Filoloogia, mida enam ei ole
Philology that is no more

Summary/Abstract: Here we define „philology” as a discipline studying how reality is transformed into text and vice versa. The question of philology is wording, while its object encompasses everything accessible to verbal reference. Philology belongs to Culture, not to Civilisation. Civilisation consists of knowledge and skills, answering the question „How to do/make it?” Culture consists of norms, orders and prohibitions, of do’s and don’ts, answering in the end the question „How to understand it?” Civilisation is developed by sciences, Culture is developed by the humanities. Philology belongs to the humanities, perhaps even, considering its function of studying the relations between text and reality, as a meta-discipline. The conjecture that the central question of philology is „How to do/ make it?” is no less than barbaric. Despite the globalising Civilisation, Culture will remain local (the Latin colere can, after all, be interpreted as being attached to a concrete plot of land and its deities, i.e. to a cultus). Humanities concepts will keep rooted exactly where they once germinated. „Philology” is a humanities concept born in the European cultural area, thus being Europocentric in nature. „Japanese philology” is a European meta-discipline dealing with Japanese texts. The true sense of philology, its ἔτυμον, will however remain rooted in European mentality. What is the final aim of philology? This is a weighty question asking for a clear answer: The ultimate goal of philology is regeneration of the European collective cultural memory by cultivating intellectual aristocracy, by producing new lamed vovniks to keep and disseminate the basic values of European culture, which are classical antiquity, Christianity and the Faustian spirit. This is indeed an onerous social pedagogical mission of ultimate responsibility, especially under the pressure of the current Great Migration, when we witness how higher education is levelled down to vocational education and hear ever loudening voices claiming that the cultural values of Europe are just tolerance, pluralism and Americanism. Paraphrasing „Tristram Shandy”, there is no Northwest passage to the philological world.

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