Abstract

In the debate about the rhetorical nature of the writing of history, the Swiss historian and art historian Jacob Burckhardt remains a curiously neglected figure. He is portrayed as an apolitical thinker, who despite his persistent cultural criticism, did not develop an alternative to historicism. However, Burckhardt did participate in the debate about whether history was a form of literature or science and was an opponent of the "scientific" school of history that dominated nineteenth-century historiography. ;Burckhardt's historical and art-historical thought is closely related to his anti-modernism. His political position was determined by his critique of modernity and his belief that Europe was in a state of profound crisis. This crisis resulted in the objectification and rationalization of the world at the expense of the subjective side of human nature, leading to the fragmentation of the modern individual and the commodification of culture. ;Burckhardt's critique of modernity influenced the development of a new mode of historical discourse based on the notion of aesthetic "contemplation" . He viewed history as a form of poetry, as the writing of myths and fictions, and compared it to "a series of the most beautiful artistic compositions." By elevating the language of aesthetics to the level of the primary structuring metaphor or narrative of existence, Burckhardt was rejecting the belief in "objective," "scientific" and "rational" history which attempted to capture the past "as it really was," and which provided the historical legitimacy of modernity. Highly political in its implications, Burckhardt's aesthetic vision of the world sought to resolve the crisis of the modern individual through the rediscovery of primary subjectivity and to subvert modernity through the reassociation of knowledge, politics and desire, which he felt was dissociated in the age of Liberal capitalism. By arguing that history was a form of representation and that nothing existed outside of the text and the rhetoric of the historian, Burckhardt's work consequently prefigured the dilemma and discussion which dominate intellectual history today