Judgments on History and Historians by Jacob Burckhardt (PDF)

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Renowned for his Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy and Reflections on History, Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897) has well been described as “the most civilized historian of the nineteenth century.” Judgments on History and Historians consists of records collected by Emil Dürr from Burckhardt’s lecture notes for history courses at the University of Basel from 1865 to 1885. The 149 brief sections span five eras: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, History from 1450 to 1598, the History of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, and the Age of Revolution.

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⭐This work consists of Burckhardt’s lectures between 1865 – 1885. He was a professor teaching students, not the public. He assumes background by the listener. Nevertheless, even though his opinions sound dissonant (maybe painful) to the modern ear, the composition is captivating.Well worth the effort!Forward – ”Readers should beware. This is a profoundly counter-cultural book, unabashedly and defiantly so. It takes on the prevailing truisms of our time across the entire political spectrum: the goodness of popular egalitarian democracy; the superiority of untrammelled capitalism and its consumerist, materialistic ethos; and the benefits of a welfare state that paternally provides for all. Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97) also strenuously challenged the notion, already widespread in his time and held even more tenaciously today, that the essence of history for the past four hundred years has been the march of progress and enlightenment.”This ‘faith’ that we live in a world that has ‘progressed’ – and that proves our superiority – is still with us. Gives Burckhardt’s trenchant analysis real force.Where else can we find this insight?”Despite his injunction not to judge the past, Burckhardt did not hesitate to judge the present, with all of its smugness and self-confidence. Like Alexis de Tocqueville, he had deep misgivings about the advent of popular egalitarian democracy, which he believed would lead to ever higher levels of vulgarity, the simplification and corruption of culture and politics, and eventually the tyranny of demagogues.” How prescient! Think Bismarck, Hitler, etc. . ”The main problem with popular democratic culture was its deification of equality as the ruling principle in all of life. It was one thing to argue that all men should be equal before the law, an idea Burckhardt did not find problematic, but quite another to argue that all men are equal, and even more pernicious to suggest that all beliefs, opinions, and ways of life are of equal worth, a reductio ad absurdum that Burckhardt believed would lead to the death of culture and the return of barbarism.” Who can deny it?”Burckhardt was equally harsh toward another idol of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, namely, the spread of economic growth and development as the essence of “progress.” Sometime during the seventeenth century, many people had come to believe that the chief end of life is to acquire material possessions and live with the greatest possible comfort and material ease. This belief, coupled with the growth of capitalism, industrialization, and ever more inventive technologies for the economic exploitation of the earth’s resources, had created a culture of hectic acquisitiveness, materialism, and spiritual and aesthetic squalor. Burckhardt was appalled at the human, cultural, and environmental costs of this ever more voracious Behemoth.” -This worry dominates present, one hundred fifty years later.Work divided into 149 chapters. Extensive and erudite. Five sections -1. Antiquity2. The Middle Ages3. History from 1450 – 15984. History of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries5. The Age of Revolution

⭐This book is derived from notes and fragments of lectures that Jacob Burckhardt gave at the University of Basel between 1865 and 1885.Be prepared to have your beliefs challenged when you read this.There is so much “history” out there which is really junk.It could provoke it’s own course of study. The characters might be familiar but they are being used contrary to their actual place in history.What he does is completely different from that.You would be hard pressed to find a Western Civilizations course this good in this day and age.The most interesting part of this book is the age of revolution.This is the period after the French Revolution.While he is talking about this in his lectures,it’s not completed yet.That’s what makes it really interesting from a historians’ point of view.He doesn’t spend as much time on some of the leaders as he does with the people of those different times in history.You can imagine how the leaders lived,but what about the people?

⭐For example:”. . . the state incurs debts for politics, wars, and other higher causes and “progress” . . . The assumption is that the future will honor this relationship in perpetuity. The state has learned from the merchantsand industrialists how to exploit credit; it defies the nation ever to let it go into bankruptcy. Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.” – Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians

⭐Jacob Burkhardt was a 19th century history professor with an intimate and detailed knowledge of the history of the west. This book is a selection of his lecture notes given at the University of Basel between 1865 and 1885. It is divided into 6 sections: Antiquity, The Middle Ages, History From 1450 to 1598, The 17th and 18th Centuries and lastly The Age of Revolution which covers the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era.He’s a very opinionated gadfly, taking jaded potshots at pretty much every Mediterranean civilization and their notables. He’s also brought up now and then by other historians as someone who was underappreciated and ought to be read. His observations are trenchant and pithy, not entirely well supported in the text, but challenging enough to kick off discussion and further exploration in order to determine whether or not he is right.One doesn’t take away an overall theme or message from the book, but take into account that this was collected and edited by one of his students after his death. Also, the material assumes that you already have a reasonably good background in the eras under discussion. As such the book should be seen as a supplement to other reading.

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