Most Popular Books by William J. Bouwsma

The essays assembled here represent forty years of reflection about the European cultural past by an eminent historian. The volume concentrates on the Renaissance and Reformation, while providing a lens through which to view problems of perennial interest. A Usable Past is a book of unusual scope, touching on such topics as political thought and historiography, metaphysical and practical conceptions of order, the relevance of Renaissance humanism to Protestant thought, the secularization of European culture, the contributions of particular professional groups to European civilization, and the teaching of history. The essays in A Usable Past are unified by a set of common concerns. William Bouwsma has always resisted the pretensions to science that have shaped much recent historical scholarship and made the work of historians increasingly specialized and inaccessible to lay readers. Following Friedrich Nietzsche, he argues that since history is a kind of public utility, historical research should contribute to the self-understanding of society.

Historians have credited--or blamed--Calvinism for many developments in the modern world, including capitalism, modern science, secularization, democracy, individualism, and unitarianism. These same historians, however, have largely ignored John Calvin the man. When people consider him at all, they tend to view him as little more than the joyless tyrant of Geneva who created an abstract theology as forbidding as himself. This volume, written by the eminent historian William J. Bouwsma, who has devoted his career to exploring the larger patterns of early modern European history, seeks to redress these common misconceptions of Calvin by placing him back in the proper historical context of his time. Eloquently depicting Calvin's life as a French exile, a humanist in the tradition of Erasmus, and a man unusually sensitive to the complexities and contradictions of later Renaissance culture, Bouwsma reveals a surprisingly human, plausible, ecumenical, and often sympathetic Calvin. John Calvin offers a brilliant reassessment not only of Calvin but also of the Reformation and its relationship to the movements of the Renaissance.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

Este volumen de la Historia Intelectual de Occidente auspiciada por la Universidad de Yale versa sobre el siglo comprendido entre 1550 y 1640. William J. Bouwsma, profesor emérito de la Universidad de Berkeley y máximo experto en el período, replantea con brillantez las ideas tradicionales sobre la duración e influencia del Renacimiento, señalando que a mediados del siglo XVI se gestó una nueva concepción cultural, marcada por el abandono del optimismo y la seguridad propios de la etapa anterior. A partir del análisis de los principales nombres de la cultura de ese tiempo (Montaigne, Cervantes, Galileo, Shakespeare, Descartes), el autor traza el panorama intelectual de la época, marcado en primera instancia por una serie de impulsos de expansión y liberación (del sujeto, del conocimiento, del espacio, del tiempo) que generaron a su vez una profunda corriente de desconfianza y duda ante un mundo que se revelaba más complejo de lo que se creía, y que desembocaron en una «cultura de orden» en todos los terrenos sociales, de la política a la religión, las artes o la ciencia.