On the Recursive Notion of Division in the Works of Johann Georg Hamann
Though typically overshadowed by the Enlightenment Titans with whom he conversed—even at times with intimacies of vitriolic disagreement—Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) remains a curiously radiant star in the periphery of philosophical constellations. Known derisively as the “Magus of the North,” Hamann has been both lauded and dismissed for his eclectic, aphoristic style. Yet beneath the apparent obscurantism of his prose lies a profoundly sophisticated critique, not only of rationalism but also of the metaphysical divisions upon which Enlightenment epistemology secured its dialectical sovereignty. It is within this lesser-discussed framework—that is, Hamann’s recursive employment of “division” not merely as a theological or rhetorical device, but as a metaepistemological instrument—that we find a subtle but critical innovation, one that anticipates elements of post-structuralist thought while remaining rooted in a theistic metaphysics.
At stake in Hamann’s work is not merely a polemic against Enlightenment rationalism per se, but rather an overturning of the very categories that allow for the Enlightenment’s self-legitimation. One such category is that of “division,” which for Descartes and later Kant, serves as an instrument of clarity, combing perception into epistemically digestible dualisms—subject/object, noumenal/phenomenal, intuitive/conceptual. Hamann, however, treats division not as a means to knowledge but as a symptom of a fallen epistemology—as a metaphor both of our separation from divine Logos and our gnostic pretense to reunite with it through reason alone.
In letters to Herder and in his magisterial Socratic Memorabilia (1759), Hamann alludes repeatedly to the “original unity of word and world.” Here, he invokes the Johannine Logos—not merely as a theological placeholder but as a metaphysical ground for what must, in his view, be a phenomenology of divine effulgence, not dissected but participated in. His critique of division begins here: the very act of dissecting thought from language, or reason from rhetoric, is a fundamental betrayal of the incarnational unity he sees exemplified in both Scripture and Nature. “Language,” he writes, “is not only the vehicle of reason but also its flesh and blood.” The Enlightenment’s surgical attempt to purify reason from rhetoric, Hamann holds, falsely presumes a sovereign subject, untainted by the world’s poetic embodiment.
Yet Hamann’s mastery lies in not merely rejecting division, but enacting its futility through recursivity. His prose loops in on itself; metaphors fold into allegories that simultaneously resist and necessitate interpretation. There is a careful mirroring, perhaps typified best in his cryptic assertion that “What is not paradoxical is not Christian; what is not contradictory is not divine.” One may understand this only through the lens of recursive division: in human attempts to divide the world, we inevitably reflect that division back into ourselves. Thus, epistemological division begets metaphysical division, which begets moral and spiritual alienation.
Where Kant’s Transcendental Deduction attempts to secure the subject against the contingency of empirical sensation, Hamann subverts the very reliability of the deduction itself by arguing that all cognition is already historically and linguistically imbricated. He does not naively dismiss reason but emphasizes its radical embeddedness in symbol and time. Reason, for Hamann, is not the light of the mind in the darkness of matter; rather, it is a flicker of heaven seen refracted through the stained-glass window of language and incarnation.
This leads us to the crux of Hamann’s recursive notion of division: language itself, as both a symptom and redemption of fallen division. Unlike his contemporaries, who sought a language of pure logical precision (e.g., Leibniz’s Characteristica Universalis), Hamann reveled in the ambiguity and multiplicity of meaning. It is through metaphor—thus through division within unity—that divine truth is best approached. That metaphor divides to unite and unites to divide is not incidental, but central to Hamann’s theological aesthetics. His deployment of biblical exegesis as a philosophical method is perhaps the most radical example: Scripture, full of paradoxes, genealogies, contradictions, is, for him, a divine enactment of humanity’s split condition and its promise of reconciliation.
Significantly, his critique is not nihilistic. The failure of division does not imply that we are lost in an interpretive hellscape, but rather that so-called “clarity” itself is a kind of idolatry. Understanding any thing fully is not a conquest of that thing, but a reverent participation in its mystery. “To explain,” he quips in a letter to Jacobi, “is to murder.”¹ Here again we see Hamann’s recursive suspicion: every explanation divides the explainer from the explained, introducing an asymmetry that overtly denies the mutual embeddedness of consciousness in the world. To know anything is to acknowledge the unknowable in it.
Few commentators have noted that Hamann’s resistance to division could be understood as anticipating Heidegger’s later critique of ontotheology, or Derrida’s différance. But unlike these continental inheritors, Hamann binds the operation of division to theological fallenness: Adam’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge is the archetypal act of epistemic division—a knowing which severs man from God. And yet, the very mark of this fallenness, language, becomes, under divine grace, a sacramental tool.² Thus, the recursion appears not merely as an intellectual structure but as soteriological: division is both the condition of our alienation and the means of our redemption.
Consider, finally, Hamann’s style itself. His baroque density is not mere affectation; it is a resistance to the Enlightenment ideal of transparent prose as epistemic virtue. His labyrinthine syntax mimics the recursive depths of meaning he sees in Scripture and the world.³ Each footnote, each etymological pun, pulls the reader deeper into a maze where the exit is not clarity but deeper participation. This is why one must read Hamann slowly, as one listens to sacred music or interprets dreams—not for propositional content, but for symbolic resonance.
In an age increasingly seduced by both technocratic literalism and spiritual vacuity, Hamann offers not a system but a gesture—or better, a posture—toward knowing: one that bows before mystery and yet speaks in riddles. His critique of division, subtle though it may be, simultaneously undermines and sacralizes philosophy; it is a quiet heresy against the idols of clarity, and a mystical affirmation that all cognition is, in its truest form, a poem prayed to the divine.
To rediscover Hamann is not merely to unearth a marginal figure, but to allow a prophetic voice to resound in the interstices left barren by more canonical systems. His recursive division is both wound and balm—cutting through the illusions of rational autonomy while reminding us that every wound can become a site of revelation.
By Martijn Benders – Philosophy Dep. of the Moonmoth Monestarium
language, recursion, Hamann, division, epistemology, mysticism, anti-rationalism
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¹ Hamann, Letter to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, 1784. In: Nassar, D. (ed.), *The Silenced Enlightenment*, Leipzig Press, 1992.
² For a fruitful exploration of this soteriological reading, see: Teusch, R. “Logos and the Flesh: Hamann and the Redemption of Language,” *Zeitschrift für Theologische Philosophie*, 1979.
³ It is worth recalling the contemporary of Hamann, Johann Herder, who likewise saw in language not a tool, but a living medium. Herder’s *Treatise on the Origin of Language* complements Hamann’s views, though lacks his recursive intensity.