古典学还是语文学：历史脉络中的学科演进是如何出现的？

 朱学贤

近期中文互联网上一则声称普林斯顿大学改革将古典语言取消专修以抵制殖民历史和系统性种族主义的消息引起了巨大争议，在笔者查阅了信息原文后发现，中间存在一定的信息扭曲和误解。本文希望在对这些信息加以澄清之际，借此契机来讨论古典学学科本身的一些问题，取消语言究竟会对古典学造成多大影响、古典学究竟要讨论什么、究竟什么才是古典学，是否会如奈维乌斯的墓志铭所写的一样，“在他去往冥间之后，罗马将会忘记如何说拉丁文（Itaque,postquam est Orchi traditus thesauro/Obliti sunt Romae loquier lingua Latina）”。

本文原题为：《古典学还是语文学：历史脉络中的学科演进是如何出现的？》，“澎湃新闻·思想市场”分上、下两篇刊出。

一、信息传播的扭曲和古典学的发展趋势

近日，普林斯顿大学古典学系通过砍掉古典学方向和取消古典语言学习的强制要求以打击“结构性种族主义（structural racism）”的信息，在互联网上引起了广泛讨论。文章中表示，普林斯顿大学的古典学专业学生将不再需要专修古希腊文或拉丁文，以此建立更包容的课程，并且取消了入学的语言要求让高中期间未能接触相关语言的学生可以进入古典学系。文章还提到了古典学的种族主义历史和古典学系的殖民奴役历史。为了创造公平环境，古典系有必要通过抛弃语言学习来抵制种族主义。必须承认，笔者在刚刚看到中文互联网上的这个消息后十分震惊。为了探究事情的真相，我们有必要对消息本身进行探源，以弄清楚普林斯顿大学究竟说了什么。在经过我的挚友、一位叫“金星原”的年轻学者启发和帮助下，我们能发现这条消息最早出现于微信公众号“人人木又”上，其在6月5日的文章中表示“普林斯顿大学的古典学专业学生将不再需要学习希腊文或拉丁文”，并且引用了普林斯顿校友周刊（Princeton Alumni Weekly）在五月份发表的一篇名为“古典学系取消了对学生学习希腊文和拉丁文的要求（Classics eliminated the requirement for students to take Greek or Latin）”的文章作为佐证。

然而，当我们追溯至这篇文章后发现，作者卡莉特·斯派克（Carlett Spike）既不是普林斯顿古典学的学者，也没有任何古典学的训练背景，只是一位被邀请的撰稿人和助理编辑，这很难说明该作者对古典学有足够的了解。而在进入普林斯顿大学的通告，窥探其政策改变的内在逻辑之后，我们发现古典学系在一则名为“多样性与公平性”的通告中指出了古典学系建立历史中的种族主义因素和改变目标。然而传播媒介却对该信息进行了选择性摘取，例如斯派克和公众号“人人木又”都重点使用了目标1和目标2中免受种族歧视以及和扩大课程覆盖范围的段落，却都对最长的目标3选择了忽视，而目标3恰恰才是指出未来发展路线和原因的解释。

例如在目标3中，古典学系指出古典学内部存在古典主义的孤立性，所以未来要考察共时性层面中希腊和近东的思想是如何表达传播、历时性层面中希腊和罗马文化如何被工具化，成为同谋、最终要回答“什么是古典（ What is a Classic?）”这一问题。与此同时，普林斯顿古典学系在6月1日的声明中回答了不少争议。在第一点开篇就指明普林斯顿古典学系仍然坚定致力于对古代语言的教学（Princeton Classics remains profoundly committed to the teaching of ancient languages），并且在目前及未来都不打算减少教授语言的承诺，该系最近甚至还增加了对阿卡德语和现代希腊语的常态教学，这与通告的目标3形成互文，目的都是为了避免孤立地研究希腊和罗马。同时声明也解释道：我们在跟本科生的交流中发现，强制要求学习古典语言并不能达到很好的引导作用，因此比起强迫学习，鼓励学习更为有效。声明最后指出，古典学系对于研究的严格要求依然存在，并且这样的严格要求会在更广泛的视角中得到进一步加强。

这一观点在普林斯顿内部的学生报纸“普林斯顿日报（The Daily Princetonian）”中得到了支持。日报主编、古典学系2022届的学生艾玛·特雷德韦（Emma Treadway）于6月3日撰文“普林斯顿大学并没有从根基上改变古典学。它在保持其活力（Princeton isn't fundamentally changing classics. It's keeping it alive）”以示支持，并以学习者视角解释了这次改变。她在文中坦言，自己在听到这个消息后确实非常震惊，但以学习经验说将古典学领域限制在“语言学”和“在进入大学之前就可以接触到古典语言的学习者视角上”是对现代古典学界的一种损害。因为虽然学习拉丁文和古希腊文会增强对古典世界的研究，但古典学不局限于此，古典学同样意味着探索其他地区的古代世界；古典学并非研究死物，它同样研究当下活跃的事物根源。因此，将古代学仅仅限制为两种语言是短视的（To limit classics to two languages is myopic）。

另一方面，“人人木又”的文章“普林斯顿古典学系砍掉古典学方向，并取消希腊语、拉丁语要求，以打击‘系统性种族主义’”其实全部翻译自里斯·古道尔于五月三十日在著名杂志《国民评论（National Review）》发表的文章“Princeton removes Greek and Latin for classics students to combat institutional racism”，“人人木又”不仅没有标注此文是翻译的文章，也没有提供翻译来源，甚至都并未对翻译文章中的信息进行核实。

我们可以看到国内公众号在搬运翻译中，并未考察原信息的真实性和正确性，同时对普林斯顿的原文信息做出了“有意引导、断章取义以及忽视学界内部声音”等多种新闻学意义上的错误处理。而其引用的国外消息因为信息发布的时间差原因 ，存在“因为自身学术背景而对古典学系改革做出了大而化之的理解”的问题 ，彻底将一次学术内部的改革变成了政治意义的变化。

