Cryptic as always, Hamann writes ( Aesthetica in Nuce ): “Speak, that I might see you! — This desire was fulfilled in creation, which is an address to the creature through the creature.”

Dickson notes that this suggests that creation pre-exists itself such that its desire is answered by the act of creation. She explains: “I make sense of this logical puzzle by metaschematically applying a Lacanian notion: that even before it is born the baby already is given a role and identity in the structure of a family, has a place and unique position there (e.g. a woman carrying her first baby and planning to have several has already created an identity for her unborn child, not as her ‘only child’ but as an ‘elder sibling’ - though not only are there no other siblings, but the child itself has not even been born.”

Hamann’s use of this notion hints at a doctrine of the decree: “we had a ‘pre-existence’ in God’s structuring an identity for us (and creating our desire) as his children, even before the creation ‘from nothing.’”