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Jacob Christoph Burckhardt (May 25, 1818, Basel, Switzerland – August 8, 1897, Basel) was a Swiss historian of art and culture, and an influential figure in the historiography of each field. He is known as one of the major progenitors of cultural history, albeit in a form very different from how cultural history is conceived and studied in academia today. One scholar described Burckhardt as: "The great discoverer of the age of the Renaissance, he first showed how a period should be treated in its entirety, with regard not only for its painting, sculpture and architecture, but for the social institutions of its daily life as well." Burckhardt's best known work is The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860).

Life

The descendant of a long line of Protestant ministers and the son of a clergyman, Burckhardt, following his father's wishes, studied theology first in Basel and then in Neuchâtel. In 1839 he moved to the University of Berlin to study history, especially art history, then a new field. At Berlin, he attended lectures by Leopold von Ranke, the founder of history as a respectable academic discipline (based on sources and records rather than one's own opinions). Burckhardt respected Ranke but had little affection for him. Under the latter's guidance he learned how to appreciate, properly select and scrutinize original sources.

He spent part of 1841 at the University of Bonn, studying under the art historian Franz Kugler, to whom he dedicated his first book, Die Kunstwerke der belgischen Städte (1842). Soon thereafter Burckhardt made the first of his many many trips to Italy, and revised Kugler's "Handbook of the History of Painting" (Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei) in 1847, altering Kugler's romantic view of the Germans as the true successors of the Greeks, emphasizing Renaissance art instead (which Kugler had termed derivative). It was during those years of revolutionary fervor in "unforgettable Rome" that he conceived the idea for a vast multi-volume history of culture, only some of which would eventually be realized.

He taught at the University of Basel from 1843 to 1855, then at ETH, the engineering school in Zurich. In 1858, he returned to Basel to assume the professorship he held until his 1893 retirement. Only starting in 1886 did he teach art history exclusively. He twice declined offers of professorial chairs at German universities, at the University of Tübingen in 1867, and Ranke's chair at the University of Berlin in 1872. In this later period he lost his faith, keeping it private out of respect for his clerical family.

Cultural Historian

History: an essay in pathology

Two great philosphical lights were ascendant in Burckhardt's formative years: G.W.F. Hegel, whose star of influence was on the wane, and Arthur Schopenhauer, whose recent "re-discovery" had caused a renewed interest in his work among artists and several young philosophers. Among historians, Jacob Burckhardt, seemingly alone, had a natural affinity to the latter and it's attendant antipathy for the former.

Of Hegel and his attempt to turn history into philosophy, Burckhardt wrote: "He develops the fundamental idea that history is the record of the process by which mind becomes aware of its own significance... Thus we find him putting forward the doctrine of perfectibility, that is, our old familiar friend called progress." For Burckhardt, progress was an illusion, an idea put forth admirably and extensively scrutinized in Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation.

"The Hegelians," Schopenhauer wrote, "who regard the philosophy of history as the aim of all philosophy, ought to be taught some Plato, who indefatigably repeats that the object of philosophy lies in the unchangeable and in what lasts, and not in the things which are now like this, and now again like that... philosophically speaking, what really is is the same at all times." History ought to be based on the insight that, "in all those endless variations and turmoils, we have before us merely the one creature, essentially identical and unchangeable, busying itself with the very same things today, and yesterday, and forever." Man, and not a Hegelian Weltgeist, is at the center of history. Indeed it has been observed that "Schopenhauer's philosophy pervades the whole work of Jacob Burckhardt".

Burckhardt considered himself a humanist but only insofar as drawing a distinguishing line between history and theology. While attacking Hegel's form of secularized theology, Burckhardt could still find value in a genuine religious interpretation of history as in Augustine's De Civitate Dei. But for him man, and not god, was the center of his studies. Man, not as "the measure of all things" or "the paragon of animals" but instead as an essentially unhealthy creature. The study of history thus became for him an essay in pathology.

A reader of history

In the century since his death, Burckhardt's reputation has been rated very differently by the educated public, on one hand, and the professional historian on the other. In recent history, with the renewed appreciation of his work as "cultural historian", this gap has narrowed significantly. However the fact remains that Burckhardt firmly, steadfastly renounced the straightforward, scientific approach to history and instead made a conscious decision to write books for an "educated elite" and thus to become a "master historian".

Yet he always hated the process of writing books, considering it a "form of slavery". The masterpieces that gained him his fame, Der Cicerone, Die Zeit Constantins des Grofien, and Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien were either not prepared by him for further editions or abandoned for colleagues to revise. Burckhardt regarded himself as neither researcher nor writer but instead—a reader of history.

This position as reader afforded some unique insights. In empathy with the student and non-technical reader he observed that history and historiography in his day had degenerated into an intimidating and deadly dull "mass of facts" and had completely devalued and thus avoided any eyewitness experience. "The focus had shifted from remembrance to reconstruction; events were now narrated in terms of newly conceived abstractions like 'development,' 'process,' 'spirit of an age,' and 'spirit of a nation.'" Contemporary history had devolved into a history for historians only. Gone were the vivid sources from the past. Sources that were not only first-hand but also told with an eye to maintaining the interest of the reader.

