The Development of Individuality in the Modern World:
Burckhardt’s View on the Renaissance in Italy


Individuality and Cultural History

In Reflections on History Jacob Burckhardt describes that “culture may be defined as the sum total of those mental developments which take place spontaneously and lay no claim to universal or compulsive authority” (55) and claims that culture is developed as a process of human mental activities, "The spearhead of all Culture is a miracle of mind – speech, whose spring, independently of the individual people and its individual language, is in the soul, otherwise no deaf-mute could be taught to speak and to understand speech. Such teaching is only explicable if there is in the soul an intimate and responsive urge to clothe thought in words" (56).

He continues to discuss that culture can highly be developed as the movement of renaissance showed. As he explains that the Italian and European movement of renaissance of the fifteenth......

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Title: The Development Of Individuality In The Modern World
Approximate Word Count: 3677
Approximate Pages: 15 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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