American Philological Association

Classical Philology and Humanism Author(s): Werner Jaeger Source: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 67 (1936), pp. 363-374 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/283246 . Accessed: 18/03/2014 16:03
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

American Philological Association and The Johns Hopkins University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Vol. lxvii]

Classical Philology and Humanism

363

XXV.-Classical Philology and Humanism1

WERNER
UNIVERSITY

JAEGER
OF CHICAGO

of Westerncivilizationwhichwe are witnessThe disruption ing, with the rise of the doctrinethat cultureand knowledge are nationalistic possessions, dividinggroupfrom group,rather than expressionsof kinship binding the heirs of a common heritage into closer union, dismays not only disinterested philosophers and educators,but men of foresight and good will in all walks of life. It is of deep concernto classical scholars, forin the past it has been theirprimaryfunction to transmit fromgenerationto generationone of the great unifying traditions. This is the heritage,received fromthe ancient world, of classical humanism. What especially troubles those who like myselfstill seek to performthis functionis a division withinour own group whichhas widened withinthe last halfcenturyas a resultof the application of scientific methodsto thestudyofclassical literature and archaeology. Undoubtedly thesemethodshave in a multitude ofways renewedthevitality of our subject, and have increased both our knowledgeand of the ancient world. But the extremeconunderstanding centration upon themin our day and the narrowspecialization which they have produced threaten to obscure and nullify our main service to society,never more needed than today, of keeping alive and developing the universal tradition of humanism. That a reconciliation between the older conception of humanistic studies and the newer type of classical scholarshipis possible and is indeed being effected I believe. But a conflict between them in varyingdegreesof acuteness still exists, which must be resolved if the study of antiquity is to perform its noblest function in the modernworld.
1 I am greatly indebted to Professor G. L. Hendrickson of Yale University for his extraordinary kindness in revising and condensing my article for publication. It owes much of its present form to his generous assistance.

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

364

Jaeger Werner

[1936

I recallveryvividlyhow afternine yearsspent in a classical and learned school of the old type I entered the university, as one of the achievements of scientificscholarship that "humanism" was a pseudo-Greekword of recentorigin,and that both the word and its content of meaning were under strictban fromthe vocabulary of classical philology. It was a painful shock to the traditionand creed in which I had been brought up, by teachers who had held before me the august ideal of humanism, receiving authority from such venerable names as Humboldt, Winckelmann,and Goethe. the gap betweenthisolder I saw no chance of bridging At first tradition of humanism as a cultural ideal, and the exact me by my philological scholarshipwhichwas offered scientific and archaeological teachers. I should indeed have been temptedto abandon altogethermy classical studies had I not observed that in the best of my teachers,behind the rigidity method, there glowed an and a certain bigotryof scientific of ancient literature ardor which gave to the interpretation between warmthand vitality. In them I discerneda conflict the rigorousphilologistand the humanist,in which however the humanistwas only admittedapologetically. I speak of my own experiencebecause it was typical of the and it may serveas a pointof departure situationin Germany, is possible between these what reconciliation for considering conceptions of classical study. It is a problem conflicting which our generationhas inheritedfromits immediatepredecessors,and I have outlinedit in thispersonalformsuspecting that my own case is not isolated, but symptomaticof wider concern. The antagonism between the newer science of antiquity and the older humanismwas perhapsmost acute in Germany, which formed the center and starting point of that exact critical scholarshipwhich had revolutionizedthe humanistic studies of earlier centuries. But German example spread in the quickly to the whole world and it trainedcompetitors and involved classical to study same avenues of approach

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Vol. lxvii]

