amen!
NOTES
1. A Latin address: “Most Revered Master Politician (or Statesman)!” Christian Jacob Kraus (1753-1807) was professor of practical philosophy and political science at the University of Königsberg, as well as a student and friend of Kant.—TRANS.
2. Latin aphorism “from eggs to apples” (i.e., from soup to nuts), normally used for long-winded introductions that take forever to get to the point.—TRANS.
3. A pen for writing in macaronic style. The Oxford English Dictionary defines macaronic as “a burlesque form of verse in which vernacular words are introduced into a Latin context with Latin terminations and in Latin constructions.” The Italian Tifi degli Odasi (d. 1488), author of Carmen Macaronicum, is credited as its originator. In addition to the mixing of languages, the satirical-comical style is typical of macaronic literature.—TRANS.
4. A reference to the December 1784 issue of the Berlinische Monatsschrift, in which Kant's essay “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” appeared on the first page.—TRANS.
5. Carl Friedrich Flögel, in the first volume of his Geschichte der komischen Litteratur(1784), characterized the “cant style” as follows: “The low speech (which in England is sometimes called the cant style) was dominant in England at the end of the last century and was introduced by the courtiers of Charles II, who, to express their contempt for the ceremony that had characterized the preceding age, succumbed to the opposite extreme and affected a liveliness of manners and conversation as well as a loose, ungrammatical vulgarity of expression Richard Steele says that this Kantischer Styl is derived from a certain Andreas Cant, who was a Presbyterian clergyman in an uneducated part of Scotland, and had obtained through practice the gift of speaking from the pulpit in such a dialect that he was understood only by his own congregation and not even by all of them” (pp. 174f.; cited in Bahr, Was ist Aufklärung?, 60-61). Notice that Flögel renders the English “cant style” as Kantischer Styl, which Hamann exploits as a pun on Kant's name.—TRANS.
6. According to a note in Bahr (p. 61) per e means “through (the omission of the terminal letter) ‘e.’” In this way English “cant style” becomes German “Kant-Stil,” which Hamann writes as “Kantschen Styl.”—TRANS.
7. According to a note in the Bahr edition (p. 61, attributing the insight to Arthur Henkel), Latin asmus becomes asinus (ass) cum puncto (with a dot)—i.e., when one puts a dot over the first upright of the “m,” thus turning it into “in.” Asmus, a shortened form of “Erasmus,” was used as a pen name by Matthias Claudius, with whom Hamann corresponded. The phrase cum puncto derives from Hebrew grammar, where it refers to the addition of vowel points. Why one would turn Asmus into asinus in this way remains unexplained, as does Hamann's reason for referring to it.—TRANS.
8. Kant's “Sapere aude!” (Dare to Know!)—his “motto” of the Enlightenment—comes from the Epistles of Horace (1.2.40); the phrase “Nil admiran” (to marvel at nothing), which Hamann has altered to “Noli admiran!” (Marvel not!), is found in Epistles 1.6.1.—'TRANS.
9. A reference to Kant; see Oswald Bayer, “Selbstverschuldete Vormundschaft: Hamanns Kontroverse mit Kant um wahre Aufklärung,” in Der Wirklichkeitsanspruch von Theologie und Religion, ed. Dieter Henke et al. (Tübingen, 1976, 19). It may also be relevant that Kraus lectured on Plato.—TRANS.
10. Latin, “with a grain of salt.”—TRANS.
11. “ohne eine Selbstverschuldung…zu besorgen”—the first of Hamann's many ironical allusions to Kant's definition of enlightenment as “self-incurred [selbstverschuldet] immaturity” (see Kant, “Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” translated above, p. 58). Hamann plays on the root term Schuld, which can mean “guilt,” “fault,” or “debt”—nuances that are lost in translation.—TRANS.
12. “Hutchinson” is presumably a reference to the Scottish moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746). The book in question may be Hutcheson's System of Moral Philosophy, published posthumously in 1755. Hamann frequently complains in his letters about unreturned books he has loaned.—TRANS.
13. An allusion to the footnote at the end of Kant's essay (translated above, p. 64). Kant states that while he knew of the publication of Mendelssohn's essay on the same question in the Berlinische Monatsschrift, he had been unable to obtain a copy of the journal and so sent his own essay off to Berlin “as an attempt to see how far agreement in thought can be brought about by chance.” Hamann had apparently also been unable to obtain the issue of the Berlinische Monatsschrift containing Mendelssohn's essay and knew of Kant's contribution only because Kraus had sent him a copy of the journal.—TRANS.
14. The “royal librarian” is Johann Erich Biester (1749-1816), editor of the Berlinische Monatsschrift and royal librarian in Berlin. The essays by Mendelssohn and Kant appeared in the second volume of the journal.—TRANS.