事实上，如果我们去观察近十年内古典学研究的整体动态，会发现这种改革并非孤例。其中的典型例子就是2020年伯克利大学决定从2021年八月开始把“古典学系”（Classics）改为“古希腊罗马研究系”（Ancient Greek and Roman Studies），同时以詹姆斯·波特（James Porter）为首的古希腊学者联合其他八位教授署名的“The Postclassicism Collective”合著了名为《Postclassicisms》的著作，这一切都标示着对于古典学内部反思引起的改革正在进行。

这样的改革对于古典学来说并不稀奇，据笔者的一位名叫“Hilaria”的古典学系好友介绍，德国也有几所学校的古代史项目取消了语言要求。若是进入学科发展的长时段，我们会发现一些更有趣的变化。打开普林斯顿大学古典学系的介绍后，我们会发现普林斯顿大学的古代语言训练是在十九世纪后半叶才形成的学术学科，而古代语言和文本的研究在二十世纪初，才由时任校长的伍德罗·威尔逊整合吸纳为古典学系。另一方面，在1917年课程改革之前，所有学生都必须学习古希腊文，因此古典学系的诞生本身就和当时环境中对于语文学的反思有关。

十三世纪正在上课的学生们

二、对于古典的探索和古典学的出现

在十四世纪之前，对于古典文化的的探索和使用都带有浓厚的政治意图，例如神圣罗马帝国皇帝腓特烈二世从1231年开始在西西里王国铸造了一种叫“Augustalis”的金币，这枚金币效仿罗马金币，正面刻着一位头戴月桂花环的古代皇帝半身像，篆写了铭文“CESAR AVG IMP ROM”，背面则是名字“FRIDE RICVS”。就这样，腓特烈通过金币图像赋予了自己罗马皇帝头衔——奥古斯都（Augustus）。但不可否认的是，正如培根所言，‘语言知识是通往智慧的第一道门户’（notitia linguarum est prima porta sapientiae），中古时期依然有不少学者注意到了古典的重要性。

然而，该学科在发展初期并不顺利，例如教皇格里高利一世吐槽当时的君士坦丁堡没人懂希腊文（quamvis Graecae linguae nescius），也没人会用希腊文书写作品（nos nec Graece novimus,nec aliquod opus aliquando Graece conscripsimus）；历史学家约达尼斯在编写《Getica》时坦言自己是“不懂语法者”（ agrammatus），并且对于抄写挪用的部分也承认自己是在抄用前辈学者的修辞（Scito me maiorum secutum scriptis ex eorum latissima prata paucos flores legisse）；都尔主教格雷高利虽然在编写《Historia Francorum》时确实比较熟悉《埃涅阿斯记》，但也一直强调自己的语法知识非常匮乏，很多行文会违背规则（veniam precor, si aut in litteris aut in syllabis grammaticam artem excessero,de qua adplene non sum imbutus），在序言中指出当时高卢的教育和学问都大不如以前（Vae diebus nostris, quis periit studium litterarum a nobis）。这样的状态直到大量的古希腊文本被重新发现后才发生了改变，例如翻译了阿维森纳注释的《论灵魂》的贡迪萨尔维在译作前言表示，自己在托莱多大主教雷蒙德要求下从阿拉伯文将作品翻译为拉丁文（et me singula verba vulgariter proferente, et Dominico Archidiacono singula in Latinum convertente, ex Arabico translatum）。

在这样的翻译浪潮下，学者开始提出“对于古代文本的掌握必须从语言入手”，最先指出这个问题的就是本段开篇提到的培根。培根反对当时大批学者在译本中争论古代的概念，在指出了大量的翻译错误后，培根认为不如直接去学习原文。他在作品《Opera quaedam inedita》第四百六十九页明确指出了研究亚里士多德读原文的必要性和读译本的危害，而在另一部作品《Opus majus ad Clementem Quartum》中，他则拿荷马的作品表示，翻译的文本无法表达作品原文的美感（si cuiquam videatur linguae gratiam interpretatione non mutari, Homerum exprimat in Latinum ad verbum）。罗兰（ Ingrid D. Rowland）在论著《The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rome》中认为，文艺复兴时期高雅文化的主要推动力就在于对于古代语言和美学的复兴；马基雅维利在著作《Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio》前言部分就点明了当时人对古代崇拜有佳，将所有荣耀都归于古代（Considerando adunque quanto onore si attribuisca all'antiquità, e come molte volte），他们不仅会花重金去买一个残破的古代雕像，还会遵循古代医术或者法条，人文主义的思想也就在这种土壤中诞生。所以我们能看到被称作“人文主义之父”的彼得拉克会在作品《Historia Iulii Caesaris》“prooemium”部分开篇就表示：追求古代知识是希望从古代道德戒律改善当世的基督教世界（Incubui unice inter multa ad notitiam vetustatis, quoniam mihi semper aetas ista displicuit）。【1】

随着启蒙运动的到来，资本带来的信仰形成了新的神圣性，而旧宗教的信仰逐渐被转化或者消解（见麦克拉赫[Eugene McCarraher]在作品《The Enchantments of Mammon:How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity》中讨论了资本主义对于旧价值的消解和取代），就如同基尔舍（Timothy Kircher）去年的新作《Before Enlightenment: Play and Illusion in Renaissance Humanism》中认为，文艺复兴对启蒙运动的影响和后者对前者的传承一样。十七世纪之前的文化力量促使了启蒙运动的爆发，这也让不少当下的学者开始重新审视这一段时间的历史历时性。例如雅各布（Joachim Jacob）2021年二月份编纂的论文集《The Reception of Antiquity in the Age of Enlightenment》就收录了一百四十篇讨论古希腊和罗马文化如何参与启蒙运动的文章，揭示了自1687年开始对古代概念的理解和接受并不局限于“一种理论的讨论”，而应该是社会范围内的大规模整合。基于这样的讨论，不少学者对启蒙运动时期的大学和知识进行了新的考察，例如萨洛蒙尼（David Salomoni）2021年的作品《Educating the Catholic People: Religious Orders and Their Schools in Early Modern Italy （1500–1800）》考察了三个世纪以来，怎样的群体和人员在满足意大利半岛的教育需求的同时对传统教育进行了革新。

