Lecture
Is not philology something greater
than a «discipline» — a symbol
of the present-day condition of man?
Or, more precisely still — a symbol of
what it means «to be human»...?
Yu.S. Stepanov
Chapter 2. The History of Philology:
from Philology as Integrated
Knowledge to Philology as a Complex
of Sciences
Philology arose as a practical activity and as practically oriented knowledge. This knowledge was distinguished by its integrated character. It is no accident that engaging in philology
required a person to possess encyclopedic learning. This
state of affairs persisted until the mid-nineteenth century, when philology
lost its orientation toward solving above all immediate practical tasks, when scientific methods took shape within philology,
and powerful processes of differentiation of knowledge occurred. The «pre-scientific» stage of philology gave way to the
scientific stage.
2.1. Philology as Practically Oriented
Integrated Knowledge
(5th—4th centuries B.C. — mid-nineteenth century A.D.)
Until the mid-nineteenth century philology retained the status of practically oriented knowledge and activity and had an integrated character (section 1.1). These features are clearly visible in the
initial stages of the development of philology.
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The philology of antiquity. Ancient Eastern (India,
China) and Western (Greece, Rome) texts came to be studied already
in the ancient world (10th century B.C. — 5th century A.D.). At various times
tasks arose here that determined the formation of philology as
a practical activity. The Eastern and Western traditions
took shape and developed separately.
On the basis of the Western tradition classical philology arose. It took form in Europe during the Renaissance
(14th—16th centuries) as a return to the ancient Greek and ancient Roman heritage. This was a reaction to the dominance of church Latin, and became one of the manifestations of the humanist position:
«man is the center of the universe». «I have placed you at the center of the universe so that you might behold everything I have put there. I
have made you neither of heaven nor of earth; like a sculptor, you shape your
own «self». You may degenerate into a beast, but you are equally able to rise, by a single wish of your soul, to the image of the divine», — God says to man in the work of the Italian humanist Pico della Mirandola (1463—1494).
The term «classical» is connected with the Latin classis — rank, class. The inhabitants of ancient Rome were divided into classes: those placed
in the first class possessed the greatest wealth and the greatest rights.
Hence the word classical also acquires the meaning «first-rate».
Classical philology studies the languages, literature, everyday life, history, philosophy, art, and culture of ancient
Greece and ancient Rome. Thus it arises and develops as a complex of knowledge about the ancient world. Studying it
required a person to master a whole complex of information about the
ancient world: knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin, of history,
of law, of politics, of military history, of culture, of everyday life, and much
else besides. At the same time, some classical philologists concentrate
their attention chiefly on grammar and textual criticism, while others focus on the history, archaeology, culture, and everyday life of ancient
Greece and Rome. The result of the activity of classical philologists
is the preparation of ancient texts for publication, their comprehensive commentary, and the creation and publication of scholarly works on the spiritual and material culture of antiquity.
Biblical philology (ancient Greek biblia, plural of biblion —
book). Biblical philology is directed toward the study of the Bible.
It is believed that the first scholar of the biblical text was Origen (185—253), although already within the Bible itself there occurs
commentary on the texts it contains.
The Bible comprises a great variety of texts, diverse in content and in genre: laws and codes,
chronicles, accounts of journeys, hymns, aphorisms, wedding
songs, lyric songs, and much else. The Bible consists of two parts — the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament was composed
from the 13th century B.C. to the 2nd century B.C. Its texts were written in ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, and Aramaic. The millennium
of the Old Testament's existence constantly required interpretation of the texts that composed it: languages changed, and in the course of copying
things were introduced into the texts that had originally been absent,
while the events, names, and facts described in the texts faded from the memory of humankind and were transformed. Thus arose the properly
philological problem connected with reading, understanding, and
interpreting the biblical text. The situation was still more complicated
with the New Testament, which was created as, in a sense, a rendering of the Old Testament: the tasks of reading, understanding, and interpreting the text were complicated
by yet another — the task of translation.
Finally, with respect to the biblical texts as a whole it proved essential to resolve one further question: are these
texts the result of divine revelation, or were they created by human beings?
