Abstract
This paper examines how Kierkegaard learned "humbling" and "polemics" from Hamann. Following Socrates, Hamann took on a polemical attitude to the Enlightenment philosophers, who were too proud of their knowledge to humble themselves before God and others. Young Kierkegaard learned not only humbling and polemics but also many other things from Hamann. Kierkegaard contrasted religion to philosophy, as Hamann did. Yet, from Kierkegaard's point of view, Hamann's humbling and polemics had gradually turned to be inconsistent with Christianity. Thus Kierkegaard reconsidered Hamann's ideas and tried to relate humbling and polemics more closely to his own idea of true Christianity. The possibility of "stumbling" enabled Kierkegaard to apprehend a dialectical relationship that these two momentums support each other without diminishing either of them. In Kierkegaard's understanding, to follow Christ was both to humble himself and to be polemical to the world. While Hamann's theory of reconciliation responded just passively to the aporia between humbling and polemics, Kierkegaard formed from the humble Christ a life in which humbling and polemics could coexist in a dialectical note.