After publishing his own classics over a short period, Burckhardt claimed that the best books in fact already existed but that an "enormous stream of literature" threatened to drown them. As for himself, he declared, "I won't write books anymore; there is enough of such anyway...."

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

Main article: The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy

In describing a particular epoch in all its aspects, this book fulfills the then contemporary aspects of a cultural history, indeed aspects that Burckhardt helped pioneer; and yet it also deviates from the concept in a crucial way. There is no account of the everyday life of ordinary people: what they ate, how they dressed, etc. "The chief concern of Burckhardt's book is the change brought about by the new awareness of man's individuality, by a new concept of man." Throughout, the book is concerned with only one section of society, its ruling group. In the city-republics this would be the leading families; in the principalities, the members of the court. And within these the focus is placed on those who play an active part in the intellectual developments of their time. In short, the emphasis of Burkhardt's idea of cultural history has shifted from descriptions of daily life to analysis of high culture.

The book has no chronological sequence and instead is divided into sections, each devoted to a different aspect of human concerns. These typically contain a brief examination or summary followed by concrete examples. Thus "the book becomes a series of brilliant vignettes."

Lectures on Greek culture

The project, a study of "the Greek spirit," was envisioned by Burckhardt in 1861 as a university course on Greek cultural history. It occupied him throughout a decade. In January of 1870 the course was announced.

In these now famous lectures Burckhardt states that the life which existed in Greece "has never existed on earth either before or later or anywhere." And yet the picture one gets is that the Greeks were not happy people. The romantic vision of Greece as a land of beauty and hope was in Burckhardt's view "one of the greatest falsifications of historical judgments ever made."

Burckhardt & Nietzsche

In 1869 the University of Basel appointed the twenty four year old Friedrich Nietzsche to the chair of classical philology. The young professor admired Burckhardt and regularly attended his lectures on the Study of History, believing himself to be "the only one of his sixty listeners who grasps the profundity of his line of thought."

In a letter to a friend Nietzsche referred to Burckhardt as an "exceedingly original old man", describing how much he deeply enjoyed the latter's lectures, impressed with "...the profundity of his line of thought with its curious breaks and twists at any point where the subject threatens to be come dangerous". The implication being that Nietzsche believed Burckhardt to be more of a rebel that he was willing to show vis-a-vis the requirements of maintaining a professorial equilibrium. As their relationship grew they began taking regular walks together in which they refered to Schopenhauer as "our philosopher."

Nietzsche believed Burckhardt agreed with the thesis of his The Birth of Tragedy, namely that Greek culture was defined by opposing "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" tendencies. Indeed Burckhardt quotes the work four times, approvingly, in his Greek Cultural History. Nietzsche and Burckhardt enjoyed each other's intellectual company, even as Burckhardt kept his distance from Nietzsche's evolving philosophy. Their extensive correspondence over a number of years has been published.

“As Burckhardt’s lectures on ”The Study of History” show, state and religion were for him powers that inhibit the development of culture.”

According to Gilbert, Burckhardt "had not been captivated by the Hegelian magic and had rejected all philosophical speculation about the course of history."

Works

• Die Kunstwerke der belgischen Städte - 1842
• The Age of Constantine the Great (Die Zeit Constantin's des Grossen) - 1852 (trans. 1949) On-line edition in German
• The Cicerone: A Guide to the Works of Art in Italy (Der Cicerone: Eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens) - 1855 (trans. 1873)
• The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien) - 1860 (trans. 1878)
• The History of the Renaissance in Italy (Die Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien) - 1867
• Greek Cultural History (Griechische Kulturgeschichte) - 1898 (modern version: The Greeks and Greek Civilization)

References

• Gilbert, Felix (1990). History: Politics or Culture? Reflections on Ranke and Burckhardt. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. p. 109. ISBN 0-691-03163-0.
• Groβe, Jurgen (Jul., 1999). "Reading History: On Jacob Burckhardt as Source-Reader". Journal of the History of Ideas. 60 (3). University of Pennsylvania Press. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Heller, Erich (1988). "Burckhardt and Nietzsche". The Importance of Nietzsche: Ten Essays. Chicago, Il.: University of Chicago Press. pp. 39–54. ISBN 0-226-32637-3.
• Hinde, John (2000). Jacob Burckhardt and the Crisis of Modernity. McGill-Queen's Press. ISBN 0773510273.
• Schopenhauer, Arthur (1966). The World as Will and Representation. Trans. E. F. J. Payne. Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-21762-0.
• Sigurdson, Richard (2004). Jacob Burckhardt's Social and Political Thought. Univ. of Toronto Press. ISBN 0802047807.

External links

• Works by Jacob Burckhardt at Project Gutenberg
• Jakob Burckhardt Renaissance - Cultural history.
• A Brief Biography.
• Complete German text of The Greeks and Greek Civilization ("Griechische Kulturgeschichte")
• Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians (1929) at The Online Library of Liberty