Classical Philology and Humanism

365

them in the same problem. There remained,to be sure, in many countriesan unbrokenhumanistictradition whichcould not be entirelyoverwhelmedby the new scholarship,but broadlyspeakingits effect was to create an undecidedconflict and a feelingof uncertainty about the legitimacyof the one conceptionof our function or of the other. It would be interestingto attempta characterization of the classical scholarship of the different countriesof Europe as modified by the impact of the new criticalstudyof antiquity,but it would take us too far afield. Let it suffice to say that America, perhaps more than any other country,has inclinedto the modernGerman type of classical study, although individual Americanshave criticised it sharply. Thus, speaking generally,in the universityworld of the nineteenth centurythe old humanismhad givenway moreand more to scientific researchin classical philologyand archaeology, though not without some resistance. What was the cause of this change? How did it happen that philological study, the child of humanism,had turned against it? The beginnings of this development go back to times when humanismwas still dominant. Humanism, which was in its origins the creation of the great Italian poets of the early Renaissance and of the neo-Latin poets and prose writers, competingwith the ancientsin theirown forms and language, had by the end of the sixteenth centurynarrowedto a sterile erudition. From this later phase of humanisma new antiquarian and criticalstudy of the ancient worlddeveloped, no longer looking to the re-creationof a modern literatureon ancient models, but to a comprehensiveknowledge of the ancient world. The cardinal point in this developmentwas reached in the second halfof the eighteenth century, when for the firsttime the historicalsense awoke in reaction against the rationalism of the age of reason. The German neohumanism of Winckelmannand Humboldt and Goethe was to be sure in no small degree determinedby the abstract rationalismof the earlier time. It sought an absolute ideal

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

366

Jaeger Werner

[1936

of man, and found in the Greeks the one revelationof the of human life. highestharmonyand completeness But the type of classical scholarship which grew up in and in the early nineGermanyat the end of the eighteenth teenth century was animated by a new feeling,a newly awakened historical sense. Its goal was the knowledge of still ancient lifeas a whole. The spiritualvalues of literature this into entered element a new but supreme, held theirplace study, an impulse to understandthem not in isolation, but against the backgroundof theirtime. That meant the reconstructionof the historyof their time. Not the old history, of the storyas recordedby the which was a mere re-telling fromsources of but a historyput together ancient historians, every kind-inscriptions, archaeological monumentsand reof lost mains, papyri fromthe dry sands of Egypt, fragments works of literaturesalvaged by antiquarian or grammatical lore, nothing in short overlooked which might serve to fill of the a gap of knowledgeand complete the reconstruction past. Great provinceswhichup to that time had owed scant allegiance to general classical scholarship such as Greek philosophyor Roman law-were reclaimed for the classical scholarand compelledto pay theirtributeto the centralwhole. In.place of a limitednumberof classical models, to which the old humanism had paid homage, there was now set up as the goal of study a panorama of historicaldevelopment extendingthroughcenturies. A particularcuriosityand interestattached to all that was new, to the discoveryof facts or materials, literary or archaeological, which were before unknown. The great culminatingpoints of antiquity lost withthe earlyand the late. The example favorin comparison studiesof Rome kindledthe youthof Mommsen'spenetrating ful Wilamowitzto a similarbreadth of view in his studies of the classical and Hellenisticperiodsof Greece. He was eager to know all that had existed fromthe earliest times to late antiquity. When asked what his research had to offerin place of the old classical ideal forthe education of youth,his

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Vol. lxvii]

Classical Philology and Humanism

367

answer was: a survey of the whole development of one of the highestcivilizationsin all the stages of its history. The of purposewas historical dominatingspiritof this formulation and scientific, not humanistic. Other scholars went further and declared that the functionof classical scholarshipwas to serve as a tool forthe historian,or again, that preciseknowledge of ancientidiomin language or in art was onlya pathway leading to 'higher' historicalconclusions. It was accounted heresy and bumptiousnesswhen as a young man, in my inaugural address as professor at Bale, I protestedagainst such views and theiracceptance as axioms, and defended the contemplationand understandingof the immortalmasterpiecesof ancient art and literature as an aim in itself. I went even further and contended that the r6le of historyand all its apparatus of researchwas ratherto give them background and setting. That which led even so sympathetica scholar as Wilamowitz to protest repeatedly against the old classicismwas the fact that the pictureof the ancient world, as conceived of and as representedby the humanists, was grossly idealized and simplified. They did not in truth aim to understandthe real life of the classical world at all. Their only care was fortypes and ideals which they found in certain works of the great authors, and these they took over without further inquiryas pertinentto their own lives and times. In historical evolution they had no interestand indeed no conception of it. Obviously no one with a developed historical feeling could contemplate with complacencythe notionthateven thegreatestworksofancient art and literaturerepresented finaland absolute standards of human perfection. History goes on and must go on. Thus the road back to the old humanismcould not be retraced. The question of humanismhowever arose again when the position of the classics in education and in general public esteem began to be menaced. In some instanceseven before the World War, but especially since then, in almost every Western countrymanifestations of a revival of this question

