Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897): Cultural History as an Alternative
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Anti-Hegelian Cultural Historian
Jacob Burckhardt, Swiss cultural historian and longtime professor in Basel, holds among the three figures discussed here the most explicit anti-Hegel program. Nietzsche, his colleague in Basel, called him “our great, greatest teacher.”
The “Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy” (1860)
Burckhardt’s principal work established a new kind of historiography: not the history of states, but cultural history. Not kings and battles, but mentalities, art forms, ways of life.
The Explicit Critique of Hegel
In his “Reflections on History” (Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen, published posthumously in 1905), Burckhardt formulates his critique directly: he rejects any notion of progress. The “presumption of living in an age of ethical progress is utterly ridiculous.”
Instead of Hegel’s dialectical development, Burckhardt sees the interplay of three “powers” (Potenzen): state, religion, culture. These do not stand in a systematic relation but influence one another mutually in unpredictable ways.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Burckhardt’s strength lies in his sensitivity to crises and upheavals. His warnings of coming wars and of the growing power of the state were prophetic.
His weakness lies in the absence of a systematic framework. His cultural conservatism and anti-democratic stance remain unexamined. If there is no standard for progress, how can anything be evaluated at all?
Karl Löwith aptly placed Burckhardt’s position “midway between Hegel and Kierkegaard”[1] - between the system and the individual, between world history and existence.
Karl Löwith, Von Hegel zu Nietzsche, 1941. ↩︎