 Philological Hermeneutics:
A Case for Classical Scholarship
Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden, eds.
Innovations of Antiquity
New York: Routledge, 1992
Since antiquity, contentions about how to read have structured the scholarly reception of Greek and Latin
literature. In its most recent manifestation, this struggle has tended to turn on an antithesis of philology and
literary theory. As Daniel Selden has demonstrated elsewhere, the institutional format of the present debate is rooted in similar polemics about philology and hermeneutics in the German academy during the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, polemics which sought to demarcate and defend professional boundaries by defining the proper goal of classical scholarship.1 One index of this
disciplinary strife is the quarrel between two classicists, August Boeckh and Gottfried Hermann. Boeckh pressed forward the earlier initiatives of his teachers, Friedrich August Wolf and Friedrich
Schleiermacher, and sought to reorient the profession toward a criticism aimed at the understanding of ideas grounded in a systematic science of hermeneutics.2 Hermann, on the other hand, maintained that
classical philology's object was the acquisition of linguistic expertise and the reconstruction of literary
artifacts. His method was grounded in a belief that language was a portal to the soul of a people and its
culture; thus, intimate knowledge of the classical corpus could produce unproblematically a corresponding intimacy with the ancients themselves.3 Boeckh's review of Hermann's De officio interpretis repeatedly
asserts that although Hermann construes the text properly, he does not grasp its meaning because he has no systematic hermeneutic method to guide him.4
Boeckh's exhortation fell on deaf ears within the discipline and modern hermeneutic theory has continued
to develop outside of the institutional boundaries of Classics. One measure of the success of Hermann's
vision of philology can be found in the classicist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff's stinging critique in 1872 of Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy
, a text which confounded contemporary assumptions about the objectivity of language, the possibility of the recovery of objective truth via language, and the proper
apparatus of rationalist classical scholarship: evidence, footnotes, conflicting points of view. In his denunciation of the Birth of Tragedy
, Wilamowitz invokes Hermann and the philological tradition of which he was an acme:
Herr N., however, is also a professor of classical philology; he treats a series of very important questions of Greek literary history.... This is what I want to illuminate, and it is
easy to prove that here also imaginary genius and impudence in the presentation of his claims stands in direct relation to his ignorance and lack of love of the truth.... His solution
is to belittle the historical-critical method, to scold any aesthetic insight which deviates from his own, and to ascribe a "complete misunderstanding of the study of antiquity" to the age
in which philology in Germany, especially through the work of Gottfried Hermann and Karl Lachmann, was raised to an unprecedented height. 5
Wilamowitz subsequently had an astonishing impact on the discipline of Classics. "Classical scholars
universally acclaim Wilamowitz as the greatest Hellenist of modern times," William Calder writes, "a man
of genius and unbounded learning, whose over seventy books (regularly reprinted), countless articles and reviews, have exerted incalculable influence on subsequent scholarship, who for almost a hundred years
has formed certainly the German and arguably the European conception of Hellenism...." 6 Nietzsche resigned his professorship at the University of Basel in 1879 because of poor health; his departure from
the institutional borders of Classics parallels the non-reception by classical scholarship of his work and its significance. Nietzsche's situation is not unique. As Selden shows, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud
likewise developed "lines of critical inquiry [grounded in classical philology] which, for one reason or another, fail[ed] to be assimilated by the profession."7 Students of this trio—for instance, Derrida,
Foucault, Lacan, Harold Bloom, Jameson, Althusser—have continued to work outside of the discipline of Classics, although their work often focuses on Greek and Latin texts. This tradition of scholarship has
become synonymous with literary theory, kept at arm's length by the discipline with epithets like "new,"
"foreign," "inappropriate," "destructive." The bifurcated development of classical scholarship that I have
hastily sketched continues: on the one hand, an institutionally sanctioned philology; on the other hand,
various strains of theoretically self-conscious criticism which repeatedly explicate classical texts as part of
their programmes, strains which are perceived as inconsistent with the practice of classical scholarship.
Recent discussions about the means and ends of classical scholarship, discussions which are themselves part of a larger stocktaking of the institutional and intellectual health of Classics, 8 repeatedly testify to the
perdurability of this opposition. "Why," John Peradotto wrote in 1983, "has American classical philology
so relentlessly and, I must say, successfully resisted the inroads of current methodological concern arising
out of ongoing philosophical reflection and interdisciplinary dialogue, a concern which has had such profound and in some cases divisive effects on all other literary fields...?"9 A conference convened in
1990 on the interpretation of Roman poetry turned on the question, "Empiricism or Hermeneutics?"10 As Jan Ziolkowski succinctly measured the division: "[F]or everyone who resists theory, there is someone else who resists philology."11Innovations of Antiquity
is an ambitious, polemical intervention in this debate, one which repeatedly interrogates its oppositional logic and argues for an alternative, symbiotic, and inevitably uneasy dynamic
of theory and practice. It collects sixteen essays by scholars who, with varying degrees of recognition and
effectiveness, have not only challenged received opinion and advanced our understanding of Greek and Latin literature, but have also broadened and sharpened literary critical discourse in Classics. 12 The
volume is, in short, a showcase of advanced criticism spanning the chronology of Greek and Latin literature. It illustrates how advancements of our understanding can turn not on the discovery of new texts
or attention to heretofore marginalized ones (although several contributions demonstrate this, as well), but
rather on rereadings of authors long considered central to the Western literary canon: Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, Aeschylus, Euripides, Plato, Catullus, Virgil, Livy, Seneca, Augustine. If you can read one
book that exemplifies the sophisticated literary criticism being produced in Classics today, make it this one. Innovations of Antiquity
is a big volume (over 600 pages including the introduction) that invites selective reading, a no doubt profitable strategy: the individual essays can stand on their own. But it is as a
whole, read from beginning to end, that the volume makes its most persuasive case as an ambitious intervention in the ongoing debate about how we should read Greek and Latin literature. In this, in its
interrogation of the dispute between philology and hermeneutics, Innovations of Antiquity is a watershed.
Describing the organization of the volume, the editors state that when the essays solicited for it started to
arrive, they noticed an alarming trend: despite an editorial desideratum that individual pieces make explicit
the methodological principles that underpin their exegeses, many of the articles were not obviously theoretical. "If by theory one understands the rooting of literary exegesis in a system of some conceptual
generality," the editors explain, "then it would appear that much of the work produced for us, even where
exegetically most brilliant, failed in its assignment" (xvi). It is precisely the nature and causes of this "failure," the problematic relation of theory and practice, that the essays of
Innovations of Antiquity individually and collectively explore. The volume is not organized chronologically nor, as one might expect, by theoretical doctrine or school.
There is no précis of the "turn to theory" at the beginning of the volume to prepare the reader and supply
a key for a series of practical applications that follow, a possible organization that recapitulates the schism that Innovations of Antiquity questions. 13 The editors have instead paired the essays under
rubrics—"Literariness," "Figures," "Variance," "Gender," "Absence," "Context," "Persuasion," and "Traditions"—prefaced by brief accounts of the arguments the essays muster and the theoretical issues
they raise. The pairings displace chronology in favor of conceptual affinities, and are intended to play off
one another on both a micro and macro level. At the micro level, for instance, the first essay under "Literariness" by Winkler, "Lollianos and the Desperadoes—which turns on the nature and context of a
fragment of Lollianos' Greek novel of the 2nd century C.E., the Phoinikika —puts into question the
possibility of a close correspondence of fictional narrative to religious practice. The next essay, Anne Carson's "Simonides Painter," shows how this Greek poet of the late 6th and early 5th centuries B.C.E.
thematizes precisely this problematic relationship of language and the world that Winkler's essay raises.
At the macro level, the pairings are designed to progress to increasing levels of theoretical complexity.
The prefatory "critical staging[s]" (xiii) to each pairing aim to instruct the reader in negotiating the gap
between theoretical reflection and critical practice, even as they make that gap explicit. The divide is both
confirmed and measured by the metaphor the editors use to capture their prefatory effort, which positions
their remarks as springboards for a leap or launch from theoretical reflection and formulation to exegetical practice and vice versa.
Contributors were asked to "exemplify procedures for the close reading of ancient literary texts [by
posing] a particular problem in the interpretation of Greek and Latin literature, and then render an account
by illustration" (xiii). It would be naive to presume that individual contributors did not have any number of theoretical agendas or formulations in mind when they turned to their projects. The readings they
advance, however, to varying degrees efface the traces of what those prior agendas or formulations might
have been. The editors' activity in the pairing of the essays underscores this erasure: Winkler's essay, for
example, could comfortably belong under the rubric of "Context" instead of its current placement under "Literariness"; numerous other combinations, as the editors make clear, are possible. Innovations of
Antiquity is not, in other words, a menu of importations and applications of literary theory to classical
texts. On the contrary, the individual essays persistently invert this relationship: the various problems of interpretation and the processes of reading that aim to solve them expose theoretical issues as a
consequence of reading. Theoretical concerns, it seems, are always already in language and realized, with various inflections, by reading.
This would seem to reconfirm the received wisdom of philology as a kind of objective enterprise anterior to theory. Both the editorial charge and its multiple executions, however, counter the often prevalent
notion of philology as foundational and thus pre-theoretical, for close reading proceeds from the prior enabling assumption that words have meanings which can be realized and organized in reading, an
assumption which is itself open to a variety of theoretical formulations and contestations. These essays, in
short, individually and collectively exhibit the symbiotic, not oppositional dynamic of philology and literary
theory. Theoretical considerations, explicit or implicit, enable philologically rigorous reading whose object
is not only the acquisition of linguistic and historical data, but also the hermeneutic production of meaning. This in turn necessarily impinges on theoretical questions of how texts mean.
The consequences of the fact that philology is not pre-theoretical could be extended to other forms of
classical scholarship that focus on literary remains: textual criticism and the commentary. One can envision
a pair of articles by leading practitioners in the discipline which illustrate textual criticism and commentary
in action, as it were, complete with reflection on the assumptions that enable or require an emendation, say, or the dissection of a figure or trope. Innovation of Antiquity's
exclusion of direct reflection on these forms of scholarship by current practitioners risks perpetuating the tacit assumption that textual
restoration and commentary are exempt from the theoretical self-consciousness that the collection promotes. If, as Innovations of Antiquity
argues, "methodological self-consciousness and rigor produce the finest criticism" (xii), and if this self-consciousness and rigor are as desirable as they are difficult to realize, and
if, finally, the relationship of literary theory and critical practice is a symbiotic, not oppositional one
(however uneasy or problematic), the volume raises at least one pressing question about the current state
of graduate education in Classics in the United States: How should Classics institutionalize the study of literary theory in graduate education? 14
In a recent overview of an ongoing discussion about rethinking graduate education in Classics, Sheila Murnaghan describes a curious, recurrent contradiction in the remarks of many of the participants:
[O]n the one hand...most people seem to agree that, yes, something needs to be done to change the way we educate our graduate students. On the other hand, there seems to be a
widespread view that, whatever we do, the result should look as much as possible like what we are doing now.... This deep attachment to what we have been doing all along means
that...change tends to get redescribed as a form of accretion [emphasis mine]: the basic core—consisting, at least in the version of Classics defined as "philology," of something like
Greek and Latin to a very advanced level and mastery of certain canonical ancient texts—remains untouched, but is augmented by...a swift introduction to contemporary literary theory.... 15
The addition of some version, swift or less so, of an introduction to contemporary literary theory is both laudable and necessary, and is taking place or has already taken place in many Classics graduate
programs. But if the prevalent tendency to regard the study of literary theory as an accretion, a supplement not proper to the Classics curriculum which is grudgingly or even enthusiastically imported
from across the Atlantic or from the Comparative Literature department down the hall or across campus, the profession runs the risk of reinscribing the epistemologically bankrupt notion of an oppositional
relationship of philology and literary theory. The perception of literary theory as something new or alien
to Classics not only ignores the influential ancient texts of, for instance, Aristotle and Longinus, but perpetuates the ahistorical view that contemporary literary theory is not founded on or has concerns
different from the interpretation of classical texts. The cases of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud, for instance,
put the lie to that claim. But to stop there suggests that theoretical concerns are themselves an invention of
the nineteenth century. As Innovations of Antiquity repeatedly demonstrates, theoretical issues are always
already in language and are activated by reading. Philological rigor is the stethoscope, if you will, with which to hear and measure the theoretical pulse which ancient Greek and Latin literature generate.
Literary theory is thus inextricably bound up with classical literature, a relationship which the institutional
practice of Classics has persistently and successfully resisted or erased. The challenge to the profession
now is to incorporate, not add, the study of literary theory into the Classics curriculum and bid its students to ponder: Is the unexamined reading worth writing? 16Brendon Reay
 Notes (1) "Classics and Contemporary Criticism," Arion 1.1 (1991): 155-78.
(2) Seldon 161-62. (3) Seldon 164. (4) Seldon 164-65. (5) Zukunftsphilologie! in Der Streit um Nietzsches "Geburt der Tragödie": Die Schriften von E. Rohde, R. Wagner, U. V.
Wilamowitz-Möllendorf [sic], comp. Karlfried Gründer (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969), 30-31. (6) "The Wilamowitz-Nietzsche Struggle: New Documents and a Reappraisal," Nietzsche-Studien 12 (1983), 216. Cf. Stephen Nimis,
"Fussnoten: Das Fundament der Wissenschaft," Arethusa 17.2 (1984) 105-34. (7) "Classics and Contemporary Criticism" 166. (8) See Phyllis Culham and Lowell Edmunds, eds., Classics: A Discipline and Profession in Crisis? (Lanham, MD: University Press of
America, 1989) and David Damrosch, "Can Classics Die?" Lingua Franca 5.6 (Sept./Oct., 1995): 61-66. (9) John Peradotto, "Texts and Unrefracted Facts: Philology, Hermeneutics, and Semiotics," Arethusa 16 (1983): 15-16; reprinted in
Classics: A Discipline and Profession in Crisis? 180. For a particularly vitriolic instance of resistance and division, see S. Douglas Olson's
review of Simon Goldhill's The Poet's Voice, and Goldhill's response, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2.5 (1991) and 3.1 (1992),
respectively. Both are available on-line. Olson's review: gopher://gopher.lib.virginia.edu:70/ORO-11426-/alpha/bmcr/v2/2-5-9.
Goldhill's response: gopher://gopher.lib.virginia.edu:70/ORO-10814-/alpha/bmcr/v3/3-1-13. (10) Karl Galinsky, ed., The Interpretation of Roman Poetry: Empiricism or Hermeneutics? (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1992).
(11) "What is Philology? Introduction," in Jan Ziolkowski, ed., On Philology (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), 7. (12) Contributors and the titles of their essays: Ann Bergren, "Architecture Gender Philosophy"; Norman O. Brown, "The Apocalypse of
Islam"; Anne Carson, "Simonides Painter"; Margaret Ferguson, "Augustine's Region of Unlikeness: The Crossing of Exile and
Language"; Helene P. Foley, "Anodos Drama: Euripides' Alcestis and Helen"; David M. Halperin, "Plato and the Erotics of Narrativity;"
Ralph Hexter, "Sidonian Dido"; Gary B. Miles, "The First Roman Marriage and the Theft of the Sabine Women"; Glenn W. Most,
"Disiecti membra poetae: The Rhetoric of Dismemberment in Neronian Poetry"; Gregory Nagy, "Mythological Exemplum in Homer";
Pietro Pucci, "Human Sacrifices in the Oresteia"; Charles Segal, "Signs, Magic, and Letters in Euripides' Hippolytus"; Daniel L. Selden,
"Ceveat lector: Catullus and the Rhetoric of Performance"; Gordon Williams, "Theocritus' Idyll 7 from a Virgilian Perspective"; John J.
Winkler, "Lollianos and the Desperadoes"; Froma I. Zeitlin, "The Politics of Eros in the Danaid Trilogy of Aeschylus". (13) For an example of this, see Irene J.F. De Jong and J. P. Sullivan, eds., Modern Critical Theory and Classical Literature (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1994). (14) This and other questions about graduate education in Classics in the United States are undergoing increasing scrutiny. See, e.g.,
the contributions to the 1995 American Philological Association Presidential Forum on "Graduate Education in a Changing
Profession," available on-line at: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~joef/apaforum.html; and the material from an ongoing project launched in
1994 at the University of Pennsylvania to promote discussion about graduate education, also available on-line at: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~joef/gradcurr.html. (15) "New Directions from a Penn-Sponsored Dialogue," from the 1995 American Philological Association Presidential Forum on
"Graduate Education in a Changing Profession," available on-line at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~joef/apaforum.html. (16) I would like to thank Caroline Bicks, Bill Egginton, Peter Gilgen, Paul Saint-Amour, and Richard Terdiman for their advice and
criticism. None of them, of course, is responsible for what I have done with it.
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