Filologia e storicismo. Per intendere Pasquali

Philology and Historicism. Understanding Pasquali · This paper aims to identify the philosophical assumptions, whether deliberate or active on an unconscious level, proper to classical philology as it developed in the decades between Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Giorgio Pasquali, highlighting personal relationships and circulation of ideas that directly or indirectly link classical scholars to the leading figures of German historicism, especially Wilhelm Dilthey, Ernst Troeltsch, and Friedrich Meinecke. The outcome of the analysis is the formulation of ten theoretical principles, deriving directly from historicism, that guide the reader to a full comprehension of Pasquali’s philological method in dialogue with his German masters. From a broader point of view, these principles outline a proper ‘historicist decalogue’ belonging to classical philology, that Wilamowitz and then Pasquali assumed in their thought and work. The decalogue is constituted as follows: 1. Distinction between ‘human sciences’ [Geisteswissenschaften] and ‘natural sciences’ [Naturwissenschaften]; 2. Interactions between disciplines and deletion of scientific compartments [Fächer]; 3. Refusal of a causal relation between nature [Natur] and culture [Geist] by reason of a mathematical function; 4. Conception of philology as in constant connection with life and experience [Erlebnis]; 5. Historical determination of art; 6. Anticlassicism; 7. Cult of Personality [Persönlichkeit] and specularity between great individuals and eras; 8. Anti-romantic denial of folk poetry; 9. Historicizing conception of textual criticism and interpretation of (historical) ‘development’ [Entwicklung] as (textual) ‘tradition’ [Überlieferung]; 10. Tension between relativity of history and eternity of values. Finally, taking up some results of Dilthey’s hermeneutics, the paper rea√rms the validity of philology as a tool for the intertemporal transmission of values.