Essay originally published in:

Contemporary Review, November 1997, Vol. 271, Issue 1582, pp. 250-256

Few modern historians have been concerned with mapping the spiritual horizon of our civilization. The hundredth anniversary of Jacob Burckhardt's death is an appropriate moment to pause and reflect on those vitalizing aspects of human existence which every civilization must struggle to keep alive.

Born in 1818 into one of the poorer branches of a prominent Basel family, Jacob Burckhardt began his studies in theology before moving on to Greek philology and ancient history. But it was whilst studying at the University of Berlin, under Franz Kugler and Leopold von Ranke, that Burckhardt discovered the fledgling discipline of art history which he was to pursue and develop throughout his life.

Burckhardt's fame as one of the first great historians of art and culture, rests equally on the insights which he brought to the subject and on his demeanour as a scholar. In Basel, if not elsewhere in Switzerland, it was common practice among old established families, for children to eat at a separate table, especially so at formal dinners and family reunions. The children's table in Basel dialect was nicknamed the Katzedischli (little cats' table). On August 8th, 1897, Jacob Burckhardt sat in his cherished chaiselongue (which, along with his piano, was one of the few furnishings which he possessed). Besides him on a small table lay a volume of Homer and Gotthelf, a pastor in the Emmenthal canton who wrote novels of Swiss village life. As Jacob Burckhardt expired his last words, spoken in Basel dialect, were Adie liebs Katzedischli -- farewell my dear little cats' table. Although what he meant, as with all dying words, will remain forever a mystery, those last words reflect his life.

Burckhardt lead a modest existence in the fullest sense of the word; except for the last few years, he lived in a single rented room, each autumn collecting dry leaves for his mattress. Declining till the last all homage or distinctions, he persistently refused invitations to the assemblies of the learned, the Viri Eruditissimi as he gently mocked them, stating that he was not interested to hawk his wares outside Basel, where he taught at the University and gave regular public lectures. Although his modesty has been described as tinged with irony, it was by refusing to eat at the head table of the academy that he was able to dedicate himself wholly to the matter at hand. Free of the controversies and squabbles, that so readily permeate the academic world and estrange understanding, Burckhardt forged his distinctive understanding of history and stubbornly cleaved to the quest for a knowledge which embraced both the material and spiritual world.

Burckhardt's key work on the Renaissance The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy continues to be a watershed work. Begun in 1855 while he was teaching art history at the polytechnic in Zurich and completed in Basel where he held the chair of History from 1858 until his retirement, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy was first published in 1860 and translated into English by S.G.C. Middlemore in 1878.

In a letter of August 1860 Jacob Burckhardt described the work as 'an altogether wild plant dependent upon nothing whatever already existing. '(The Letters of Jacob Burckhardt, edited and translated by Alexander Dru, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1955, p. 125, henceforward Letters). The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is unique in a number of ways. Unlike previous histories the work does not proceed in a chronological or narrative form but follows a series of transverse sections from different perspectives, revealing some of the facets which characterized the age.

Burckhardt was well aware that the isolation of a period or component of History is an arbitrary device. History is a continuum, but as with any horizon one needs to set a series of cardinal points by which to navigate. Jacob Burckhardt had planned to write a series of monographs which would span the Middle Ages from the time of Constantine the Great to the Renaissance. When he took up the Chair of History at Basel University he chose to relinquish the task so as to dedicate himself exclusively to teaching. We do however have the two extremities of the work as it were, The Age of Constantine the Great (first published in German in 1852) and The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.

Before proceeding to look at the importance of the Renaissance and its significance to contemporary Western culture it is worthwhile to digress and explore Burckhardt's approach to history.

From his earliest student days until his death Burckhardt maintained that he was altogether incapable of speculation and abstract thought. In a letter to a fellow student of June 1842 he writes: 'My surrogate (to speculation and abstract thought) is contemplation, daily clearer and directed more and more upon essentials. I cling by nature to the concrete, to visible nature, and to history. But as a result of drawing ceaseless analogies between facta (which come naturally to me) I have succeeded in abstracting much that is universal.'