这提醒了我们，在十七世纪开始，教育和知识将随着社会发展产生新的变化。在自然科学的飞速进展和印刷文化的兴起后，许多新的思潮涌现，例如麦金托什（Carey McIntosh）在去年的作品《Semantics and Cultural Change in the British Enlightenment:New Words and Old》考察了1650年到1800年间，在自然科学革命冲击下出现的新词和对旧词概念的新解读，这意味许多学科和研究的框架也突破了古代框架。我们可以发现，教育开始逐渐普世化（哈罗（Pedro Aullón de Haro）在论文集《Introduction to the Spanish Universalist School: Enlightened Culture and Education versus Politics》中就耶稣会的教士对启蒙运动时期知识全球化和普世化进行了讨论）。知识的下降让新的学科得以出现，一些以往被视作精英才能掌握的学问也不再那么“精英”。

皇帝狄奥多西二世编纂的法典《Codex Theodosianus》会要求“为能接受教育的青年安排最杰出的教育，即能够教古希腊文和拉丁文的修辞学者和语法学家”（praeceptorum optimi quique erudiendae praesideant iuventuti, rhetores loquimur et grammaticos Atticae Romanaeque doctrinae）；学者哲罗姆会在《Chronicon》中记载自己的老师多纳图斯和当时的修辞学者维克多林是罗马的名人（Victorinus rhetor et Donatus praeceptor meus Romae insignes habentur）；尼卡诺尔因为研究了八种标点符号所以被叫做“标点符号学家”（ὁστιγματίας），仅存一篇文章的学者希罗狄安因为对古希腊单音节词和生僻词有讨论，被后世学者誉为“通晓技艺”（ ὁ τεχνικός）；伊纳休斯虽然没有作品留下来，但他也因为对于语法的研究，被赞扬发掘了已经被遗忘的语法技艺（ὃς ἐς φάος ἤγαγε τέχνην γραμματικήν, λήθης κευθομένην πελάγει）；诗人策策斯也会在作品《Chiliades》中将语法和修辞学视作获取知识的学问系统（δευτέρως δὲ ἐγκύκλια μαθήματα καλοῦνται ὁ κύκλος, τὸ συμπέρασμα πάτων τῶν μαθημάτων）。

但我们可以发现，到了十八世纪，对于希腊文和拉丁文的学习都属于哲学的下属学科——语文学（Philology）的分支下。必须注意的是，作为一门学科的古典学在大学中出现得非常之晚，很多研究都是在其他称谓的学科下完成的。1777年，沃尔夫（Friedrich August Wolf）在格廷根大学注册时要求学习“古典语文学”（studiosus philologiae），而当时这个学科并不存在。最终在沃尔夫的强烈要求下，校方妥协同意以“古典语文学”为其注册。这也算是大学体系内最初的古典研究学科的诞生，我们也可以从第三部分中“当时大学的授课”，来看出古典学研究和语文学之间的关联。

三、语文学的脉络和历史科学的背景

柏林大学1844/1845年的冬季课表

我们可以在柏林大学1844/1845年的冬季课表中看到古代史、希腊史和罗马史都属于“历史学和地理学”方向，而当下属于古典学系的拉丁文训练、古希腊罗马神话和对于《阿伽门农》跟《金冠辞》等古希腊文作品的研究都属于“语文学”方向。当时的课程表中并未出现“古典学”这一学科。在当时，语文学就是囊括一切古代研究的学科，所以也被称作“古代科学”（Alterthumswissenschaft）。例如沃尔夫于1831年出版的著作《Vorlesung über die Encyclopädie der Alterthumswissenschaft》的目录部分叫做“古代科学导论”（Einleitung in die Alterthumswissenschaft），而诸如希腊文和拉丁文这样的古代语言则属于“古代科学的基础部分”（Die Fundamentaltheile der Alterthumswissenschafi）中的A部分：“语法或语言研究”（Grammatik oder das Sprachstudiam），诸如“碑铭学”（Epigraphik oder die Lehre von den Inscriptionen）则属于“艺术史”（Geschichte der Kunst, oder die Lehre' von den Kunstwerken der Alten）的大领域、在古典学中的古典文本方向则是“希腊罗马文本科学和艺术史”（Litteratur und Geschichte 'der Wissenschaf-ten und Künste bei Griechen und Römern）这一分类、而文物方向则是“希腊与罗马的古物”这个大块（Alterthümer der griechischen und römi- schen Nation），这一切被称为“古代科学的主要部分”（Die Hauptheile der Alterthumswissenschaft）；同年沃尔夫的另一本著作《Encyclopädie der Philologie》中出现了同样的顺序，在第三十二页把涉及古代语言（拉丁文和古希腊文）的 “Sprachftudium oder Wiffenschaft beider alten （der griech. und lat.）Sprachen”章节同样设置为了第一部分，第一百六十一页则是针对文本的“诠释学与批评”（Hermeneutik und Kritik）。

