Reflections on History

by Jacob Burckhardt

Book Overview

A guide to the study and comprehension of historical processes. Burckhardt makes a clear distinction between that state and the voluntary activities of socirty. He focuses on the nature and reciprocal interactions of the state, religion and culture.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 091396638X
• ISBN13: 9780913966389
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: Liberty Fund
• Length: 354 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.

Customer Reviews

One Of The Best Historians From The 19th Century

Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) was one of the most brilliant historians of the 19th century. Burckhardt was a professor of history and the history of art at the University of Basel from 1858-1893. He believed studying customs and manners of an era were more insightful than studying institutions. He also thought that by studying literature and art of a historic period contained a more meaningful truth than the history of events. This book is composed from a series of notes for lectures Burckhardt delivered from 1865-1885 at the U. of Basel. This book is a defiant counter-cultural look at human history from antiquity to the time of Napoleon. Burckhardt does not judge history by modern day standards, but seeks to find each historical epoch's own intrinsic meaning to the intellectual and artistic treasure of mankind. The historian's job is to observe, contemplate and enjoy. Although; not quick to judge the past, Burckhardt was quick to ridicule the "smugness" of his present times. Burckhardt had grave misgivings about "popular egalitarian democracy", watching it corrupt culture and politics. Burckhardt was an environmentalist worried about the ravaging of the earths natural resources during the industrial revolution. Burckhardt was very wary of the growth of the "state" politically and believed it was only a matter of time before the tyranny of the `state' would steal people's liberty. Yet, Burckhardt is no pessimist, he was a "philosopher of freedom", believing man could rise above the bleakest of circumstances. He is an astute observer and is fascinating to read. His lectures have the clarity and historic scope like that of Lord Acton's works. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in political philosophy, and history.

Essential text in your personal library !

This is an important and fundamental essay around a fascinating and controversial issue. The story according Burckhardt is "The breakthrough with the nature caused by the awakening of the conscious." In this sense, the story really begins when the men think in the elapsed time not in function of natural processes, but around a set of specific facts in which they are deeply committed consciously and simultaneously can influence. The further and derived conclusions you can extract are countless. Go for this rewarding, vigorous and passionate essay.

Rambling thoughts of the historical know-it-all

This book has an index, and the index lists one page for Zarathustra, but even Zarathustra might wonder how he ever ended up being the last word in the paragraph:"Aryan polytheism, in its reversion to pantheism, was the source of the religion of the Brahmans; the Zend religion, on the other hand, transformed it into an unparalleled dualism. And that change can only have been operated in one sudden movement by one great (very great) individual. Hence there can be no doubt of the personality of Zarathustra." (p. 152).There is a lot in this book, attempting to "cover the ground" (p. 59) of "state, religion, and culture in their mutual bearings. . . . The state and religion, the expressions of political and metaphysical need, may claim authority over their particular peoples at any rate, and indeed over the world. For our special purpose, however, culture, which meets material and spiritual need in the narrower sense, is the sum of all that has spontaneously arisen for the advancement of material life and as an expression of spiritual and moral life--all social intercourse, technologies, arts, literatures, and sciences." (pp. 59-60). Considering ownership (or worse, the desire of individuals to copy such things in a manner that was previously restricted to commercial manufacturing processes) of such things the major factor behind all the great struggles of our own time, we ought to be able to see how much has happened since the paragraph quoted above from the lectures given off and on from 1868 to 1885, included in Chapter 3, "The Reciprocal Actions of the Three Powers," and that more than a hundred pages later, even Jacob Burckhardt, the famous historian and friend of the young professor Friedrich Nietzsche at the University of Basel, in Chapter 4, "The Crises of History," needs to ask those who are listening to his lecture, "Or is everything to turn into big business, as in America?" (p. 266) only a page before observing, "The socialist systems have been the first to abandon the quest for power and to place their specific aims before anything else." (p. 267).Political systems have been fumbling over the kind of power of personality question that put Zarathustra in the perplexing paragraph quoted above, as if anyone who claimed to possess knowledge of good and evil, "in the extreme sense, theocratic in intention" (p. 152) could easily divide the world "between two personified principles and their trains (hardly personified at all). And that in a predominantly pessimistic sense, beloved of the gods, ends his life evilly in the toils of Ahriman. Yet at this very point, we must again note how easily religion and the state change places in their mutual interaction. All this did not prevent the actual monarchs of Persia (the Achaemenidae at any rate) from arrogating to themselves the representation of Ormuzd on earth and believing themselves to stand under his special and permanent guidance, while the monarchy itself was in reality a horrible

Philosophy of History

Burckhardt's book focuses primarily upon the three powers, state, religion, and culture. He examines them by defining the concepts as he wished to use them (for common understanding of what he refers to when using the terms) and then looks closely at the relationships. Chapter three, which examines the relationships by how each power "determines" or influences the others, is based on reciprocity between the three. Burckhardt shows how state, religion, and culture are all within the framework of influence and through examples from history he supports his argument very well.In the later part of the book Burckhardt looks at the crisis of history. The crisis he discusses is in the conflicts of mankind which we measure our history against, such as wars. He then discusses great men of history, not in specifics of naming but in defining what it means to be great, and who can or can not be great...someone who can not be replaces is considered great and by Burckhardt's reasoning that may include artists but exclude inventors (as he believes that someone else could also have invented any given "thing" though art would not be as easily reproduced.)This books is relevent still today, though to read it one must be ready for the view point of Burckhardt's time, which can seem racist or intolerant to the people's outside of Christian Europe.