Jacob Burckhardt was never under any illusion as to the character of human nature. His dictum that power never yet improved a man made him keenly aware that progress is an ephemeral ideal based rather on wishful thinking than on actuality. Consequently he rejected an approach to history based on political events per se, or a study of the powerful individuals who attempt to hold sway over an epoch, the Gewaltmenschen (power-mongers) and Outlaws in history as he called them.

There is no doubt that crucial historical developments take place, developments which influence all subsequent periods (the discovery of a previously unknown continent for example), but to see progress in such events and deduce from them a continuous improvement is to ignore the valuable insights which history can offer.

If to philosophers history is a source of knowledge from which one may abstract the primum agens, for Burckhardt such an approach was incomprehensible, albeit fascinating. He saw in history a process. A process firmly anchored to the material world and yet disclosing the vitalizing aspirations of the age. In the same letter of 1842 he wrote:

'The highest conception of the history of mankind: the development of the spirit to freedom, has become my leading conviction, and consequently my studies cannot be untrue to me, cannot let me down, and must remain my good genius all through my life.' Further on he continues: 'To me history is poetry on the grandest scale; don't misunderstand me, I do not regard it romantically or fantastically, all of which is quite worthless, but as a wonderful process of chrysalis-like transformations, of ever new disclosures and revelations of the spirit. This is where I stand on the shore of the world -- stretching out my arms towards the fons et origo of all things, and that is why history to me is sheer poetry, that can be mastered through contemplation.'

Another work by Jacob Burckhardt, one published posthumously, Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen, translated as Force & Freedom: Reflections on History by James Hastings, Nichols, (New York 1943, henceforward Reflections) was based on a series of lectures which Burckhardt gave between 1868 and 1871 and offers fundamental insight into his concept of history.

It is noteworthy to recall that if Burckhardt shied further and further away from publishing as the years proceeded, he prepared his lectures much in the same manner as he worked on a book, and continued to revise his lectures and notebooks after his retirement, 'not with the idea of publication' he writes in 1889 aged 71, 'but as a final settlement, for my own sake.'

The first four chapters of Reflections are based on a course entitled 'Introduction to the Study of History' which was held at Basel in the winter of 1868/69 and again in 1870/71. The lectures were not concerned with events and dates but with the historical process. Through them Burckhardt explored the three major forces which shape a civilization: State, Religion and Culture. Once again he clearly rejects any claims to formulating abstract principles of history. His aim is to observe 'the recurrent, constant and typical as echoing in us and intelligible through us.'

The establishment of a state or a religion, which often entails the displacement of a previous power that has become corrupt or decadent, is frequently based on ideals to set up a new order. Inevitably, however, there arises the concern to maintain itself in authority. Power, in the end process, has a corrosive action on humanity. The role of the state fulfils the expedient of checking the factions (be they political, religious or representative of individual group interests) which would strive to gain power by means of force, and to maintain a sense of security and continuity. Religions, Burckhardt argues, 'are the expression of human nature's eternal and indestructible metaphysical need.' Both state and religion are constants which seek to maintain a stable and perdurable identity of a civilization. Change however, as Burckhardt points out, is the essence of history. The role of culture as the one variable was not an arbitrary choice on his part. The preeminent emphasis of culture in his thought, solicits our attention:

'Culture may be defined as the sum total of those mental developments which take place spontaneously and lay no claim to universal or compulsive authority.

'Its action on the two constants is one of perpetual modification and disintegration, and is limited only by the extent to which they have pressed it into their service and included it within their aims.

'Otherwise it is the critic of both, the clock which tells the hour at which their form and substance no longer coincide.

'Culture is, further, that millionfold process by which the spontaneous, unthinking activity of a race is transformed into considered action, or indeed, at its last and highest stage, in science and especially philosophy, into pure thought.

'Its total external form, however, as distinguished from the State and religion, is society in its broadest sense.' (Reflections, p. 140)

Following his observations on culture Burckhardt pauses to reflect on the historical consideration of poetry. If one takes the ultimate goal of history, as Burckhardt did, to be concerned with revealing human nature, then poetry is the vessel in which the ethos of human suffering, striving and struggling towards freedom has been concentrated, distilled and purified. Along with Aristotle and Schopenhauer, Burckhardt has no doubts that poetry is superior to history: 'history finds in poetry not only one of its most important, but also one of its purest and finest sources.'

