burckhardt civilization of the renaissance

For this citizen of Basel, who watched Germany’s transformation from a cultural idea into a political empire with mounting alarm, the potential of humans to remake an expanding world in their own, individualistic and secular image had its origins in the ferocious political rivalry of Italian city states which sought to claim their legitimacy by every means at their disposal. Burckhardt’s Civilisation has been described as both ‘the supreme expression of the 19th-century fantasy of the Italian Renaissance’ and also as a ‘dark, disturbing classic of modernism’ which located ‘the shock of the new’ in Italy’s sleeping ruins. The British Academy conference Burckhardt at 200: The “Civilisation of the Italian Renaissance” Reconsidered adopted the strategy of looking at Burckhardt’s classic book to understand his methods and intentions as well as to judge his continuing relevance. The bicentenary of the birth of the Swiss scholar, Jacob Burckhardt ( - 8 August 1897), author of Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), seemed an appropriate moment to take stock and consider whether or not the idea of an ‘Italian Renaissance’ is still a hermeneutically helpful one.

Burckhardt civilization of the renaissance