Burckhardt und Nietzsche im Revolutionszeitalter by Emil Walter-Busch (review)

Emil Walter-Busch’s study is the latest in a long series of scholarly works focused on Jacob Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche and the relationship between them. Works of primary importance, such as Karl Löwith’s Jakob Burckhardt. Der Mensch inmitten der Geschichte (Luzern: Vita nova Verlag, 1936), Edgar Salin’s Vom deutschen Verhängnis. Gespräch an der Zeitenwende: Burckhardt–Nietzsche (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959), and Alfred von Martin’s Nietzsche und Burckhardt. Zwei geistige Welten im Dialog (Munich: Erasmus Verlag, 1947), have for a long time set the framework for conceiving the relations between these authors, both from a biographical point of view and when it comes to their reciprocal intellectual debts. More recently, the Nietzsche-Burckhardt relation was at the center of Enrico Müller’s Die Griechen im Denken Nietzsches (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005) relating Nietzsche to history and Greek antiquity. After these contributions, unmatched in terms of exhaustiveness and depth of analysis, the question of the relationship between Nietzsche and Burckhardt seemed to offer no further opportunities for scholarly exploration. It is to Emil Walter-Busch’s credit that his book succeeds in demonstrating that this field is still fertile and can be investigated from new, alternative perspectives. Instead of seeking to compete with these specialists by proposing a new and definitive account of the Nietzsche-Burckhardt relation, he endeavors to deal with their works (in particular that of Salin) and then to offer a new perspective that lacks systematic pretensions but certainly not scholarly interest.

The first part of the book immediately makes clear what Walter-Busch’s approach will be: not “Nietzsche and Burckhardt” but “Burckhardt and Nietzsche.” The order given to these names not only reflects the chronological order of the two philosophers but also reveals Walter-Busch’s preference. His book is clearly skewed toward Burckhardt, even though the sections dedicated to the two authors are quite equal in terms of the number of pages. The part dedicated to Burckhardt (10–132) is the more original and meticulous one, and the one with which the author seems to feel most at ease. Burckhardt also receives a great deal of attention in the second part, when the comparison with Nietzsche is made. This part (133–214) appears to be treated less painstakingly and the topics discussed seem less cohesive, but it too offers interesting elements, such as the chapter on the cult of Renaissance in the literature of the turn of the century (194–214). And, in Walter-Busch’s defense, the challenging task of presenting two authors and their reciprocal relationship and of revealing their different approaches to common themes, on the basis of their different historical and social backgrounds, perhaps makes a dualistic and comparative approach inevitable.

Before approaching the Burckhardt-Nietzsche relationship on the basis of their biographies and works, Walter-Busch feels it necessary to first consider each philosopher separately, focusing particularly on the dependency of their works on the age in which they lived. Burckhardt and Nietzsche were indeed, as Walter-Busch says, “Zeitzeugen typischer, gelegentlich auch lokal, national oder international bedeutsamer Entwicklungen und Ereignisse des 19. Jahrhunderts” (57), and that can be seen in their works.

When it comes to Jacob Burckhardt, Werner Kaegi’s colossal work in seven volumes, Jakob Burckhardt. Eine Biographie (Basel-Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1947–82), remains a vital reference work and offers Walter-Busch a mine of materials on the first years of Burckhardt’s activity in Basel. One of the most original and interesting sections of the book (even for specialists) is the analysis of the so-called Politische Reportagen (61–76), the numerous newspaper reports Burckhardt wrote between 1843 and 1848 in the wake of the political events that upset Europe and, on a small scale, even Switzerland. In contrast with the universalism of Burckhardt’s historical thesis, Walter-Busch points out the local, cantonal rather than national dynamics Burckhardt chose to be involved in. This first part is followed...