Such were the most important philological tasks that arose in
connection with the study of the biblical texts. The resolution of these tasks brought into being two philological disciplines: criticism (from
ancient Greek kritikē — the art of analyzing, of judging) in the form of biblical criticism, and exegetics (from ancient Greek exēgētikos — explaining, interpreting). The chief question that biblical criticism set
itself was the question of the authorship of the biblical texts. The search for an answer proceeded on the basis of comparing
biblical texts with mythological and folkloric texts.
Exegetics arose in connection with the study of the Homeric poems, and later turned to the study of sacred texts
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(Latin sacer / sacri / — sacred, pertaining to religious
cult, to ritual; ceremonial). Its task became the search for the single
correct interpretation of the biblical texts — in «the original depth and holiness of the Word of God».
Oriental philology arose in the 16th—17th centuries in Europe,
when individual European countries were carrying out the colonial conquest of Eastern peoples and territories. The term reflects the Europeans' view of the territory settled by peoples
whose language and culture were being studied: namely Asia and Africa. Thus
Oriental philology took shape separately from the ancient Chinese and ancient Indian traditions.
The foundation of Oriental philology was the study of languages.
To the study of languages was added the study of geography, ethnography,
customs and mores, beliefs, culture and literature, and the political and military organization of the peoples of the East. Oriental philology arose and for a long time existed as the broadest
complex of knowledge and information about the peoples of the East. Within this complex
knowledge of linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, history, regional religious studies, and other fields are joined together.
Thus the philological tradition was laid down. Its existence and development were sustained by the needs of practical philology arising from various spheres of the life of society.
Of the greatest significance in the «pre-scientific» period of philology were confessional needs (Latin confessionalis — pertaining to confession, ecclesiastical). These included the creation of
alphabets and writing systems, chiefly for cult-religious purposes, and translations of confessional books into the contemporary (for a given period) languages, among other things. A vivid trace in
the history of philology was left, for example, by the European Reformation — a movement for the social, cultural, and religious transformation of society, which unfolded in the 16th—17th centuries. Among
its demands was the requirement of introducing worship in the native
language of the parishioners, and the translation of church books into the native language;
this meant an expansion of the social functions of language, and brought the problem of translation into sharp focus. Thus Thomas Müntzer (1490—1525), when translating the Latin psalms into German, noted that he did
this «more according to sense than word for word».
Attempts by philology to achieve independence are connected
with interest in national languages and cultures. In Europe
this interest led to the emergence of the first shoots of national philologies. National philologies appeared in the era of
the Renaissance. One of the first works in this area was the treatise
of Dante Alighieri (1265—1321), «On Vernacular Eloquence». The most important question in the treatise concerns the particular qualities of a number of languages contemporary to the author. He notes that French is broadly accessible and pleasing; that in Spanish the first verses had begun to be composed;
that Italian (or «Italic», as it was then called; Dante's
native language) has two advantages: first — in Italian are composed the «most sweet and refined» verses; second — it
is closest of all to the Latin language (the language of ancient Rome).
Work begins on compiling dictionaries and grammars of contemporary languages, and attention to works of literature in native languages grows.
Interest in national languages is accompanied by a reflection on national culture and by the development of theoretical questions of philology. In France in the seventeenth century Antoine Arnauld and Claude
Lancelot created a grammatical description of languages based on the recognition of the universality of the categories of language. This idea
was tested by the authors through the comparison of material from the classical languages (ancient Greek, Latin, ancient Hebrew) and
from contemporary ones (French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, German, and others). This work — the «General
and Rational Grammar» (Paris, 1660; Russian translation 1998) — takes its name
from its place of composition and is known as the «Port-Royal Grammar» (Port-Royal being a town in France). This work is regarded as «the first purely scientific system» (Yu.V. Rozhdestvensky). Thus
the «Port-Royal Grammar» serves to overcome the integrated character
and practical orientation of philological knowledge
as its chief feature.
In Russia, of great importance for the shaping of philology were the works of M.V. Lomonosov (1711—1765): the «Russian
Grammar» (1755), which became a model for grammars of the Russian
language down to our own time, and the «Preface on the Usefulness of Church
Books in the Russian Language» (1758), in which are laid
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the foundations of the doctrine of the genre and stylistic richness of the Russian language.
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