Jacob Burckhardt and the Crisis of Modernity (Electronic book text)

As a historian of the Renaissance and the rise of Christianity, Burckhardt was concerned with periods of social, political, and cultural transformation. Writing in the aftermath of the 1848 Revolutions and in the long shadow cast by the French Revolution of 1789, he observed the rise of industrial capitalism and mass politics with trepidation. He especially lamented the fate of the individual, whose creativity had shaped the glories of the Renaissance and ancient Greece but who was increasingly domesticated and commodified in modern society.