La lettura filosofica del Rinascimento nell’ultimo Nietzsche

In the Antichrist, Nietzsche qualifies the problem of Italian Renaissance – its meaning and its place in universal history – as his own. Such late positive and enthusiastic attitude, however, results from the previous fight between two towering personalities in his biography: Richard Wagner and Jacob Burckhardt. The latter is responsible for shaping (rather than simply influencing) not only Nietzsche’s appreciation of the Renaissance, but also the reflection on Cultur in the last phase of his production. However, Burckhardt’s reading of the Renaissance was already widely criticized in his time and later. In this paper, his reading of the Renaissance as the overturning of the Middle Ages will be discussed in the light of later criticisms based on cultural and historical evidence (Gebhart, Burdach, Warburg and his school), as well as the potentially contradictory consequences it entails for Nietzsche’s philosophy.