15. Chiliasm (from the Greek word for “thousand”) is the doctrine that the millennium, a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth, will be inaugurated at the Second Coming (see Rev. 20:4). Hamann alludes here to Kant's use of the term in “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” which had appeared in the November 1784 issue of the Berlinische Monatsschrift. Kant had commented that “philosophy too may have its chiliastic expectations [ihren Chiliasmus]” (AA 8:27 [translated by H. B. Nisbet in Kant, Political Writings, 2d ed., ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge, 1991], 50). Later, in The Contest of the Faculties, Kant uses the term to designate one of the three possible futures of historical humanity, namely, the conception that the human race will continually progress, for which his preferred term is “eudaemonism” (AA 7:81 [Kant, Political Writings, 178]).—TRANS.
16. Greek, “the first lie,” i.e., the basic error from which all further errors follow.—TRANS.
17. Hamann's use of the word unflegelhaft may be a pun on Flögel's name and an allusion to his skill as translator (see note 5 above).—TRANS.
18. A reference to the term selbstverschuldet in the opening line of Kant's essay: “Enlightenment is man's exit from his self-incurred immaturity”(See note 11 above.)—TRANS.
19. The root of Kant's term selbstverschuldet (self-incurred) is Schuld (fault). In the opening paragraph of his essay, Kant says that immaturity is self-incurred when it results from “the lack of the resolution and the courage” to use one's own reason.
20. Kant twice uses the phrase “without the guidance of another” in the opening paragraph of his essay.—TRANS.
21. The German idiom means “to beat around the bush”; the translator has rendered it literally because of Hamann's reference to “cats' eyes” in the next sentence.—TRANS.
22. Lucubration is hard work or study, especially at night (from Latin lucubrare, to work by artificial light)—possibly another in Hamann's ongoing series of wordplays on enlightenment.—TRANS.
23. “Owl-eyed Athena,” epithet for the Greek goddess, referring not only to her holiness but also to her flashing eyes, which penetrated the dark of night, and to her gift of vision to human beings.—TRANS.
24. The reference of Bärenheuter (layabout, lazybones, idler) remains obscure. It could conceivably be a pun on the name of Johann Christoph Berens, Hamann's friend, who along with Kant had tried to reconvert him to Enlightenment ideals after his London conversion to Christianity in 1758.—TRANS.
25. Possibly an allusion to 2 Sam. 12:5, where David, after hearing Nathan's parable of the poor man's ewe lamb, unknowingly passes judgment on himself: “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die.” The German is closer to Hamann's diction: “So wahr der Herr lebt, der Mann ist ein Kind des Todes, der das getan hat.”—TRANS.
26. A reference to the biblical story of the son of David who rebelled and was killed in battle against his father's army. Here, “Absalom” presumably refers to Frederick the Great, who as a young man also rebelled against his father. The “chiliast” is, of course, Kant, whose deferential stance toward Frederick the Great is criticized by Hamann.—TRANS.
27. The anecdote referred to here is obscure. Pomeranians were sometimes regarded as country bumpkins, hence Hamann has the Pomeranian catechism pupil, presumably reciting the Nicene Creed, mispronounce the German “unsichtbar” by placing emphasis on the wrong syllable. Pronounced this way, unsichtbar can mean “blind” and possibly “obscene.”—TRANS.
28. The idiom hinter dem Ofen hocken means to be a stay-at-home, never to stir from one's fireplace. Besides its literal meaning, Schlafmütze also implies a dull or sleepy person. Hamann is accusing Kant of being an armchair philosopher, one who sits comfortably at home by the hearth while accusing others of laziness and cowardice.—TRANS .
29. Cf. the concluding paragraph of “What Is Enlightenment?” where Kant's enlightened ruler “has at hand a large, well-disciplined army as a guarantee of public peace” (translated above, p. 63).—TRANS.
30. “To describe as Enlightened' and to glorify a man who deals with human beings as this king does—that could be done only by an Emancipated gaper [eximirter Maulaffe],' an existentially uninvolved spectator” (E. Büchsel, “Aufklärung und christliche Freiheit: J. G. Hamann contra I. Kant,” Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 4 [1962]: 151).—TRANS.
31. In the last paragraph of his essay Kant says that “man…is more than a machine” and that his enlightened ruler does not “fear shadows” (translated above, p. 63). The reference to his “grandeur” (Riesengröβe) may contain a pun on Frederick the Great.—TRANS.
32. Hamann implies that Frederick believes not in God but only in his subjects as “his ministering spirits.”—TRANS.
33. “The officer says: ‘Don't argue, but rather march!’ The tax collector says: ‘Don't argue, but rather pay!’ The clergyman says: ‘Don't argue, but rather believe!’ ” (Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?” translated above, p. 63).—TRANS.
