Katherine Harloe

Thucydides and the Modern World: Introduction: the modern reception of Thucydides

During counsel in Charlottenburg, Oelssen [Section Head in the Ministry of Finance] animatedly defended the preparation of a quantity of paper money so that debts could be paid. All argument to the contrary failing, I said with immense audacity (knowing my man): ‘But Privy Councillor, do you not remember that Thucydides tells of the evils that followed from the circulation of too much paper money in Athens?’ ‘This experience,’ he concurred, ‘is certainly of great importance’ – and in this way he allowed himself to be persuaded in order that he might retain the appearance of learning.

Allusion and ekphrasis in Winckelmann's Paris description of the Apollo Belvedere

As Vout (2006) has recently reminded us in this journal, Johann Joachim Winckelmanns History of the art of antiquity (Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums , 1st ed. 1764) is widely considered to be a foundational text in the history of art. Advertising itself as the first ‘systematic’ account of ancient art in relation to its geographical, social and political circumstances, Winckelmann filled out the well-known Plinian chronology of artists with a new analysis in terms of a succession of period styles, providing a satisfyingly scientific justification for the preference his contemporaries were beginning to accord to the art of the Greeks. Small wonder then that the book was lauded as a classic as soon as it appeared in Germany and was quickly translated into French and Italian. Nevertheless, it is also hardly surprising that this text, which promised nothing less than a ‘new paradigm’ for the study of antique culture, has always presented problems to its readers. These are partly caused by its magnitude of ambition. Titled, first and foremost, a ‘history’, Winckelmanns magnum opus in fact attempts to be many things: part systematic exploration of the social and physical factors that condition the development of all art; part impassioned disquisition on the essence of beauty; part antiquarian catalogue of the greatest surviving works of Greek and Roman art; part manual of aesthetic taste for aspiring contemporary artists. Few books since Winckelmanns History can have combined bold claims about their importance as historical scholarship with detailed instructions on how to draw a perfectly beautiful face.

Hannah Arendt and the Quarrel of Ancient and Modern: “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts on Lessing” and the Politics of Historiography

[q 2 1. 2. 3. 4. We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain. —Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1950)

Kritische Zeitgenossen: Lessing, Heyne, Herder

Die Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums erschien 1763 in einer Atmosphare hoher Erwartung. Dass W. an einem grosen synthetischen Werk arbeitete, war bereits 1757 in der Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften und der freyen Kunste (Br. I, 293–294) annonciert worden. In dieser Ankundigung bestimmte W. die unmittelbare personliche Erfahrung von Altertumern als Fundament des neuen Werks und schob das reine Buchwissen zugunsten des Sehens beiseite.