Intro, by Peter Burke

比《什么是文化史》的介绍更专门一点，我觉得写得很好，分享一些笔记。

Jacob Burckhardt and the Italian Renaissance, by Peter Burke

生平及志业
—Basel
—University of Berlin, seminar of Leopard von Ranke, Medievalist.
—Italy, Franz Kugler, cultural history, Renaissance. The Age of Constantine the Great, The Cicerone.
—Zurich. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.
—Posthumously, notes for lectures.

Italy, a welcome escape from the Protestant piety of Basel, where art and its history were suspect to some people as ‘worldly’ pursuits.
Lecturer: walk with Nietzsche.
Hearty dislike for the French Revolution, for the US, for mass democracy…a good citizen and a good European.

作史方法：反对positivism, Hegelianism. 没有历史哲学, for history co-ordinates, and hence is unhistorical. 但并非对哲学无所知（philosophically illiterate）。熟悉黑格尔、叔本华、尼采。反对实证主义，”sketch of the whole” (Gesamtschilerung).
文化史观。“cultural history” (Kulturgeschichte). 狭义，艺术；广义，文化。centrality of art. 和兰克的政治史相对，逐渐自觉。
对意大利的同情之了解：Like other northerners, from Goethe to Ibsen, from Wagner to Warburg, Burckhardt found that his encounter with southern Europe, and with Italy in particular, was a major event in his life. ***Italy was for him the Other, attractively different from the Switzerland he left behind, with sun instead of rain, wine instead of beer, and an outward-going people instead of an inward-looking one.
前两部作品的姊妹篇：The Cicerone.意大利艺术得以产生的文化环境，the concern for individuality. The Age of Constantine the Great, rise of other-worldliness in the fourth century, The Renaissance, rise of worldliness in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

作品之界划：”Introduction to the Study of History”. Three powers: state, religion, culture. 各占上峰，古埃及、墨西哥、秘鲁：国家决定文化；伊斯兰世界：宗教决定国家；希腊城邦：文化决定国家。文艺复兴属于三型，本书结构：中间四章讨论文化，开篇介绍国家，结论关于宗教。
全书章旨：第一章，it concentrates on the rise of a new, self-conscious conception of the state, which may be illustrated from the Florentine and Venetian concern with gathering what would later be called statistics. “the state as a work of art” (Der Staat als Kunstwerk). 末章，文化对宗教态度的影响，both subjective and worldly.
中间四章，第三章，”The Revival of Antiquity” 最传统。第五章，”Society and Festivals” 视野广阔。其余两章最著名，”The Development of the Individual”, “The Discovery of the World and of Man ”.
最著名的论断：
In Middle Ages…man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, part, family, or corporation—only through some general category. In Italy this veil first melted into air; an objective treatment of the State and all the things of this world became possible. The subjective side at the same time asserted itself with corresponding emphasis; man became a spiritual individual, and recognized himself as such. (p. 98)
组织材料：对世界的客观观察，Machiavelli’s Prince; 主观方面，autobiographies like those of Pius II, poems of Petrarch, etc.
主题：it was not the revival of antiquity alone, but its union with the genius of the Italian people[dem italienischen Volksgeist], which achieved the conquest of the Western world.

对艺术的同情和对政治的兴趣并存。Peter Gay diagnoses “a secret infatuation with enormities”. I would rather speak of Burckhardt’s ambivalence, and place more stress on the northerner’s perception of the hot-blooded south as the Other, and also on the German cultural tradition of fascination with the demonic, a tradition which runs from Goethe through Wagner and Nietzsche to Thomas Mann. (不是很懂。。。)

学术史意义：
文化史传统：Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists (1550). Voltaire, Essay on Manners (1756). Saverio Bettinelli, Revival of Italy (1775). 意大利史学家，未被重视。伏尔泰中心主题，”spirit” or “genius” of an age. 当时的风气，孟德斯鸠，休谟，赫尔德,Volksgeist，黑格尔, “spirit of the age” (Zeigeist).
与哲学家的思想关联：
The State as a Work of Art—the political work of art，黑格尔《哲学史讲演录》，论希腊政体。
The Development of the Individual—individual, objectivity, subjectivity，黑格尔。
（贡布里希说布氏作品built on Hegelian foundations. Unity of a period）
Polarities of objective and subjective, science vs. history—叔本华，”our philosopher”.

对文艺复兴研究的继承：
古学复兴，当时人就有这看法。Vasari,首次用Renaissance (rinascità). 18-19世纪精致化。伏尔泰、司汤达关注文艺复兴。
1850s取径最相似的两位史学家：Georg Voigt, The Revival of Classical Antiquity (1859). Italian humanism. Jules Michelet, History of France (1842-1855). “the discovery of the world, the discovery of man”. 布氏此作允为时代产儿。

出版史：初版不佳，插图，英译。J. A. Symonds, 前三卷。Samuel Middlemore.

指暇：
专业化的趋势，一些概括站不住。科学史成为独立学科。
对材料的解读。Petrarch’s famous letter describing his ascent of Mont Ventoux in Provence. Allegorical rather than literal.
结构上的弱点。对经济基础强调不够。忽视动态变化。The impression of immobility is the result of Burckhardt’s successful attempt to demonstrate the lateral connections between different domains of Renaissance life.
对中世纪的陌生。十二世纪的传记文学作品，骑士对荣誉的追求等等，挑战individuality, individualism等概念。
Modernity. 历史并非单向街，并无一定的进路。不能将15-16世纪欧洲的变化归结为“意大利化”。考虑its adaptation to local circumstances.

对学者的启发：
忽略了人文主义者与经院哲学家的冲突；人文主义者之间的冲突。
Johan Huizinga, Waning of the Middle Age (1919). Riposte to Burckhardt, emphasizing the theme of decay rather than rebirth and culture of France and Flanders rather than that of Italy. 但与此同时，仍是布氏风格写就。
希腊研究对未来的影响。
Like the Norman aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, this Basel patrician may be regarded as a ‘prophet of a mass age’. His emphasis on the subjectivity of historical writing and on cultural relativism, heretical in his own day, is now widely shared. His concern with patterns of culture and with changing concepts of the person has appealed to social anthropologists (from Ruth Benedict to Clifford Geertz) as well as to socio-cultural historians.