king ubu Posted November 20, 2003 Report Share Posted November 20, 2003 As I get it, there are several historians among us. Anyone has opinions to share on Hans Baron's concept of "civic humanism"? Anyone read his "Crisis"? I'm currently working on a little exercise on Leonardo Bruni and in connection with that read Baron's "Crisis" among other things. ubu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minew Posted November 20, 2003 Report Share Posted November 20, 2003 Wow. Never expected this to come up here. It's been over a decade, but as I recall, Baron's argument was that the crisis (chaos and power vaccuum) of the late 14th C. Italian city states caused figures like Bruni and Salutati to call on the lessons of the classical world for (city-)state building. In so doing, they resurrected classical political forms, e.g., republics, senates, etc, and thus, at least in political terms, were responsible for Renaissance. Am I remembering this correctly? Rival theses like Burckhardt (earlier), Kristeller (contemp. w/ Baron), and Baxandall (current) focus more on humanism/classical philology itself as the catalyst for changes in other arenas. What's your take? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king ubu Posted November 21, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 Baron's notion was that, under the influence of the threat consisting of the Tyranny of Milan, in Florence, there arised a new form of humanism. He called this "civic humanism". Leonardo Bruni (from Arezzo, thus at that time called "Aretino") was the crucial person in Baron's scheme, 1402 the crucial year - the year when the threat was getting immense. I cannot right now explain what exactly "civic" meant, but it has to do with the idea that the new humanists, opposing mainly to Petrarca (and Bocaccio, who was a student or scholar or whatever of Petrarca) and his ideals of the "vita contemplativa", stressed the "vita activa" (of civic, hence the word, life). In addition, a new study (after discovery of new handwritings, I think, but am not sure) of Aristotle and mainly Cicero took part. Bruni, in his "Laudatio Florentinae urbis" (which I write my paper about, and which, together with his "Dialogues" represent the mainstay of Baron's argumentation in "Crisis") developped a "double-thesis", maintaining (as Salutati before him had found already) Florence's foundation not under Caesar (the hero of Petrarch) but under the Roman repbulic (Sulla, I think), and therefore having to bear the yoke of the task of defending Roman/republican/Etrurian civic liberty in opposition to the threat of tyrants all over Italy. Baron maintained Burckhardt's view of the Renaissance bearing the seed of modernity, bringing middle ages to an end. Yet somehow he also maintained sort of a continuity - actually "civic humanism" came into being through a melting together of the vernacular, medieval, civic tradition of the communes, and the learnde humanist approaches of the line of Petrarch (and the Scholastics). Bruni was the most important figure in this scheme, presenting us (in the "Laudatio") a first republican manifesto (as Baron believed) (and this is exactly the part of the "Laudatio" in focus of my paper). (You can download a partial version in english as pdf here: www.york.ac.uk/teaching/history/pjpg/bruni.pdf Baron's reading has been more and more critized. Beginning with attacks by Jerrold E. Seigel (somewhen in the sixites), and, as you mentioned disagreements with (but no open critique from) Kristeller. While it seems that at least concerning the "Laudatio" the huge work Baron did to re-date the text (1403/04 instead of 1400/01) seems to be regarded as valid still today, in the case of the "Dialogues", Baron's opinion is not generally accepted anymore. The chronology (the establishment of a new chronology proposed and put up by Baron) was the foundation for his thesis. Yet today, there are historians who consider that even with certain chronological aspects as established by Baron being false, his general proposal (the "civic humanism") is still valid. The main point put up against the "Baron-thesis" (besides the general difference in regard to what (renaissance or generally) history should deal with - the differences between Baron and Kristeller) was that his view was much derived from his own "preferences" - his adhereance to german 19c "Bildung", "Bildungsbürgertum", "Bildungsideal" (in reference to Humboldt's "second humanism" etc - Kay Schiller wrote an article and a book about that issue). So Baron generally identified himself with Leonardo Bruni, his great champion, and thus created problems that maybe would not have been without him. He stressed that Bruni was a republican ideologue (the first actually to leave us an outspoken republican tract, the "Laudatio" (as I said before, ahem...), and seemingly disregarded the possibility of Bruni being a professional "rhetorician" (Seigel's attack was titled: "Civic humanism or professional rhetoricism" or something similar, Baron's reply "L. Bruni: 'civic humanist' or 'professional rhetorician' "). My opinion on this whole thing (not quite fully formed yet, however), is along the lines of James Hankins (who wrote an interesting article for a book ("Renaissance Civic Humanism") he edited). The Baron-thesis is still interesting, some (important, not to say general) points are still valid (the new - whether to dub it "civic" would have to be discussed, actually, the original term was "Bügerhumanismus", and maybe less debatable than its english counterpart - humanism is a "fact" which can be stressed with help of sources), yet regarding Bruni (not to speak of Baron's Machiavelli), Baron seemed to miss some points. I don't believe Bruni was an ideologue of any kind. Rather he was a politically involved rhetorician, man of letters (and bestseller author of his time, too, by the way), wo adapted with ease