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

368

Jaeger Werner

[1936

have been seen. In Germany the periodical Die Antikehas for the past dozen years presented in non-technicaland attractiveformthe resultsof philologicaland archaeological research. In the English speaking countriesand in France thisrevivalhas been markedby the greatseriesof translations with originaltexts, such as the Loeb Classical Library,and des Universites de France. Their extraordinary the Collection success is a symptom of an unsuspected interest. At the congressof the AssociationBude in Nice in 1935 the whole problem of humanism played a leading part; and impulse was given to make of the next meeting a world congress an international organdealingwiththistheme,contemplating of humanism. ization of the friends As has been said, some of these movementsgo back to a time shortlybeforethe World War. It was not until then that we had faced the consequencesof the great spiritualand had come about social revolution which,almostimperceptibly, during the nineteenthcentury. One manifestationof this revolutionwas the decline of classical studies in the schools. The risingmasses of the population were without an intelwhile on the otherhand the class whichhad lectual tradition, enjoyed a classical education and maintained its traditions was eitherin declineor no longersure of its own ideals. The trainedin the modern of the universities, classical scholarship school of philologicaland archaeological research,had at its and illustration, of knowledge treasures disposal undreamed-of but it looked at esthetic and ethical humanism,which had earlier been the driving force of classical education, as the lost faithof its childhood. Thus that which had constituted the innerforceand inspirationof these studies in school and college,was now withoutsupportfromits recognizedleaders. The decline went on. There were experimentswithout end and a hundredrecipeswere tried,but therewas lack of faith. the scholarship When the teacherin the schoolsoughtaid from he was told that faithwas a private affair; of the university that it was not the businessof scholarshipto establishvalues,

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Vol. lxvii]

Classical Philology and Humanism

369

but to investigateand discovertruth. But in fact,as we have seen, scholars were unable to justifyhumanisticeducation in termsof the older faith. The defensetook on an organized form; societies were formed,groups of alumni, influential personagesin social and political life,all were invokedto stem the adverse tide; but no betterarguments wereadvanced than the incomparable formal training affordedby the ancient languages, and the great importanceof knowingthoroughly the historyof Greece and Rome. But the truthwas that the unique position of the so-called 'ancient world' had been shaken by the disclosure of ancient civilizationswhich had long preceded it. Thousands of years had been added to 'ancient' history,and (as in philosophy)historical relativism seemed to be the inescapable consequenceof new perspectives in the long historyof mankind. Thus the old hierarchyof values had disappeared; and fromthe firstplace in the announcements of university courses classical philology was compelledto assume a modest or even minorplace among its alphabetical sisters. The war revolutionizedeverythinghere as elsewhere. It threwus back to the very foundations of our existence-to a consciousnessand realizationthat classical antiquitywas one of those foundations, in somethingmore than the sense of a merehistorical influence. It was a crisisthat served to reveal the true position of the ancient world in the scheme of our present time. It is a lasting law of the human spirit that wheneverone of its fundamentalvalues seems to have lost meaningand significance, it must be traced back to its origins for re-assessment. This is the law of renaissance, since ' renaissance' is not merelythe name of a particularevent and time. It is a rhythmin the spiritual movementof history, recurring fromtime to time,a concomitantof the pressureof the spiritual atmosphere. Confidenceand self-assertion are promotedby a returnto the culminating points of life,and a revival of innervalues modifies our conceptionof historyand sets it in a new light.

