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From the fourteenth century onwards writers began to speak of a revival in Italy after a period of darkness; for many this was a cultural one, for others a political one. Even Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire and Gibbon, who regarded the Renaissance as the rejection of all things medieval, did not attempt to integrate the two conceptions. Burckhardt was the first thinker to do so, finding the cause of Italy's cultural Renaissance in the unique political conditions of the peninsula, an area which was not governed by one ruler but by a great variety of ruthlessly competing states. According to Burckhardt this produced a secular, realistic and individualistic culture with little regard for religion or social hierarchy, and great regard for political and artistic talent. The revival of classical literature and art was significant, he thought, but it was the marriage of this with the peculiar genius of the Italian people that produced a unique civilization that ushered in the modern era. The principal influence on Burckhardt was Schopenhauer, not Hegel (pace Gombrich). The extent of the debt owed by modern historians such as Baron, Skinner, Pocock and Chabod to Burckhardt's notion o

Author

Humfrey Butters

Publisher

Amsterdam University Press

Published

2019

Language

EN