BACHOFEN, JOHANN JAKOB. - Jurist, b. in Basel on 22 Dec. 1815, d. there on 25 Nov. 1887. A disciple of Savigny, he turned his research to the history of the development of legal forms within primitive human groups, so that he is considered the founder of legal ethnology.
His fundamental work is Mutterrecht (Stuttgart 1865), in which he asserts that the social and religious development of humanity would proceed from a first stage, characterized: economically by communism; socially by the predominance of woman, to whom, given the promiscuity of the sexes, the rule of generation was traced; religiously by the cult of a great Mother Goddess, symbol of the earth that produces all things and reabsorbs all things into itself, whence the chthonic deities and the cult of the dead.
From this telluric religion, in which lunar mythology predominates, one would pass to a second form of religion and civilization, economically characterized by private property, socially by the predominance of man even within the family, and religiously by the cult of solar deities; which, according to B., means that the progress of history is accomplished through the victory of spirit as force over the inertia of matter. This explains the revival of studies on B. in Germany in the period between the First and Second World Wars.
Bibliography5 worksC. A. Bernoulli, J. J. B. und das Natursymbol, Leipzig 1924; on which volume see a broad analysis by R. Pettazzoni, in Studi e materiali di
BIBL.: C. A. Bernoulli, J. J. B. und das Natursymbol, Leipzig 1924; on which volume see a broad analysis by R. Pettazzoni, in Studi e materiali di Stor. delle relig., 1 (1925), p. 233; Ch. Andler, J.-J. B., son œuvre et sa méthode, d'après un livre récent, in Revue de l'Hist. des religions, 93 (1926), pp. 224-41; J.-J. Bachofen, Urreligion und antike Symbole, 3 vols., Leipzig 1926, contains passages from his works coordinated by C. A. Bernoulli himself; B. Croce, Il B. e la storiografia affilologica, in La Critica, 26 (1928), pp. 418-431.
Turchi, Nicola. “Bachofen, johann jakob.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. II, coll. 656–657. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1949. https://azioneromana.com/article/bachofen-johann-jakob.
MLA
Turchi, Nicola. “Bachofen, johann jakob.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. II, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1949, coll. 656–657. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/bachofen-johann-jakob.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec2_bachofen_johann_jakob,
author = {Turchi, Nicola},
title = {Bachofen, johann jakob},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {II},
pages = {656--657},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1949},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/bachofen-johann-jakob}
}
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