The idea that classical wisdom nourishes the life of the spirit took shape during the Renaissance period — the transitional movement in Europe between medieval and modern times, beginning in the 14th century in Italy and lasting into the 17th century, when Greek and Latin authors were restored to prominence by leading humanists.
As they conceived it, the studia humanitatis — which originated in the 15th century and refers to a course of classical studies including grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy — required sustained engagement with the ideas and values enshrined in the great works of antiquity, which were seen as the best guides to two related aims: stylistic excellence and moral improvement.
This humanistic project showed little interest in vocational concerns and tended to sideline the natural sciences, treating them as largely irrelevant to the formation of character.
Its educational program — elitist insofar as it hailed from the notion that the studia humanitatis were intended for the freeborn — placed overwhelming emphasis on the study of the past as the primary means of intellectual, moral, and aesthetic self-cultivation.
The humanistic model of education long held a dominant position, with the sciences initially slow to challenge its authority.
From the 17th century onward, however, this began to change.
The natural sciences not only questioned the epistemological foundations of a traditional, historically oriented educational philosophy — while also claiming equal, if not superior, curricular status — but also exerted a more "insidious" influence in that a positivistic tendency rubbed off onto the humanities themselves, shifting attention away from broad pedagogical and ethical concerns toward a more neutral preoccupation with particular philological questions posed by the texts.
This development was further boosted by the professionalization of the humanities in the 18th-century German university.
Although the emergence of Altertumswissenschaft, a German concept emphasizing the unity of the various disciplines the study of the ancient world comprises, did not entirely displace earlier humanist ideals, it significantly diluted them by replacing their integrative, value-oriented approach with more technical and specialized forms of inquiry while scientific utilitarians became more vocal.
So, as one of that ilk put it, knowing the position of the liver became more useful than knowing the Greek and Latin words for it.
It was now hard for the humanities to claim the high moral ground they had once possessed and the "particularists" who, as Irving Babbitt once quipped, devoted study to ancient horse bridles and Roman doorknobs, were not much help.
Another challenge to the ideals of early humanism came with structuralism and its subsequent developments, which shifted attention from textual content to the deep structural patterns that generate it.
Later intellectual trends associated with post-modernism, along with debates surrounding political correctness and so-called "woke" culture — defined as awareness of important facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social justice — contributed further to the gradual repositioning of the study of classical texts.
More recently, in the prevailing intellectual climate in the West, traditional claims about the enduring authority and relevance of the "classics" have also been increasingly questioned.
Antiquity is nowadays approached less as a repository of intrinsic value and more as a historically situated system of meanings and values — inviting the question "value for whom?" — with which modern readers are expected to engage critically rather than reverently.
Meanwhile, as institutional classics go down their various paths, debates about their place in contemporary curricula flare up from time to time.
Notably, an international conference on this quandary, entitled "The 'Future of the Past': Why Classical Studies Still Matter", was held at the Academy of Athens in November 2022, reflecting the continuing urgency of this question.
Two years later, the inaugural World Conference on Classics, themed "Classical Civilizations and the Modern World", was co-organized in Beijing by, among others, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Academy of Athens.
When I participated in this event, together with other Greek academics and scholars, I had in mind an article published in 2021 in Asia Times by David Goldman, in which he contrasted the relative decline of classical studies in the United States with their growing prominence in China.
The conference "concept note", as circulated by the Chinese organizers, adopted an optimistic tone.
It suggested that scholarly exchanges among participants would help highlight "the modern value of classical civilizations" and contribute "wisdom and strength to tackle problems facing the development of human society," while also fostering mutual learning and international understanding.
For a Western scholar accustomed, as I am, to conferences, colloquia, and workshops focused on the finer points of narratology, gender, sexuality, meta-scholarship, deixis, and a wide range of other specialized concerns, this framing initially appeared rather broad and somewhat imprecise.
At the same time, however, it was also refreshing, insofar as it seemed, to revive something of the optimistic spirit of Renaissance humanism, albeit reframed through a distinctly cross-civilizational perspective.
Indeed, a number of the papers presented were informed by such an orientation.
The second World Conference of Classics, held in Athens from June 9 to 10, appears to confirm the organizers' intention to develop an ongoing dialogue between Beijing and Athens in pursuit of these aims.
This initiative will be welcomed by those who remain convinced that the comparative study of the core values of classical civilizations continues to offer one of the more promising paths for reflection on our shared humanity.
The author is a member of the Academy of Athens.
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