Riflessioni sulla storia universale

This short paper on universal history, which we present here in its entirety, predates by a few years the onset of the crisis surrounding the liberal reforms of the Prussian Kingdom and Humboldt's personal institutional trajectory, which would soon see his relationship with Chancellor Hardenberg begin to crumble. Humboldt's departure from the Council of State, and more generally from the inner circle of the Kingdom's rulers, his discontent and growing disappointment, clearly perceptible in his correspondence from that period, foreshadowed the definitive rift between the two figures and the decisive prevalence of the conservative current in the 1820s. The reformist interlude came to an end, and with it, the scope for action for the reformer Humboldt, who thus chose to withdraw from politics and devote himself to study and philosophical reflection on language.