Book Reviews and Notices : The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of Interpretation. BY WALLACE K. FERGUSON. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co. 1948. Pp. xiii, 429.)

• Published date: 01 September 1949
• Author: Arnaud B. Leavelle
• Date: 01 September 1949
• DOI: 10.1177/106591294900200320
• Subject Matter: Articles

438

appended

to

the

book.

In

part,

they

deal

with

the

reviews

which

the

first

edition

had

received

internationally;

in

part,

they

refer

to

special

points

in

new

monographs.

The

most

interesting

of

them

is

a

note

on

a

study

by

Gohlke

on

the

genesis

of

Aristotle’s

Politics.

It

seems,

according

to

Gohlke,

that

Book

VII

of

Politics

is

not

a

sketch

of

an

&dquo;ideal&dquo;

state

at

all;

it

rather

is

a

tract

advising

Alexander

not

to

pursue

his

policy

of

amal,

gamating

Hellenes

and

Asiatics,

but

to

separate

them

in

upper

and

lower

classes

in

the

planned

new

foundations

of

cities.

If

Gohlke’s

thesis

should

prove

tenable,

it

would

cast

an

entirely

new

light

on

Aristotelian

ideas.

The

book

with

its

additions

is

a

most

refreshing

symptom

of

the

revived

interest

in

ancient

political

ideas

and

a

renewed

understanding

of

their

importance

for

the

present.

Louisiana

State

University.

ERIC

VOEGELIN.

The

Renaissance

in

Historical

Thought:

Five

Centuries

of

Interpretation.

BY

WALLACE

K.

FERGUSON.

(Boston:

Houghton,

Mifflin

Co.

1948.

Pp.

xiii,

429.)

This

book

needed

badly

to

be

written,

and

all

social

scientists

who

find

history

tributary

to

their

disciplines

will

be

gratified

that

it

has

been

written

with

such

penetrating

scholarship

and

such

awareness

of

the

dan-

.

gers

of

subjective

bias.

Professor

Ferguson

has

undertaken

to

trace

the

variations

in

the

conceptions

of

that

crucial

originative

period

of

modern

civilization,

the

Renaissance.

Selecting

those

interpretations

which

have

been

either

widely

influential

or

typical

of

particular

schools

of

historical

thought,

he

characterizes

with

great

lucidity

the

early

Humanist

historians

of

Renaissance

Italy

itself,

the

Erasmian

tradition

of

the

North,

the

Ra-

tionalist

and

Romantic

controversy

in

the

eighteenth

century,

the

central

importance

of

Jacob

Burckhardt’s

masterly

synthesis,

The

Civilization

of

the

Renaissance

in

Italy

(1860),

and

the

contemporary

revolt

of

the

medievalists

and

Thomists,

whose

efforts

to

read

back

into

the

Middle

Ages

all

that

is

held

good

in

classical

humanism

is

labeled

mildly

as

&dquo;difh-

cult

if

not

impossible

for

non-Catholics&dquo;

(p.

339)

to

accept.

While

the

author

himself

confesses

to

a

faith

that

&dquo;history

is

not

a

meaningless

chaos

of

unrelated

facts&dquo;

(p.

391),

he

concedes

that

the

pri-

mary

significance

of

the

historiography

of

the

Renaissance

consists of

its

being

an

object

lesson

in

historical

relativism.

Each

historian’s

recon-

struction

of

the

period

has

been

conditioned

by

his

own

intellectual

en-

vironment

and

his

own

philosophical

or

moral

interests.

The

late

Charles

A.

Beard

would

have found

here

further

impressive

support

for

his

belief

that

there

are

very

narrow

limits

to

the

possibility

of

historical

fact

and

that

philosophies

of

history

are

always

based

upon

subjective

choices.