Surveying philosophy and in general the history of Western ideas with Isaiah Berlin, is like navigating a stormy sea with a master navigator, phlegmatically calm at the most chaotic contradicting directions of thought that, if not for his history, would be buried beneath the school text books as essential, teleological, reductionistic simplicity of understanding history as an inevitable result that could not have turned out, in the many sharp contradicting conflicts of thought, completely different to how we now understand it is.

i would love more isaiah berlin lectures !

Will there be a part 3 of Origins of Cultural History? Isaiah Berlin did something marvellous in giving more of a name to men like Hamann, Herder, and Vico

hero 101

For those coming to Hamannian literature for the first time with this lecture, please be aware that Berlin's perspective is severely outdated. Hamann was fundamentally not an "irrationalist" or part of some "Counter-Enlightenment". Perhaps Berlin confuses Hamann's views with those ascribed to him by the likes of Jacobi. Hamann is better represented in works such as Gwen Griffith-Dickson's Relational Metacriticism, John Betz's After Enlightenment, and Oswald Bayer's A Contemporary in Dissent: J.G. Hamann as Radical Enlightener. To present Hamann's views in nuce, he was primarily concerned with the discord introduced into philosophy between faith and reason by the Enlightenment. Hamann viewed the works of the likes of Immanuel Kant as misplaced in the view that reason could be 'purified' apart from the contextual influences of history, language, tradition and faith. A famous quote from Hamann: 'Language is reason, Logos' captures much of this sentiment. Hamann held many views that were akin to a religious mystic, such as Nicholas of Cusa's coincidence of opposites, but Hamann put forth these views with the (often ironic) use of contemporary philosophy, such as the use of Hume's radical skepticism put forth to defend religion. Hamann's work is beautiful and evocative and I would encourage everyone to read it. He was not an "irrationalist". He didn't write to 'confound or confuse' his readers, but rather to evoke a religious experience of the 'Spirit in the Word'. Berlin was a wonderful historian but he got Hamann very wrong. It is unfortunate that Berlin's influence continues to shade contemporary understandings of Hamann. Hamann has much more to offer modern scholarship and modern readers in general than Berlin's simple notion that he waged a broad irrationalist attack on Enlightenment reason. Hamann called for a balance between these apparently dyadic principles. He laments often that the philosophers had separated what nature put together in this regard. If you're interested in Hamann I would encourage you to seek out further sources of his work. A wonderful edited collection is available through Cambridge by Kenneth Haynes, which includes many of his best essays. A warning, Hamann is difficult to read. You will be required (or perhaps encouraged to seek out (and this is part of the point for Hamann)) a broader understanding of philosophy, poetry, history, language, translation, aesthetics, religion, art, music, hermeneutics (i.e., interpretation of texts & the "understanding of understanding"), the importance of friendship and a healthy appreciation for irony, among many other things, in order to better understand Hamann's work. Good luck and have fun.

6:48 supposed Kant quote

18:42 bookmark

Not for nothing we've learned a lot in astronomy since Kant but what does any of it really matter? I think the spirit of his remark was fair

Reisserischer Titel. Zum Glück ist der Vortrag nicht ganz so reisserisch, sondern zumindest stellenweise um eine etwas ausgeglichenere Darstellung bemüht, wie das bei einem echten Gelehrten (a genuine scholarly person) auch sein sollte.

Strange, even Kant called Hamann a brilliant thinker.
Seems more like this prof has a serious bee in his bonnet against metaphysical positions.