Religion and the Rise of Historicism
W. M. L. de Wette, Jacob Burckhardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-Century Historical Consciousness

This book demonstrates the centrality of theological concerns in the emergence of modern, secular historical consciousness.

Thomas Albert Howard (Author)

9780521650229, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 November 1999

264 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.6 kg

"Burckhardt emerges...as a serious interlocutor who can illuminate the content of contemporary experience and help clarify the implications of current historicist perspectives... It is a striking example...of how the reconstruction of historical cultural contexts should not bury the dead in the past worlds but allow them to speak in ours." John E. Toes, Central European History

This book offers an interpretation of the rise of secular historical thought in nineteenth-century Europe. Instead of characterizing 'historicism' and 'secularization' as fundamental breaks with Europe's religious heritage, they are presented as complex cultural permutations with much continuity; for inherited theological patterns of interpreting experience determined to a large degree the conditions, possibilities and limitations of the forms of historical imagination realizable by nineteenth-century secular intellectuals. This point is made by examining the thought of the German theologian W. M. L. de Wette and that of the Swiss-German historian Jacob Burckhardt. Burckhardt's meeting with de Wette and his subsequent decision to study history over theology are interpreted as revealing moments in nineteenth-century intellectual history. By examining their encounter, its larger historical context, and the thought of both men, the book demonstrates the centrality of theological concerns and forms of knowledge in the emergence of modern, secular historical consciousness.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: History, Theology, and Modernity
1. Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette: enlightenment, romanticism and biblical criticism
2. De Wette and Schleiermacher at Berlin (1810–1819): politics, history, and the post-enlightenment transformation of theology
3. De Wette, D. F. Strauss, and the New Christusbild
4. Basel, Burckhardt, and de Wette
5. History without centaurs
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]