Theodor Mommsen’s (1817-1903) influence on generations of scholars is both uncanny and profound. During the course of his life, Mommsen published over 1,500 works, many of which are considered the bedrock of entire fields of study. Although much of Mommsen’s work has been superseded by subsequent scholars, Mommsen laid the foundation for all modern scholarship in Roman history and Roman law. Among the great scholars of the 19th century, Mommsen is perhaps the most influential of them all.
Mommsen was born in Schleswig, the son of a Lutheran pastor. Mommsen was instilled with the value of education, attending the Gymnasium at Altona from 1834 to 1838. His father exhibited an “Enlightened rationalism,” and was not fundamentalist. Yet, Mommsen demanded ever more rational explanations, and ultimately abandoned Christian belief in 1837. Mommsen’s writings seem to equate pre-Christian antiquity to light and rationalism, and Christianity with darkness and emotionalism. Several historians have suggested that Mommsen replaced his lost Christianity with a commitment to philology. Perry even argues that Mommsen turned to the ancient Romans for guidance, in place of religion. Following Altona, Mommsen studied jurisprudence at the University of Kiel from 1838 to 1843. Here, Mommsen was influenced by Burchardi, a pupil of Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779 – 1861), “one of the founders of the historical school of jurisprudence,” which stressed the close interrelationship between law and history. Mommsen also came into contact with Otto Jahn (1813 – 1869), who emphasized the study of ancient language and its interrelationship with ancient institutions and life.
Upon graduation, Mommsen took an appointment at a school for young girls, ...
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Livy’s The Rise of Rome serves as the ultimate catalogue of Roman history, elaborating on the accomplishments of each king and set of consuls through the ages of its vast empire. In the first five books, Livy lays the groundwork for the history of Rome and sets forth a model for all of Rome to follow. For him, the “special and salutary benefit of the study of history is to behold evidence of every sort of behaviour set forth as on a splendid memorial; from it you may select for yourself and for your country what to emulate, from it what to avoid, whether basely begun or basely concluded.” (Livy 4). Livy, however, denies the general populace the right to make the same sort of conclusions that he made in constructing his histories. His biased representation of Romulus and Tarquin Superbus, two icons of Roman history, give the readers a definite model of what a Roman should be, instead of allowing them to come to their own conclusion.
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ABSTRACT: There have been many interpretations of Bildung in the history of German philosophy, from the Medieval mystics to the secularization of the Enlightenment. Wilhelm von Humboldt's work at the end of the 18th century is a good example. He placed the idea of Bildung at the center of his work because it was rooted in a dynamic, transforming idea of the natural and human worlds while also being oriented toward a model of balance and perfection. Von Humboldt's interpretation of modernity is characterized by a strong emphasis on change as well as the need to find criteria for guiding such a transformation that has no intrinsic or predetermined end. Love of classical antiquity was not merely nostalgia for a lost world, a normative current that placed the idea of perfection and balance foremost in order to achieve the ideal of Humanitas in an attempt to overcome the unilaterally of modernity.
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