实际上，这是十九世纪学科演化的正常路径，例如伯恩哈迪（Gottfried Bernhardy）在1832年的著作《Grundlinien zur Encyklopädie der Philologie》中将第三章“语法”（ Die Grammatik）归为B部分“语文学的工具”（Organon der Philologie），而古代史或者古代地理则属于C部分“语文学的实属学科”（Reale Wissenschaften der Philologie），碑文研究则属于最后一个部分“语文学的附属学科”（Beiwerke der Philologie）。在伯克（August Boeckh）长达五十六年的讲座手稿《Encyklopädie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissenschaften》中，无论是碑铭学、语言学、古罗马的经济史、古希腊的艺术史或是研究方法都属于第二大部分“古代科学的质料学科”（ Materiale Diseiplinen der Alterthumslehre）；伯恩海姆（Ernst Bernheim）1908年的著作《Lehrbuch der Historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie》中第一章§4“历史科学与其他学科的关系”（Das Verhältnis der Geschichtswissenschaft zu anderen Wissenschaften）的第一节就是“与语文学的关系”（Verhältnis zur Philologie），在第三章§3“辅助科学”（Hilfswissenschaften）部分的第一节“语言科学”（Sprachkunde）后则标注了“语文学”。

这些十九世纪的课表、讲座和著作都指出：对于古典学来说，语文学正是最重要的学科源头，而古典学本身就是十九世纪学科分化的产物，这也能解释为何上文提到的普林斯顿古典语言和文本研究会在十九世纪末形成学科，并在二十世纪初被纳入古典学系之中。

所以，对于古典学学者而言，普林斯顿大学的变动是非常正常的。正如同十九世纪欧陆大学中正在兴起的历史学，以及二十世纪初美国大学正在筹备的古典学都是从原有语文学中分化而来；而语文学在大学中则隶属于哲学这个大块。沃尔夫在《Vorlesung über die Encyclopädie der Alterthumswissenschaft》第六页指出，古人会用“博学”（eruditus）这个词来描述具有历史知识的人，所以兴起的古典语文学是要在现有基础上发展哲学和历史学方向的科学（sonderlich aus der historischen und philosophischen）——这个想法被学生穆勒（Karl Otfried Müller）和维尔克（Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker）延续。桑迪斯（John Edwin Sandys）在《A history of classical scholarship.Vol.III》第二百一十三页表示，在温克尔曼（Johann Joachim Winckelmann）和海耶纳（Christian Gottlob Heyne）的时代，对于古代世界研究重点还是放置在古希腊语和拉丁文上，政治史依然是从属地位，尼布尔和伯克大大推动了进展，而后继的穆勒在细读了尼布尔（Barthold Georg Niebuhr）的《Römische Geschichte》后，将精力放在了历史科学上。很有趣的是，兰克（Leopold von Ranke）在1885年留下的自传中表示让自己对历史科学充满期待的也是这本书。

我们可以看出，在这个时期并没有独立且成体系的历史科学培训系统，而历史意识就在这些语文学者的研究中逐渐苏醒。穆拉克（Ulrich Muhlack）在论文“论十九世纪古典语文学与历史的关系”（Zum Verhältnis von Klassischer Philologie und Geschichtswissenschaft im 19）中认为：十九世纪语文学为历史主义历史学提供了方法。伯克很好地利用了这个方法，科尔斯特伦克（Irene Kohlstrunk）在著作《Logik und Historie in Droysens Geschichtstheorie:E.Analyse von Genese u.Konstitutionsprinzipien seiner “Historik”》中指出伯克让语文学逐渐“历史学化”，变成了历史学-语文学，也被称之为“内容语文学”（Sachphilologie），而另一位赫尔曼（Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann）则延续了语言和诠释学的路径，被称作“语言语文学”（Sprechphilologie），前者逐渐演变为当下历史学，后者的核心依然是“古典语文学”（ klassische philologie）。但如同“classic”作为第一等的含义直到1613年才在英语中出现一样，这个时期的学界也没有学者会称呼自己为古典学家或者历史学者。

例如《Lebensnachrichten über Barthold Georg Niebuhr: aus Briefen desselben und aus erinnerungen einiger seiner nächsten freunde》收录了一封尼布尔在1794年11月16日的信件，其中说到“若要提及我的名字，我将被称作历史作家、政治作家、古代研究家和语文学家（ wird man mich als Geschichtschreiber,und politischen Schriftsteller,als Alterthumbfors fcher und Philologen kennen）”，直到1868年德罗伊森（Johann Gustav Droysen）在《Historik》中对历史知识进行限定，才确定了现代历史学的基本框架，德罗伊森会认为历史知识理论的任务就是成为历史思考和探索的工具（ein Organon des historischen Denkens und Forschens zu sein），这样的探索让“建立在历史知识理论之上”的历史科学开始出现。

古典学系正是在这种学科脉络中发展出来的，维拉莫维茨-默伦多夫（Ulrich Wilamowitz-Moellendorff）在1921年的著作《Geschichte der Philologie》指出：古典学的任务正是要通过科学的力量使那死去的世界重新焕发生机（Die Aufgabe der Philologie ist, jenes vergangene Leben durch die Kraft der Wissenschaft wieder lebendig zu machen）。这个时期的著作中已经独立提及了“古典学”（ Classical Scholarship），而1982年劳埃德-琼斯（Hugh Lloyd-Jones）的译本《History of classical scholarship》也是把原标题的“Philologie”作“classical scholarship”理解。正如维拉莫维茨-默伦多夫所指出的，兴起的古典学是建立在历史科学基础之上，追随现代心灵对古典世界进行探索，这也是与既往被称作“古代科学”的“语文学”不同之处。

正是这样的探索决定了古典学视角中的“古典”本身就是一个值得考察的概念，例如普法伊费尔（Rudolph Pfeiffer）在著作《History of Classical Scholarship:From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age》中提出，古典学研究始于公元前三世纪，在社会转变的背景下，诗人和学者们逐渐意识到了既往时间和未来之间的断裂，出现了被斯特拉波称作“诗人学者”（ Ποιητὴς ἅμα καὶ κριτικός）的菲力塔斯和第一位在荷马作品笺注留下名字的安提马库斯。同时，因为亚历山大图书馆的建立，前三世纪的学者开始有意识地收集过往作品进行编纂。这些诗人学者一边承载着诗人的记叙职责，一边对文献进行校订。这种从菲力塔斯到德迈特利乌斯时期的学术风气塑造了最早的古典学，也指出了公元前三世纪中诗人学者们已经意识到了一个“古典”的时间存在。