Here we see at work Burckhardt's unremitting dedication to fathom the vitalizing influence of the eternal on the temporal 'from the one point accessible to us, the one eternal centre of all things -- man, suffering, striving, doing as he is and was and ever shall be.' His mission lay above all in the quest to re-establish a balance and remind us that only by understanding the temporal in relation to the eternal can we hope to become 'not shrewder (for next time), but wiser (for ever).' It is in this light that we must understand his use of 'spirit of freedom'. Not in a Nietzschean superhuman sense of beyond good and evil, or an esoterical sense of 'spiritualism'. But firmly anchored in human existence with all its cares and woes and yet aware that no matter how we are shackled to self-interests, the transitory fragility of life can be counterbalanced, for 'Once we really break off relations with the great and the infinite, we are utterly lost and caught in the wheels of the present age.'

After overviewing the role and development of poetry as the voice of religion, the mythological epic, lyric poetry, narrative and drama, Burckhardt proceeds to consider the reciprocal action of the three powers. The arrangement he adopts in considering the six relationships is, as he states, without systematic value, and represents only one of several possibilities. In these six sections, (culture as determined by the state and religion, the state as determined by religion and culture, religion as determined by the state and culture) Burckhardt's observations proceed as a series of half-random trains of thought. His aim was to awaken in the attentive reader a wealth of ideas and insights which can function as a springboard to further exploration. As he wrote to Nietzsche in 1874: 'I have never taught history for the sake of what goes under the high-falutin' name of 'world history', but essentially as a propaedeutic (i.e. preliminary) study: my task has been to put people in possession of the scaffolding which is indispensable if their further studies of whatever kind were not to be aimless. I have done everything I possibly could to lead them on to acquire personal possession of the past -- in whatever shape and form -- and at least not to sicken them of it; I wanted them to be capable of picking the fruits for themselves' (Letters, p. 158).

In a chapter on the crisis of history Burckhardt discusses the accelerated movement of the process of history. Those moments when developments which would normally take centuries or be restrained forever flit by in the space of a few months or even days. In the 'theory of storms,' as he dubs this section in his introduction, Burckhardt is careful to point out that not every crisis is a rejuvenation and the permanent results often remain 'astonishingly meagre in comparison with the great efforts and passions which rise to the surface during the crisis' (Reflections, p. 281). Several aspects of this section offer pertinent warnings for the present. Burckhardt has often been described as 'prophetic' and there is no doubt that he saw in his own time the omens of 'tremendous national wars' (Reflections, p. 292) and an escalating concern for money making and self-interest. Above all it must be recalled that in times of great general crisis our own interests create an optical illusion as to what is desirable or undesirable. The effect of genuine crisis is not the mere abolition of an old order, but the creation of a really vital new one. Burckhardt achieved great fame among intellectuals in post-war Britain and America as his writings offered such insight into the battle between freedom and the all powerful State.

The last two chapters of Reflections, 'The Great Man of History' and 'On Fortune and Misfortune in History', are based on public lectures which Burckhardt held at the Museum of Basel in 1870 and 1871 respectively.

On the great individuals of history, Burckhardt appraises those prime movers that affect the three spheres of civilizations, state, religion and culture. The truly great, in which 'the old and the new meet for a moment and take on personal form' (Reflections, p. 79), are not to be confused with the powerful. Quoting the proverb that 'no man is irreplaceable' Burckhardt adds 'But those that are, are great.' (Reflections, p. 305). Above all great are those that crystallize and elevate the standards of a civilization.

The chapter on fortune and misfortune, as Burckhardt notes in the introduction, aims to 'safeguard our impartiality against the invasion of history by wishful thinking' (Reflections, p. 79). No section better illustrates Burckhardt's concept and approach to history. History discloses the past -our heritage: only proof we can have of the continuum to which we belong, and continuity, when applied to the human spirit, reveals itself as significance.

If the study of the past is to yield the criterion by which we can judge the present, that inquiry must be free of egoism, ulterior motives and vain assumptions of superiority. Moral progress, it must be reiterated, 'is relevant to the life of the individual and not to whole epochs. If, even in bygone times, men gave their lives for each other, we have not progressed since.' (Reflections, p. 355).

