Johan Huizinga
Johan Huizinga
Johan Huizinga, was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth7 December 1872
music sports fashion
The things which can make life enjoyable remain the same. They are, now as before, reading, music, fine arts, travel, the enjoyment of nature, sports, fashion, social vanity (knightly orders, honorary offices, gatherings) and the intoxication of the senses.
ideas rainbow imagination
The eternal gulf between being and idea can only be bridged by the rainbow of imagination.
public-opinion looks demand
From whichever angle one looks at it, the application of racial theories remains a striking proof of the lowered demands of public opinion upon the purity of critical judgment.
attitude sober-up expression
An aristocratic culture does not advertise its emotions. In its forms of expression it is sober and reserved. Its general attitude is stoic.
powerful struggle wings
It is an evil world. The fires of hatred and violence burn fiercely. Evil is powerful, the devil covers a darkened earth with hisblack wings. And soon the end of the world is expected. But mankind does not repent, the church struggles, and the preachers and poets warn and lament in vain.
war civilization history
If, then, this civilization is to be saved, if it is not to be submerged by centuries of barbarism, but to secure the treasures ofits inheritance on new and more stable foundations, there is indeed need for those now living fully to realize how far the decay has already progressed.
beautiful depression confusing
Every age yearns for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and the depression about the confusing present, the more intense that yearning.
past history interpretation
History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.
luxury giving way
Life is made too easy. Mankind's moral fibre is giving way under the softening influence of luxury.
use youth spirit
Educators are aware that they can reach the youth only by making use of gang spirit and guiding it, not by working against it.
lonely light cities
The modern city hardly knows a pure darkness or true silence anymore, nor does it know the effect of a single small light or that of a lonely distant shout.
culture metaphysical aim
Culture must have its ultimate aim in the metaphysical or it will cease to be culture.
play special function
Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.
character play bears
Culture arises and unfolds in and as play... culture itself bears the character of play.