我们当下的“古典”意识也同样包裹着来自近现代的认知，这一点陈莹雪在作品《修昔底德的苏醒——古史写作与希腊民族认同转型》中有较深入的讨论，她指出当下对于古典文本的推崇本身就是西欧制造的古希腊传统/地中海主义对希腊等地中海世界的殖民，以神圣化古典来否定古典之后的历史，例如迪波德（Hans Karl Dippold）会在作品《Skizzen der allgemeinen Geschichte：Vorlesungen gehalten in Danzig im Winter 1811》中会将修昔底德视作真实历史的唯一开篇（Das erste Blatt des Thukydides ist der einzige Anfang aller wahren Geschichte），这个观点被库马斯（Κωνσταντίνος Κούμας）吸收，后者同样将修昔底德视作前无古人后无来者的历史学家（Εύλόγως έμπορεί νά είπη, ότι ούτε σύγχρονοί του ούτε μεταγένεστεροί του μεταγένεστεροί του ήδυνήθησαν να μιμηθσι το έργον του），而希腊之所以没落就是因为马其顿人的征服，洪堡（Alexander von Humboldt）在论文中认为从菲利普到亚历山大统治时期的雅典一直在衰落（Die wahre Periode des Verfalls Griechenlands war schon die Regierung Philipps und Alexanders）。基于这种观念，一种新的“古典”随着特殊时代背景产生了，当时的希腊学者在翻译经典作品时会尽力通过注解和再造翻译来塑造新的民族意识，通过对于“古典”的塑造来形成新的“古典”。修昔底德在《History of the Peloponnesian War》中有一段描述伯利克里盛赞为国捐躯者的死亡彰显了他们的勇敢（δοκεῖ δέ μοι δηλοῦν ἀνδρὸς ἀρετὴν πρώτη τε μηνύουσα καὶ τελευταία  βεβαιοῦσα ἡ νῦν τῶνδε καταστροφή），这一段被当时的翻译学者杜卡斯（Νεόφυτος Δούκας）翻译为他们的死亡展示勇者的美德，以不朽烙印勇气（ό θάναντος αυτων δεικνύει την αρετην ένός άνδρος γενναίου έξ άρχής μέχρι τέλους , έπισφραγίζων αυτην μέ τήν άθανασίαν），并且还特意标注这种为国家献身的勇敢就是最大的美德（τὴν άρετήν τῶ ίδίω ύπέρ της πατρίδος θανάτω της ανδραγαθίας μεγίστης ούσης άρετής,προκρινομένης），这样的解读是在回应被奥斯曼统治的社会现状，在现实需求的召唤下自然而然就会借用经典文本来塑造全新的“古典”意识，以完成对民族国家历史连续性的整合。

迈锡尼壁画上的妇女

这样的发现至少说明了“古典”只能作为一个特定时间点的特殊概念，很难作为一个数百年历史发展的时段性质来理解。这一发现也要求学者在尽可能抛弃一个被称作“古典”概念化框架之后，再对研究进行探索。在这方面，有不少学者都试图从个案来重新推敲整个时代的脉络，例如麦克雷（Duncan MacRae，2016）的著作《Legible Religion: Books, Gods, and Rituals in Roman Culture》从公元前一世纪末出现的非圣经文本讨论一种“反应在公民生活中的宗教神学”，在对于古希腊文本的吸纳和对于罗马信仰的文本化过程中如何进行宗教划分。民间的神学体系也为帝国君主制的建立和教会的兴起提供了载体，在多元崇拜的背景下通过文本形成了权威知识的场域，使其超越了其他信仰构架，塑造了对民间的新解释。这样“从经典文本形成前的个案对整体社会风气和制度之间影响”的考察打破了既往对于罗马宗教的单一认识。

同样的个案推敲在哈克尼（Casey Dué Hackney，2019）的作品《Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics》中有着更精彩的精彩讨论，哈克尼通过探查经典文本《伊利亚特》的广泛记载和多种形式，来揭示一些看似“古典”的文本或许并没有那么古典，或许在不同时段中，这些文本本身就有着不同的体现。例如在对于《伊利亚特》Venetus A的考察中发现，公元前三世纪的学者阿里斯塔克斯会因为认为荷马的创作是受神启发，所以荷马不可能创作出不符合这一伦理的角色，而对一些文本进行删减或增改，以符合当时的伦理以及阿喀琉斯应有的性格与形象（καὶ οἱ λόγοι οὐ πρέποντες τῷ τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως προσώπῳ）。这似乎告诉我们，“古典”这个概念在我们当下认为的古典时代中依然会变化，不同时期的学者会对他们当时的“古典”文本作出新的诠释、注解甚至改写，来符合时代的变化。

亨德森（Thomas R. Henderson,2020）的著作《The springtime of the people:the Athenian Ephebeia and citizen training from Lykourgos to Augustus》讨论了被称作“ἔφηβος”的军事教育体系，认为在发展中ἔφηβος已不满足于单纯的军事训练，而是逐渐演变为公民文化的一部分（[ἔ]θυσαν δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ὁρ[ίων] καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς τοῖς κατέχουσ[ιν] τὴν Ἀττικήν）。而在常被认为衰落了的希腊化时代，ἔφηβος依然保持着重要的作用，在公民生活着有着非凡的活力。这三本著作都从不同个案挑战了一种既定的古典框架观念。这似乎说明了基于特定时代形成的古典学系所代表的古典观念，在学术发展脉络中需要有足够的限制和澄清。那么，作为一个概括时段的“古典”概念就难以成为一个特定学术方向的分析视角，学术对于自身方法和视角的反思也就必然会出现了。