The crisis that permeated the close of the Middle Ages and from which sprang the Renaissance is of crucial importance for a better understanding of our civilization. Indeed one might even say that our future depends on understanding the forces which shaped the 'civilization which is the mother of our own, and whose influence is still at work among us' (The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy).

The Middle Ages were above all characterized by the Christianization of the western world. The focus of the society was centripetal, unity and adherence to church, guild and family played a paramount role; the individual was passive and subordinated to the ideal of a common faith; learning was on the whole restricted to monastic and ecclesiastical centres. By the fourteenth century, however, moral decadence and the power struggles between the Popes and the Emperors plunged the Christian world into crisis.

In contrast to the rest of Europe, where the feudal system was evolving into unified monarchies, Italy was fragmented into a multitude of political units.

Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy investigates the period from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century from six different angles. The first three sections delineate the major traits which crystallized the age.

The opening section 'The State as a Work of Art' gives an overview of the despots and republics: 'In them', writes Burckhardt, 'for the first time we detect the modem political spirit of Europe' and with them 'a new fact appears in history -- the State as the outcome of reflection and calculation'.

The second section 'The Development of the Individual' reveals the central thesis of the work. Burckhardt's insight, based on a formidable bulk of background reading, traces the dawn of the individual in relation to every sphere of human life and activity. 'Italy began to swarm with individuality; the ban laid upon human personality was dissolved'.

With the awakening of individuality in all its myriad forms, both positive and negative, came 'The Revival of Antiquity'. In this third section Burckhardt demonstrates that the movement, which gave the era its appellation, was the result, rather than the cause, of the spirit (Volksgeist) of the time. The crystallization of the spiritual individual and the revival of antiquity could have found no better herald than the Divine Comedy, for here we have a pagan poet, Virgil, leading Dante through the Christian afterworld.

In relation to the rise of humanism Pico della Mirandola must be singled out: 'He was the only man who loudly and vigorously defended the truth and science of all ages against the one-sided worship of classical antiquity.' Burckhardt found in him, perhaps, a kindred spirit, and extols his oration on human dignity and free will, De Hominis Dignitate, as 'one of the noblest bequests of that great age.'

The second half of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy outlines the repercussion and facta ('deeds' would be a poor translation of the term by which Burckhardt encompassed all that has been wrought by the human mind) which sprang from the freedom associated with the diversity of political units, individuality and the study of antiquity.

In the section on 'The Discovery of the World and of Man' Burckhardt follows the Italian mind as it 'turned to the discovery of the outward universe, and to the representation of it in speech and form.' The geographical explorations and sciences, the discovery of natural beauty, with Petrarch as its prime instigator, and the poetry of the age, are delineated in all their diversity.

The social life of the Italian Renaissance, 'first-born among the sons of modem Europe', is fully illustrated in 'Society and Festivals'. The development of the individual asserting itself in daily life with great enthusiasm, a fusion of spirit and passion, nowhere contrasted more to the Middle Ages. Foremost among the factors that polarised the dissimilarity with the rest of Europe at the time was the mingling of the classes: noble and burgher 'dwelt together within the walls of the cities.'

The concluding section, 'Morality and Religion', offers some tentative thoughts on a subject which, as Burckhardt notes, no one can treat with certainty.

The apogee of the Renaissance was reached by the beginning of the sixteenth century. The theme of this section opens with a quote from Machiavelli: 'We Italians are irreligious and corrupt above others' and concludes with 'because the Church and her representatives set us the worst example.' Aware as the Italians were of their immorality and corruption they could not fail to reject the authority of a state which was often equally corrupt if not tyrannical. As Burckhardt notes, within the hallmark of the Italian character lies both its greatness and its weakness. Having lived in Italy for some twelve years, I would venture to add that its hallmark remains excessive individualism.

The same blend of passion and spirit, which had made of the Renaissance an active centrifugal civilization that reached beyond all previous boundaries, might have shown its dark side with the decline of the Renaissance. But with the partitioning of Italy under the powerful foreign rule of France and Spain, that other key ingredient -- the spirit of freedom -- was curbed and the individual became once more shackled to authority.

One hundred years after his death, the pioneering work of this quiet Swiss scholar still has many powerful insights and reflections to offer those who seek a broader vista.

(Olivier Burckhardt is a distant kinsman of Jacob Burckhardt. For a brief historical background of the Burckhardt family follow this link)