History : Choice and Commitment / Felix Gilbert.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gilbert, Felix, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Historians--Germany.

Historians.

Italy--Historiography.

Italy--Politics and government.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527.

Local Subjects:

Historians--Germany.

Italy--Historiography.

Italy--Politics and government.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (555 p.)

Edition:

Reprint 2014

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), generally recognized as the founder of the school of modern critical historical scholarship, and Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897), the great Swiss proponent of cultural interpretation, are fathers of modern history--giants of their time who continue to exert an immense influence in our own. They are usually seen as contrasts, Ranke as representative of political history and Burckhardt of cultural history. In five essays, each flowing gracefully into the next, the distinguished historian Felix Gilbert shows that such contrasts are oversimplifications. Despite their interest in different aspects of the past, Ranke's and Burckhardt's views arose from common elements in the first half of the nineteenth century, the time in which they grew up and in which their first masterworks attracted such wide attention. This concise volume clarifies the beginnings of history as an autonomous discipline, while forcing us to examine our views on basic questions in historical scholarship. In the case of Ranke, relating his work to his times counteracts the current tendency to disregard the difference between the historical concepts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By focusing on this difference, Gilbert emphasizes the originality and novelty of Ranke's ideas about history. Although Burckhardt is often portrayed as an intellectually lonely figure, this book reveals the importance of relating his thought to the intellectual trends of his time. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Contents:

Frontmatter

PREFATORY NOTE

Contents

INTRODUCTION / Ford, Franklin L.

PART I. Teachers of History at the University of Berlin

PART II. The Historian's Machiavelli

PART III. Florentine and Venetian Studies

PART IV. Diplomacy: Old and New

PART V. The Changing Lenses of History

Publications of Felix Gilbert. Notes. Index

Publications of Felix Gilbert

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

0-674-36852-5

OCLC:

1013940372