注释1：但必须得注意的是，在该时期对于古典的理解非常浅薄，基本只满足于引用一些古希腊文和拉丁文的句子，并没有什么研究，例如布鲁尼说是研究希腊历史，但其实只是把色诺芬的《希腊史》注解了一下，大部分的研究都是这么进行的，伊拉斯谟在《Stultitiae Laus or Moriae Encomium》第六段中嘲讽雄辩家们只要把几个希腊文小词像工艺品一样镶嵌在拉丁文演讲里就会被认为是一种绝技，要是别出心裁从故纸堆中摘些旧词把读者弄迷糊，更能显得自己有多么高明（quibus tenebras offundant lectori, uidelicet, ut qui intelligunt, magis ac magis sibi placeant）。

四、“古典”的考察和古典学的推进

基于这样的反思，古典学的再塑造也必然会发生。古典学本身就诞生于历史科学对于语文学的反思之中，对于古典概念和问题框架既有以上的个案，也有波特（2005）编辑的论文集、惠特玛什（Tim Whitmarsh，2013）对“我们认知中的古典希腊形象是否本身就是来自希腊化时期和帝国时期作家的改造”也进行了讨论。托伦（John Tholen）的新作《Producing Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' in the Early Modern Low Countries: Paratexts, Publishers, Editors, Readers》则讨论了近代早期中西北沿海低地诸国的印刷出版商人制作的不同版本的《变形记》。这些古代文本的制作和再版中，既包含了对批评的回应，也有引导读者阅读的内容，这说明古代文本本身就包含着当下时代对于古典意识的塑造。

如同上文指出哈克尼对《伊利亚特》的研究一样，惠特玛什则认为我们当下意识所指向的那个古典希腊，在很大程度上是源自后世作者对于古典希腊想象的再造。同时，必须指出的是，我们并非要用一种相对视角来看待“古典”，而是古典学的发展决定了它会在抛弃了无法成为历史时代概念的“古典”框架之后，进行更细致的考察。这中间包括了对原始文本中东方主义和殖民主义的批判，这一批判也源自普林斯顿大学在回应中所认为的“古典学的优势应当是跨学科的领域”（We see it as a strength that Classics is an interdisciplinary field that includes）。

几十年来，有多场会议都对古典文本内部的思想进行了探索，例如CBR（Collegium Beatus Rhenanus）于1999年9月16到18日学术研讨会文集《L'invention des grands hommes de la Rome antique》就围绕古罗马传记对历史的建构和塑造发表了数篇论文。比希勒（Reinhold Bichler）则在2003年的论文就“特洛伊战争的年代是古希腊历史的一个问题”（Die Datierung des Troianischen Krieges als Problem der griechischen Historie）延续了讨论，从荷马到克莱曼特对于特洛伊战争的记载差异，指出了特洛伊神话所处的时代是一个不同质的时间，古代作家的记载包含着“对于过去有意识的构建”。基于这个想法，比希勒在2011年的论文“克特西亚斯与希罗多德的玩乐”（Ktesias spielt mit Herodot）中讨论了泰阿西斯书写《波斯志》中对东方形象的文化想象。这个讨论也得到了另一位学者维瑟霍夫（Josef Wiesehöfer）的支持，瑟霍费尔在论文“克特西亚斯与阿契美尼德宫廷”（Ktesias und der achaimenidische Hof）中也认为克特西亚斯对波斯的描写带有明显的东方主义色彩，这样的观点也揭示了古典学内部带有精英主义色彩的想象。

古典学发展至今，已经完全不可能忽略近东，以及与更边缘地区的交流。不断出现的新材料和新视角，要求学者必须让研究从古希腊和罗马的既定框架中脱离出来。所以，无论是伯克利更改学科名字还是普林斯顿提供更广的学习范围，都是学科正向发展对话的结果。范-维伊里克（Hendrikus A.M. van Wijlick）在2020年末的作品《Rome and the Near Eastern Kingdoms and Principalities, 44-31 BC: A Study of Political Relations During Civil War》中指出，在内战时期，罗马与近东国家的关系并没有被影响，这些对外的双边关系在一个外交体系内具有很强的延续性，而安息帝国对引导罗马和近东国家之间有着更大的影响力。

这样的考察应当追溯到柏克特（Walter Burkert）1984年发表的作品《Die orientalisierende Epoche in der griechischen Religion und Literatur》，他认为希腊文化的形成就是经历东方化的时代（feststellung einer orientalisierenden Phase in der Entwicklung der archaischen griechischen Kunst）。“东方化革命”（Orientalizing Revolution）这一概念最早是由博德曼（John Boardman）在作品《Al Mina and History》中提出的，而“东方化”（0rientalizing）则是来自默里（Oswyn Murray）1980年的作品《Early Greece》第六章“The Orientalizing Period”，但柏克特对概念的完善和体系化对后世学者有着更大影响。

例如贝尔纳（martin Bernal）在1996年撰写的书评对其高度赞扬，其大名鼎鼎的作品《Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization》也算是对于这个讨论的承接和回应。虽然韦斯特（M. L. West）在作品《The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth》第六十页明确指出：近东对希腊的影响是无处不在的，但该时期的学者依然以希腊为轴心考察东方对于希腊的影响和塑造，这样的视角随着第四节提到对于古典概念的考察有所转变，塔莱（Gaëlle Tallet）今年由博论改写的作品《La splendeur des dieux:quatre études iconographiques sur l'hellénisme égyptien》进行了重新考察，以出现在鳄鱼神额头上的太阳神太阳光为切入点讨论多神教体系的塑造，认为本土神职人员和雕塑艺术家通过制造图像在保护古老传统的同时依然能够发展特有的埃及希腊主义。萨巴（Sara Saba）在作品《Isopoliteia in Hellenistic Times》中研究了公元前四世纪到一世纪“ἰσοπολιτεία”在整个地中海世界的外交性，指出希腊化世界的不同区域都以不同方式使用了ἰσοπολιτεία，以建立起新的关系来协调各区域之间的矛盾。德利格特（Luuk de Ligt）在主编作品《Regional Urban Systems in the Roman World, 150 BCE-250 CE》中集合十五篇论文横向考察大型地理区域中不同等级城市内的互动，通过碑铭学和钱币学讨论在北非、西西里、小亚细亚的城市考古和预选遗址，解释不同文化区域对于整体地理环境的组成和经济连通性；布拉图（Cristian Bratu）的作品《'Je, auteur de ce livre': l'affirmation de soi chez les historiens, de l'antiquité à la fin du Moyen Âge》考察从希罗多德开始的古希腊作家在历时性脉络德自我推销策略，强调作者形象本身就有来自作者的刻意塑造。