34. French, “stupidity on three sides,” adapted by Hamann from the title of an article by Voltaire, Sottise des deux parts (1728).—TRANS.
35. Hamann takes this language nearly verbatim from the last paragraph of Kant's essay.
36. Cf. Matt. 17:20; 1 Cor. 13:2.—TRANS.
37. Hamann's phrase Evolutionen u Exercitia machen is presumably technical terminology derived from French military usage (évolutions tactiques, “tactical exercises”). French was the official language of Frederick's Prussian government, including the customs office where Hamann was employed.—TRANS.
38. “Till they have paid the last penny” (see Matt. 5:26; Luke 12:59).—TRANS.
39. French, “hunting knives.” Frederick the Great hired French tax collectors for service in Prussia.—TRANS.
40. Perhaps an allusion to the riddle of the Sphinx: “What is it that walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and on three in the evening?” Oedipus gave the correct answer: “Man, who first crawls on all fours, then walks upright, and in old age needs a stick as a third leg.” Thus the “one who walks at noon” would be the adult, the “mature” one. Büchsel suggests an allusion to Isa. 58:10: “If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday” (“Aufklärung und christliche Freiheit: J. G. Hamann contra I. Kant,” 153n.52). Another possibility is 1 Thess. 5:12: “For you are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness”—a passage that contains all the right metaphors for Hamann's case against Kant.—TRANS.
41. The French expression (“between dog and wolf”) refers to twilight, when one cannot distinguish dog from wolf.—TRANS.
42. “Wise Man of the Customs House” (from the Latin, telonium, “customshouse”). Hamann, widely known as “Magus in Norden,” worked as a civil servant in the customs office in Königsberg.—TRANS.
43. This term is coined on the analogy of Greek Homeromastix (hostage of Homer), used of grammarians who searched for errors in Homer. Hamann calls Kraus “Morczinimastix” because in 1784 he had published an exposé of the confidence man Johann Gottlieb Hermann, alias Friedrich Joseph Freiherr von Mortczinni.—TRANS.
44. These two lines are cited from a source that Hamann had long ago forgotten. He had quoted them more than two decades earlier in a letter to Moses Mendelssohn (Johann Georg Hamann, Briefwechsel, ed. Walther Ziesemer and Arthur Henkel [Wiesbaden, 1956], 2:129). There, too, Hamann identifies himself as one who prefers darkness: “I avoid the light, my dear Moses, perhaps more out of fear than maliciousness.”—TRANS.
45. “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”—TRANS.
46. Prov. 9:10.—TRANS.
47. Hamann refers here to Kant's distinction between the “public” and “private” uses of reason (see “On the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” translated above, pp. 59-60). For Flögel, see note 5 above.—TRANS.
48. Possibly an allusion to the parable of the king's wedding feast (Matt. 22:1-14). Hamann is questioning Kant's argument that while the “public” use of reason to write and criticize must remain free, the “private” use of reason may be limited by the terms of the contracts into which one enters (e.g., the clergyman may write critical articles about church doctrine, but his sermons must conform to the teachings of his church).—TRANS.
49. Presumably an allusion to Kant's comment, “Those guardians, who have graciously taken up the oversight of mankind, take care that the far greater part of mankind (including the entire fairer sex) regard the step to maturity as not only difficult but also very dangerous.” (see “On the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” translated above, p. 58).—TRANS.
50. Hamann is citing Paul's dictum that “women should keep silence in the churches” (1 Cor. 14:35). In the following verse the apostle continues, “If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home.” Hamann takes up this contrast between silence “in the congregation” and speaking “at home.”—TRANS.
51. The Latin phrase (“if they had kept silent, they would have remained philosophers”) is presumably adapted by Hamann from the story told by Boethius in book 7 of The Consolation of Philosophy. A “certain fellow who had falsely taken upon him the name of a philosopher, not for the use of virtue but for vainglory” was put to the test by another, who berated him in order to determine “whether he were a philosopher or no by his gentle and patient bearing of injuries.” The would-be philosopher “took all patiently for a while, and having borne his contumely, as it were, triumphing, said: ‘Dost thou now at length think me a philosopher?’ To which he bitingly replied: ? would have thought thee one if thou hadst holden thy peace [si tacuisses].’” Boethius, The Theological Tractates (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 216-217.—TRANS.
52. Italian, “I, too, am a guardian!”—an ironic variation of the exclamation “Anch'io sono pittore!” (I, too, am a painter!), allegedly uttered by Correggio before a picture of Raphael.—TRANS.