Jacob Burckhardt’s Idea On Continuity In History

Jacob Burckhardt is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest historians in the 19th century, whose counter-mainstream method of history study is getting popular in our age. Scholars have mainly focused on Burckhardt’s work of culture history and art history for long while overlooked the importance of his idea of Historik and history understanding. This thesis mainly discusses Burckhardt’s idea of continuity in history by studying his lecture note of "Uber das Studium der Geschichte" (later known as Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen). By looking into Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen, we find that according to Burckhardt, continuity in history means inheritance of cultural tradition on the level of individuals and society. Meanwhile, Burckhardt’s idea of crisis supposed that this kind of continuum is not threated by crises in history. However a faked crisis would disrupt the culture tradition. The unique combination of anti-narrative and continuity suggested that Burckhardt’s idea of history surpassed those of professional historians in his era. It came directly from his thinking of historical consciousness.