这些近三年的著作代表了古典学的最新进展，古典学的框架已经被大大拓宽，对于多视角的考察以及成为当代古典学训练的必要环节。去年米勒（Kassandra J. Miller）的论文集《Down to the Hour: Short Time in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East》指出“计时”（Clock time）并非一个现代概念，在古代地中海和近东世界中有着对于时间的计量方式和工具，勾勒古代时间计量观念相互影响的思想脉络后，也阐释了个人在规整（structured）自身时间时的影响因素；戴维斯（Sarah Davies）2019年的作品《Rome,Global Dreams, and the International Origins of an Empire》从公元前三世纪发展出来的国际社会，讨论了其对罗马帝国意识形态的影响，并且认为一个单一普遍的国际视野让罗马逐渐发展出了世界主义的意识形态，同时后世史学将罗马放置在周期性的大国兴衰规律中，本身也带有一定的后世塑造。

古典的概念可能比目前所展示出来的要精彩的多，例如哈特曼（Cornelia Hartmann）正在撰写的博士论文“Löwenbild und gesellschaftliche Struktur.Fallstudien zur Semantik des Löwenbildes”就跳出了地域框架，从物质流动和图像学讨论古代世界；诺尔福（Fabio Nolfo）正在撰写的博士论文“The long “afterlife” of the poet from Sulmona: Ovidian female typologies in the poetry of Ausonius, Claudian and Venantius Fortunatus”以古代晚期讨论奥维德在当时不同流派诗歌文学创作中的影响，以女性形象切入跟异教和基督教之间的接触，揭示它们如何共存；泰勒（James Calvin Taylor）去年的博论“Plumbing the Depths: Geological Processes, Deep Time, and the Shaping of Landscapes in Classical Literature”讨论了古希腊世界中对于地层的研究如何塑造和冲击历史时间观，以及地质形成过程对于人类历史和时间景观的影响多么巨大。这些正在进行的研究都展示了极其丰富的古典概念，并非只有古希腊文和拉丁文才是古典学，也并非只有古希腊和罗马才是古典学，古典学可以承载的比想象的多的多。

斯基里泽兹编年史中拜占庭骑兵与阿拉伯骑兵的战斗插画

五、古典时代的“古典”和“古典”观念的影响

在启蒙时期，诸如伽特赫尔和施洛茨尔这样的学者在书写历史时，一定会把《圣经》或者《荷马史诗》作为参考史料引用，这在历史语境中并非是错误的，因为历史语境中对于文献的理解不同造成了方法论的差异。这需要以一种史学史的视角来回顾作品的整体脉络。那葭（Carla Nappi,2009）的作品《The Monkey and the Inkpot:Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China》揭示了李时珍在书写《本草纲目》中很多看似荒谬的药材和记载，其实有着自己独特的药学逻辑和社会文化；梅特卡夫（Christopher Metcalf,2015）的作品《The Gods Rich in Praise: Early Greek and Mesopotamian Religious Poetry》回到早期希腊文本中，回应了第四节关于东方化的观念，通过对比指出早期希腊的诗歌并不依赖古代近东。虽然它们之间有着不可否认的深刻交流，但希腊作品依然有着自己的独特发展力；西洛尼（Francesca Schironi,2018）的作品《The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad》认为，阿里斯塔克斯在研究荷马时，通过自身的观念重塑了整个文本，利用评注和各种片段让文本在自己所处的历史环境中被重新解读。

这些不同问题，甚至不同领域的研究都说明对于既往的考察需要有既往的视角。这涉及到了古典概念中文本的历史性。像是回到古希腊后，我们会发现诗人必须承担起记叙、赞美跟劝诫的职责，例如品达在“皮提亚颂歌 第一首”（Pythian 1）赞美了希耶罗（νώμα δικαίῳ πηδαλίῳ στρατόν: ἀψευδεῖ δὲ πρὸς ἄκμονι χάλκευε γλῶσσαν）；巴库利德斯在“颂歌 第三首”（Ode 3）夸耀了希耶罗的宽容慷慨（οὔτι[ς,ὦ μεγαίνητε Ἱέρων, θελήσει φάμ]εν σέο πλείονα χρυσὸν Λοξί]ᾳ πέμψαι βροτῶν），那么诗人自然也会承载史书书写的责任。

例如我们会发现，在希波战争时，普律尼科司创作了《The Capture of Miletus》、卡戎创作了《Persian》，这些作品都对后世记录有着深远的影响，但若是我们将其称作“伪史”或者“虚假记载”，那就犯了后见之明（hindsight bias）的错误。对于古希腊作家来说，一些内容的记述比表现出来的复杂得多，既有当时文风的影响，例如伊索克拉底的《Evagoras》就沿袭了赞美诗的文风（ἐχρῆν μὲν οὖν καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ἐπαινεῖν τοὺς ἐφ᾽ αὑτῶν ἄνδρας ἀγαθοὺς γεγενημένους）；也有对于文本的传承，例如高尔基亚在回应既往对海伦的文本中就认为海伦的出逃是受爱欲驱使的被动行为，只能算是不幸（οὐχ ὡς ἁμάρτημα μεμπτέον ἀλλ᾽ὡς ἀτύχημα νομιστέον），而希罗多德则在《Histories》认为这和海伦无关，而是神的惩罚，以惩罚帕里斯违背待客礼仪的不义之举（ξε νίων τυχὼν ἔργον ἀνοσιώτατον ἐργάσαο）。我们发现古典文本的生成比表现出来的要复杂得多，这些文本内部并不单纯是记叙，还包括了作者对于问题的回应和心血。