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

370

Jaeger Werner

[1936

The values of life are historicalvalues, which means that life in the past has shaped their form. The mind is not a white paper, receiving only the immediate impressionsof surroundingnature and social environment. It is a living thing,taking shape continuallyfromthe record of past experience. Historyis more than a recordof externaltemporal in whichabiding values are constantly facts; it is a repository accumulating. It is more than the memoryof the past; it is the spiritualpresenceof the imperishable. The historianin of events as events; the usual sense of the word is the recorder scholar,versed in the but behind him stands the sympathetic mediumof a work of literatureor art, guardian of tradition, to us the abiding values whichhave had and able to interpret continueto have meaningforour life. The newerhistoricalstudy of the classics of ancient literature and art interpretstheir values and measures them by fromthose which the old humanism instandards differing voked. But this newer type of study exists and should continue to exist only on the assumption that these values exist. It cannot in the long run maintainlife if it sinks to a to its subject matter. mere techniqueand method,indifferent The very standards of exactness which it vaunts have developed fromthe beliefthat it was dealing with the fragments of a worldwhichwas believed to be of unlimitedvalue. The older classicists' conception of the significanceof ancient and art restedupon a dogmatic assumptionthat its literature were to be regardedas settingabsolute standards monuments of excellence,timelessand perfect. It was derived immediwho canonized the ately fromlater Greek and Roman writers, masterpiecesof earlier centuriesas a galleryof models to be imitated. Each author and each work had its place forever and to each in a fixedcanon which admitted no newcomers, weighedpredicationof attributesor was attached a carefully qualities. When with awakening historical sense this whole unreal and abstract structurecollapsed, the monumentsof Greek

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Vol. lxvii]

Classical Philologyand Humanism

371

and Roman literature stood forth fresh and new,in the fullness of theirliving formand content,the expressionof individual men and times. They were free to be read and understood as they were, without thoughtof furnishing models of excellence or of having any relationto educational ends. But though they were released from a role which their authors can never have contemplated,there emanates from them nevertheless an emotion and spiritualelevation,educative in the highestsense, which no one can fail to experience who approaches them with earnest purpose to understand. Even the strictmasterywhich scholarsseek is most rewarded where this spiritualinfluence is most deeply felt. Appreciation will have different degreesof clarity,fromthe vague stir of enthusiasm,and realizationthat one's own lifeis involved in the poet's words, to the sharp and distinct perceptionof exact meanings. There is no limitto'the intensification of our understanding of the spiritualworld. An estheticnaturewill perhaps respondmore immediately to the fascination of form. But the worksof the ancients representto us somethingstill more comprehensive-a world of the highest human values. The best way to explain this is perhaps to go back to the views which the Greeks themselves held of poetry and of spiritualcreation. To themthe workof art was nevera mereobject of esthetic pleasure. It was the bearer of an ethos, a feeling or intention of the artist which has sought ideal expression,and foundit. It was true to life,not realisticin the narrowsense of mere verisimilitude, but true in the perfection or excellence (arete) of the object represented. The subject of theirart is always man in all the essential relationsof his existence to life, to nature,and to destiny. Where poetryceases and the content of thoughtcalls for prose-oratory, history,philosophy-the same rule holds. The literatureof the Greeks offers thus a splendid spectacle: the strivingof the human spirit for the abiding expression of its ideals, the moulding of human excellence (its arete) fromthe heroic stage of the epic to the

