Book Reviews

A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN Reflections on History WHEN Jacob Burckhardt, the Swiss historian of art and culture, died in 1897, he left a series of classroom lecture notes that he considered un ready for book publication. It was only as he was dying that he gave permission to his heirs to bring them out if they saw fit. The notes were originally published in Ger many in 1905, but it was not until some forty years later, in the middle of a war against the very to talitarianism that Burckhardt had predicted, that the first English translation was made. The original American title, as of 1943, was Force and Freedom; Reinhold Niebuhr and others seized upon the book at once for its as toundingly accurate prophecies about the coming of the Goliath State. The odd thing was that Burckhardt, no Hegelian, did not believe in historical determinism. His fluid conception of history could have done wonders to counteract the Marxism and neo-Marxism that have bemused so many of our intel lectuals. But his influence has been limited, and his name has been pret ty much forgotten.

Now, as part of a program that is seeing many neglected classics re stored to contemporary use, the Lib erty Fund of Indianapolis has repub lished Force and Freedom as Reflec tions on History (Liberty Classics, 7440 North Shadeland, In dianapolis, Indiana 46250, 354 pages, $9.00 cloth; $4.00 paper), with a beautifully comprehensive in troduction by Gottfried Dietze. What immediately strikes the reader is that Burckhardt, a man of the nineteenth century, explains the 1980 headlines as no modern com189 190 THE FREEMAN March mentator has succeeded in doing. Take his discussion of Islam, for example. In the West, he. says, state and church have not fused into Hone oppressive whole." But in Islam the fusion took place. ~~The whole of cul ture," he wrote, Hwas dominated, shaped and colored by it. Islam has only one form of polity, of necessity despotic, the consummation of power, secular, priestly, and theo cratic .... This aridity, this dreary uniformity of Islam, which is so ter ribly limited on the religious side, probably did more harm than good to culture, if only because it ren dered the peoples affected by it quite incapable of going over to another culture."

If our editorialists had known about Burckhardt, they would not have been caught so short by the apparition of the Ayatollah Kho meini. And if our policy makers in Washington had absorbed some of Burckhardt's wisdom, they would never have been deluded into think ing that detente with a totalitarian power could ever come to anything. Consequences of Intervention: A Subtle Understanding Burckhardt did not believe in his torical ~~laws." But if nothing was fated, how could he have been such a good prophet? Only by a subtle un derstanding of the word ~~if." Des potism would result Hif" the State were to be permitted to absorb all the activities of men. But such ab sorption leads to stagnation and de cay. History, as Burckhardt ob served, is filled with overturns and interruptions. Great men can make a difference, for good or for ill. One whole chapter in Reflections on His tory is given over to a discussion of luck. It was lucky that the Greeks conquered Persia and the Romans Carthage, unlucky that Athens was defeated by Sparta. It was unlucky that Caesar was murdered before he had time to consolidate the Roman Empire into u an adequate political form." In the eighth century it was lucky that Europe held Islam at bay.