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Burckhardt's ‘Civilization of the Renaissance’ A Century after its Publication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Hans Baron
Hans Baron*
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Newberry Library
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Extract

In September 1960 a hundred years will have passed since the appearance of Jacob Burckhardt's Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. No other work has had a comparable influence on the formation of the concept of die Renaissance, and during the last one or two generations it has become an historical classic read in all western countries. Since the re-publication of Burckhardt's original text by Walter Goetz in 1922, one German reprint has followed another. After the second World War the early Italian and English translations began to share in this ever-growing popularity (America has seen three new editions recendy), while the first Spanish translation came out in South America in 1942.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance News , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1960 , pp. 207 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1960

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References

1 From the third to the twelfth edition, L. Geiger, as editor, had transformed the book into a two-volume handbook constantly growing in length.

2 Kaegi, W., Jacob Burckhardt: Eine Biographie, vol. III (Basel, 1956), pp. 325 f.Google Scholar, 586,590.

3 Martin, A. v., Nietzsche und Burckhardt: Zwei geistige Welten im Dialog (3d ed., Basel, 1945)Google Scholar, passim; E. Salin, Jacob Burckhardt und Nietzsche (2d ed., Heidelberg, 1948), passim; W. K. Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought (Boston, 1948), pp. 204 f.

4 Especially Ferguson, W. K., op. cit. On the Renaissance conception of the French Enlightenment, see also Franco Simone, Studi Francesi, IX (1959), 399-411.Google Scholar

5 On Hegel, cf. D. Cantimori in Annali delta Scuola Norm. Sup. di Pisa, ser. II, vol. 1 (1932), 235-239.

6 In the Cicerone (1855) he had, for the field of architecture, placed the beginning of 'the Renaissance in the proper sense’ ﹛eigentliche Renaissance) at ‘about 1420’ (Burckhardt, Gesamtausgabe, vol. III, p. 153); cf. also the magnificent description of the ‘new spirit’ in painting developing ‘during the first decades of the 15th century’ (ibid., vol. IV, p. 186).

7 Kaegi, op. at., pp. 664, 673.

8 The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Modern Library, New York, 1954), pp. 100,416,219, 249. The last quotation, in German ‘ein ganz kenntliches Urbild des modernen Menschen', runs in the only available, continually reprinted translation by S. G. C. Middlemore: ‘a significant type of the modern spirit'. ‘Significant', ‘type', 'spirit', are all inaccurate and misleading renderings—a warning against the use of Middlemore's text without consultation of the German original. Incidentally, this specific reference to the ‘Urbild des modernen Menschen’ was later cancelled, presumably because of objections raised by Wilhelm Dilthey; cf. Kaegi, op. cit., pp. 719-722.

9 The only omission in the Civilization which is usually mentioned is the neglect (originally not intended) of Renaissance art; cf. Kaegi, op. cit., pp. 665 f., 689 f. There are, however, other omissions with graver consequences, as will be seen.

10 On Hume, cf. J. R. Hale, Englandand the Italian Renaissance (London, 1954), pp. 46 f.; Adam Ferguson, Essay (Edinburgh, 1767), pp. 271 f.; Sismondi in his Etudes sur les constitutions despeuples litres (Brussels, 1836) and his Histoire des rtpubliques italiennes (Paris, 1809 ff.); see also H. R. Felder, Simonde de Sismondi: Gedanken tiber Freiheit (Diss. Zurich, 1954), pp. 11, 25, 29.

11 Hardly more than seeds, because Ferguson's Essay did not elaborate upon conditions in Italy, and Sismondi condemned the quattrocento too passionately as the period of tyrants to search for any survival of liberte politique after the fourteenth century.

12 ‘Despotism fostered in the highest degree the individuality not only of the tyrant or Condottiere himself, but also of the men whom he … used as his tools: the secretary, minister, poet, and companion.’ Civilization, op. cit., p. 101.

13 K. Löwith, ‘Burckhardt's Entschluss zur Apoliue', in Löwith's Jacob Burckhardt: Der Mensch inmitten der Geschichte (Luzern, 1936), pp. 152-188, 363-371; D. Cantimori on Burckhardt's apolitismo, Rivista Storica Italiana, LXVI (1954), 532 f., 536.

14 Cf. R. Stadelmann's keen, though occasionally overstrained, analysis of ‘Jacob Burckhardt's griechische Kulturgeschichte', Die Antike, VII (1931), esp. 57-62.

15 Civilization, ed. cit., p. 68.

16 Kaegi, op. cit., pp. 308 f.