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

372

Jaeger Werner

[1936

later phases of the tragic,the political,the philosophicalman. The embodimentof these values in art was to be sure only what the Greek could create out of his Greek environment, and we have learned not to separate worksof the spiritfrom as the older humanists did. We their proper environment, have learned to feel them more vividly and individuallyby them to the time and place and atmosphereof their referring origins. This does not mean however that we should see theseworksresolvedinto the historyof theirtimeand become merelysources for our knowledgeof a bygone age. On the settingcauses to grasp them in theirfirst contrarythe effort us to understandbetterhow and why they had the strength to rise above their time into the regionsof permanenceand timelessness. records. The whichhistory It is preciselythis timelessness revelation of heroic humanityin Homer did not seem antiquated to the Greeks of a later and more rationalperiod. It maintained its validity far beyond a thousand years, and remained the foundationof culture throughsuccessive centuriesof Greek life. In a similarway each new period made to that which the Greeks at the culminating its contribution in the fifth and fourthcenturies point of theirconsciousness, before Christ, called their teaching, their lesson (paideia). Since they sought to mould the universal in the individual, as well as in the plastic arts,theircreativethought in literature transcendedthe bounds of their own national existence,and spirit they early strove to extend theirculture in missionary to other people. Thus Isocrates attributes to this Greek paideia an educational functionfor the whole of humanity. of The Romans in Cicero's time proved the best interpreters of the Greek spirit,and expressedit this continuingfunction by their renderingof the Greek paideia with the Latin of man. It is fromthis humanitas,the ideal manifestation the as of the Latin spiritual developmentof word, meaning that our concept art and thoughtand literature, man through of humanismand its name has come.

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Vol. lxvii]

and Humanism Classical Philology

373

Thus even in antiquity the problem was propounded: to explain the mysterious circumstance that ideals and standards of excellenceshaped under particularhistoricalconditionsby a particular people could maintain their validity and their inspirationfor other times and other peoples, and become in fact human culturein a universalsense. Efforts will be made again and again to explain this quality of Greek cultureand its Roman derivative. For us it is enough to know that it is so, and its truthis proven by the experienceof the centuries since its origin. I have attempted to show that the nature and the tasks of modernclassical study need not stand in any antithesisto the older humanism. They are ratherthe formof humanism suited to our times and to the modern habit of scientific thoughtand inquiry. We must not abandon nor fail to use any of the achievementsof the exact scholarshipof our day. On the other hand I maintain and champion the essential truthof the older humanism:that knowledgeand studyof the ancient world is a unique civilizingand creative power in the lifeof nations and of individuals. The formsand moulds which the ancient world created as the expressionof theirhighestcultureare not forus ultimate ends to attain and to reproduce,but theyremainthe foundation stones upon which is built our occidental civilization. This civilization is a product of repeated recurrenceto the ancient tradition, fromwhichin turnit has drawn impulse to new creation. One 'renaissance' has succeeded anotherfrom the Carolingian time, through the great Renaissance, down to the neo-Hellenismof the early nineteenth centurymarking periodic returns to the regenerating power of the common source. The reciprocal influencesof the classical inheritance and of original creation, each upon the other, constitute the underlyingunity of the spiritual life of the Westernworld. Humanism itselfis an expandingterm,and what was once applied only to the study of the Greco-Romanworld has its

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

374

Werner Jaeger

[1936

and languages and art which are application to all literatures capable of making contributionto the human spirit. The study of peoples and tongues which lie outside the circle of windows, so to speak, Greek and Roman origins furnishes whichthe Westernspiritis able to contemplateother through and to learn races and alien ideals, to contrastthemwithitself, of Greek receptivity the open-minded It is from them. (historiain the proper meaning), still curiosityand inquirywhichimpelsus to enrichourselves livingin modernresearch, in this way with what the Greeks called "the wisdom of the barbarians." The nationsof the modernworld,severedby boundariesof space and language and national usage, understand one another only to the degree in which they understand the idiom of spirituallanguage which is the common hereditary and shaping of task our being. In so far as we live for the developingmankindaccording to the laws and potentialities of man's nature, we live in a world which I venture to call hellenocentric-a spiritual world revolvingabout the sun of Hellenic wisdom. The planets of thisworldwill not fade into darknessso long as this centralsun does not lose its splendor.

This content downloaded from 143.106.222.34 on Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions