Pasiones de la filología

Abstract

This article suggests an approach to philology that examines the relationships between “love of language” and “love of knowledge” in the cultural context of Ancient Greece. In accordance with Plato’s view of rhetoric as an art of “psychagogia” (soul-leading), and with Aristotle’s logic, words are conceived as symbols of the soul’s passions and the mind’s dispositional affects. These ideas have engendered an enduring tradition in the philosophy of language that extends to the philological program in Romantic Idealism, specifically Friedrich Schlegel’s project of a “philosophy of philology”, inspired by Kantian thought and its influence on subsequent methodologies and critical approaches in literary studies. Emerging from this modern tradition of critical philology is a new understanding of contemporary theories of language and literature, encompassing Jacques Derrida’s and Paul de Man’s Deconstruction, as well as the insights of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Werner Hamacher.