Johann Georg Hamann 173088 remains one of the most influential and yet least understood figures in the history of German thought and literature. Throughout his life he had major influence on figures as diverse as Goethe Schiller Kant Hegel Hoelderlin Kierkegaard and a host of others. Hamann is also one of the most difficulttoread authors in the German language writing in an ultracondensed hyperallusive language for which he became infamousand which his detractors constantly used to dismiss h