“Essay of a Sibyl on Marriage” by J. G. Hamann: Text and Commentary

Abstract

In a 1775 “Essay of Sybil on Marriage” (Versuch einer Sibylle über die Ehe), translation and succinct commentary of which is presented in a current paper, J. G. Hamann holds to strictly binary approach to human sexuality. According to Hamann, sexuality is connected to the doctrines of divine creation and Christology, and as such it transpires by means of man’s coworking with God in the matter of creating new people through the marital embrace. In this sense Hamann discards conventional Enlightenment interpretation of marriage as a social contract and rather places an emphasis on its physicality in view of his Incarnational theology. Holding to a theological-philosophical position that he adopted early in his literary career, Hamann does not consider sexual desire to be shameful or sinful but rather views the union of a man and a woman in terms of his previously developed Socratic epistemology of self‑knowledge, which results in realization of one’s own sexuality in the act of being known by another.