"Lionel Gossman's work tells the story of Basel, this seemingly anachronistic hybrid of commercialism and classical republicanism, and of four major thinkers who retreated there: the historian Jacob Burckhardt, the philologist and anthropologist Johann Jacob Bachofen, the theologian Franz Overbeck, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He shows how their ideas are tightly interwoven with the culture, tradition, and destiny of this unique and beautiful city. Today, as the developments these men decried continue to gain momentum, their "unseasonable ideas" emerge as fresh, provocative, and troublingly ambiguous in their implications as they were 150 years ago."--BOOK JACKET.