to different political systems - he had no problem with the rise of the Medici, for instance (Baron works quite hard to try and convince us why the republican ideologue should work under a regime viewed today as not much different than the tyrannies in other italian city-states of that era). Hope this makes *some* sense, ubu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minew Posted November 21, 2003 Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 It does. Also, I think it's gonna be just you and me on this one. I seem to remember that principal counter to Baron's general argument is contained in the "professional rhetorician" issue that you refer to. That is, humanism in general was a social and cultural current among Bruni's class in Italy. Although classical political forms were well known, tried, explored, and discussed throughout the Middle Ages (Kristeller, Skinner), in Bruni's time, neo-classical political forms (or anything else) were valuable simply because they were neo-classical (Kristeller, Baxandall). Or economically speaking, Lauro Martines ("Power and Imagination") argues that non-noble elites like Bruni adopted/espoused classical forms to legitimize and consolidate their merchant oligarchies. And William Bouwsma would go so far as to describe it as politcal rhetoric without correspondence to political reality. Humanism clearly "mattered" but how and why in "civic" terms. I think everyone see's Baron's argument as the starting point for the discussion but are unwilling to take Bruni at his word, as Baron does - and unwilling to overestimate his (Bruni's) impact given the way public life played out in the Quattrocento in Firenze. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jazzmoose Posted November 21, 2003 Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 Also, I think it's gonna be just you and me on this one. Probably, but remember you have an avid lurker who's soaking all this up like a sponge...keep it going! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king ubu Posted November 21, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 Moose and minew - give me some time, I'll post again here. I think the point Kay Schiller made (quite recently, actually, in a book in 2001 and an article a couple of years before that) are quite good, too. ubu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minew Posted November 21, 2003 Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 2001 and an article a couple of years before that Yeah, I'm interested to hear about the current literature on this (last 10 years) because it's been that long since I kept up with it. I wonder if anyone's somehow tied this discussion to the "civic ritual" craze that was sweeping the field a few years ago. My weekend forum visiting may be sporadic but I'll be back for more as soon as I can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king ubu Posted November 21, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 21, 2003 Actually that book was released in 2000. Some recent titles (from the bibliography of my emerging exercise): Fubrini, Riccardo, „Renaissance Historian: The Career of Hans Baron”, in: Journal of Modern History 64 (1992), 541-574. Griffiths, Godon, James Hankins, David Thompson (Hrsg.). The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni. Binghamton, New York 1987. (= Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies; 46. Renaissance texts series; 10). Hankins, James, „The ’Baron Thesis’ after Forty Years and some Recent Studies of Leonardo Bruni”, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995), 309-331. Hankins, James, „Rhetoric, history, and ideology: the civic panegyrics of Leonardo Bruni“, in: Ders. (Hrsg.), Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, Cambridge 2000. (= Ideas in Context; 57), 143-178 Hankins, James (Ed.). Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections. Cambridge 2000. (= Ideas in Context; 57). Schiller, Kay, „Hans Baron’s Humanism“, in: Storia della Storiografia 34 (1998), 51-99. Schiller, Kay. Gelehrte Gegenwelten: Über humanistische Leitbilder im 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt am Main 2000. There is some more, which I have not yet properly listed. The Schiller article (1998) is most probably an early version of the text in the book (2000). The book features an introduction, then a large essay on Ernst Kantorowicz, and then comes the long Baron part. It seems Schiller more or less used his article and incorporated it in the book. These texts (and Fubrini, too) are generally not on the Renaissance, but on the history of renaissance scholars (Baron main and centre). The Griffiths/Hankins/Thompson tome is a rather pedestrian collection of (english) excerpts from Bruni-texts. More for students, not too nicely edited and introduced, in my opinion. It still seems that Baron's edition (which came out in 1928 and was radically critised from the date of its release) is the better one. Hankins seems to be the historician currently most involved with Bruni. He is also editing the "Repertorium Bruniarum" (will be 3 tomes, as far as I know only the first has appeared so far.). His account on Bruni and the Bruni-thesis is alright, and his close analysis of the Dialogi and the Laudatio (in that most interesting book he edited, "Renaissance Civic Humanism" - this has Baron and Pocock (whom I don't know at all and are not that interested in, either) in its focus, Pocock being viewed as a scholar who made use of the Baron thesis for epochs after the Renaissance. ubu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king ubu Posted September 21, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 21, 2007 weirdest thread I ever started, bringing it back up with a weirdo request to all you academics with experience in searching articles in those online databases: after over a day of going through dozens of pages of hits in JSTOR, I am quite fed-up and not sure it's worth going through others of these databases (I have access to Peridicals Archive Online, Project Muse, Science Direct, SpringertLink, and Central and Eastern European Online Library). I'm still on this topic of the thread, hence I'm using this thread for my request, instead of starting a new one... any of the historically or otherwise scientifically educated folks here can tell me if JSTOR sort of covers it all or if I have to go through the other search engines for another week or so? I gave a short at Periodicals Archive Online, and the first bunch of hits I all had from JSTOR already, which made me doubt... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Niko Posted September 21, 2007 Report Share Posted September 21, 2007 weirdest thread I ever started, bringing it back up with a weirdo request to all you academics with experience in searching articles in those online databases: after over a day of going through dozens of pages of hits in JSTOR, I am quite fed-up and not sure it's worth going through others of these databases (I have access to Peridicals Archive Online, Project Muse, Science Direct, SpringertLink, and Central and Eastern European Online Library). I'm still on this topic of the thread, hence I'm using this thread for my request, instead of starting a new one... any of the historically or otherwise scientifically educated folks here can tell me if JSTOR sort of covers it all or if I have to go through the other search engines for another week or so? I gave a short at Periodicals Archive Online, and the first bunch of hits I all had from JSTOR already, which made me doubt... hmmm, no idea about history... for my purposes, JSTOR is far from complete, relatively often i need stuff from elsewhere, actually i usually search on scholar.google.com they already provide weblinks (including jstor) but (though they are decent, they) could be better at searching within abstracts (but it has some useful features, too, such as containing lots of working papers or providing citation histories...), so sometimes i use a specialized database (which won't help you too much) which contains more details about the articles; but, again, no idea what you are looking for; guess the stuff where it is embarrassing if you don't cite it should be in JSTOR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king ubu Posted September 21, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 21, 2007 Yes, I quickly went through the other engines. JSTOR is the best by far, but it ends around 2000/2001, for never entries it seems for my area Project Muse is best, but then they duplicated most of the older stuff and had lots of hits in there that had absolutely no connection to my search... anyway, the others all didn't help me a lot as they're not really strong on historical materials... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Niko Posted September 21, 2007 Report Share Posted September 21, 2007 Yes, I quickly went through the other engines. JSTOR is the best by far, but it ends around 2000/2001, for never entries it seems for my area Project Muse is best, but then they duplicated most of the older stuff and had lots of hits in there that had absolutely no connection to my search... anyway, the others all didn't help me a lot as they're not really strong on historical materials... again, why do you use jstor instead of scholar.google.com for searching? i thought it contained jstor plus a lot more...? because it gives you too much nonsense? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king ubu Posted September 21, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 21, 2007 Yes, I quickly went through the other engines. JSTOR is the best by far, but it ends around 2000/2001, for never entries it seems for my area Project Muse is best, but then they duplicated most of the older stuff and had lots of hits in there that had absolutely no connection to my search... anyway, the others all didn't help me a lot as they're not really strong on historical materials... again, why do you use jstor instead of scholar.google.com for searching? i thought it contained jstor plus a lot more...? because it gives you too much nonsense? Haven't tried scholar.google.com - didn't know it existed... anyway, JSTOR gives me access to the actual texts, I can save them as PDFs (if logged in to the VPN-client of my university, but I can do that from home). Will check that google thing out tomorrow, though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Niko Posted September 21, 2007 Report Share Posted September 21, 2007 Haven't tried scholar.google.com - didn't know it existed... anyway, JSTOR gives me access to the actual texts[...] you should! as i said, if the text is in jstor google scholar will give you the address (on the right side of the title it says "Group of 5" or something when scholar knows several sources to avoid multiple listings, clicking on there gives you the alternative addresses...) it's not the best site evere, but it's pretty good... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king ubu Posted September 21, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 21, 2007 seems after looking through scholar.google.com hits for a quarter of an hour, all I'm interested in is actually on JSTOR... except for the books, but they not including bibliographies and only partial introductions aren't of any use... I'll explore some more, though, thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Niko Posted September 21, 2007 Report Share Posted September 21, 2007 seems after looking through scholar.google.com hits for a quarter of an hour, all I'm interested in is actually on JSTOR... then life is easy for you (but at least scholar helped you find out)! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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