这些古典文本在被我们称之为古典的时期中同样会遭受批评，但当时的批评争论更多侧重于史书书写，例如琉善在《Philopsuedes sive incredulus》中认为包括荷马在内的名人都用书写欺骗读者，这些虚假的作品还代代相传，包括希罗多德都是一样的骗子，所以把克特西亚斯跟荷马等诗人一齐讨论（τὸν Ἡρόδοτον καὶ Κτησίαν τὸν Κνίδιον καὶ πρὸ τούτων τοὺς ποιητὰς καὶ τὸν Ὅμηρον αὐτόν）。诸如波利比乌斯在《Histories》中严厉批评了这种掺杂大量戏剧化描写的作品（καθάπερ οἱ τραγῳδιογράφοι,τῶν δὲ πραχθέντων καὶ ῥηθέντων κατ’ἀλήθειαν αὐτῶν μνημονεύειν πάμπαν,κἂν πάνυ μέτρια τυγχάνωσιν ὄντα），但需要注意的是，在古代世界，历史作品还要增加作品可读性，以激发读者热情（ἡδονῆς ἐν τῷ φράσαι,αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ γράφειν μόνον ἐπεμελήθησαν），所以也不能仅仅关心记叙。

这样的文本足以给我们的研究带来启发，古典文本自身就处在一个史学史的语境之中，这种让文本回归语境的研究，对古典学来说是一次祛魅。面对特定时间和语境中形成的文本，后世学者如何在大量吞吐中梳理出一条线索和路径就成为了至关重要的推进。例如托马斯（Rosalind Thomas）的作品《Herodotus in Context: Ethnography,Science and the Art of Persuasion》考察了希罗多德所处时代的文本，指出他并非如同纳吉（Gregory Nagy,1987；1999）宣称的那样，仅仅是一种对于古风的传承关系，而是在特定历史语境中对所处时代问题进行了共性回应。希罗多德和同时代学者一样进行思考、使用兴起的视角跟方法，这种对于历史语境的考察推动了许多研究。艾伊克（P.J. van der Eijk）的文集《Hippocrates in Context: Papers Read at the XIth International Hippocrates Colloquium》就是对希波克拉底的考察、芬格拉斯（P. J. Finglass）主编的论文集《Stesichorus: The Poems》就是对斯特西克鲁斯的考察，这样的研究告诉我们，所谓的“古代社会”，或许并没有我们想象的那么古典，无论是希罗多德还是西塞罗，他们都会使用当时历史语境中最先进的方法和视角进行研究，因此抛弃一个“古典”的框架本身就是对一种古典想象的否定。

吕厚量曾经讲述过一件轶事，哈佛大学在十九世纪筹建古典学系的时候执意将“ Ｃｌａｓｓｉｃｓ ”改为“ｔｈｅ　Ｃｌａｓｓｉｃｓ ”，加上定冠词的意思是对于古希腊和罗马文明成就表示骄傲和认可。在当时的学者看来，除了古希腊和罗马之外的地区不一定是落后的，但难以称得上是经典的。虽然我们无法确认此事的真实性，但我们可以从十九世纪的著作中看出这样的划分和对于非古希腊罗马世界的刻板印象。

例如罗斯金（John Ruskin）在1853年的作品《The Stones of Venice》第六章“ The nature of gothic”中将地中海描述为一个与“北方”截然不同的区域，这样的观念和划分正是“地中海主义”（ Mediterraneanism）。地中海主义将希腊和罗马视作一个纯净的理想社会，而其他地区则是与“接受了古典遗产的西欧”相对的区域，这个区域时而野蛮，时而割裂。这样的观念必须追溯到古希腊史学的书写脉络中进行考察。如同莫米利亚诺（Arnaldo Momigliano）在论文“普世史的溯源”（The Origins of Universal History）中指出，在基督教出现之前，史家的注意力都放置在军事和政治上。霍尔登（Peregrine Horden）在作品《The corrupting sea:a study of Mediterranean history》 第十一页指出，古希腊时期将地中海视作一条大河，但随着帝国建立，“居住世界”（ οἰκουμένη）跟“我们的海”（ mare nostrum）等概念逐渐重叠，最终形成一种帝国的普世宇宙观。诸如波利比乌斯这样的历史学家通过追溯古老历史来为地中海世界找到一个可以被整合的根源，这样的考察使得历时性的溯源与地理空间的意识形态重合。

而在斯特拉波看来，如果对任何问题进行调查是哲学家的正职，那么地理学会获得很高的资格，诸如荷马、德谟克利特、波利比乌斯这些处理过地理问题的学者都是哲学家，了解这些知识的个人都具有幸福和良好的生活状态（τὸν φροντίζοντα τῆς περὶ τὸν βίον τέχνης καὶ εὐδαιμονίας），所以作为帝国地理的概念自然而然承担起了意识形态扩张的义务。在六世纪末的学者依西多禄编写的百科全书《Etymologiae》中，我们已经能看到成型的地中海地理政治观（Iste est et Mediterraneus,quia per mediam terram usque ad orientem perfunditur, Europam et Africam Asiamque disterminans），这样海洋观念的整合作为生活状态被纳入进宇宙观中，并不单纯体现于地图学上，而是以更细微的方式在生活中运作。

例如马修斯（Karen Rose Mathews，2018）在著作《Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000-1150》考察了十一至十二世纪意大利海上城市如何对“过去”和“外国”文化进行挪用来塑造新的地中海居民身份，对地中海世界如何在超越人为建构概念后进行研究。威库（Myrto Veikou，2012）、科恩-哈内格比（Naama Cohen-Hanegbi，2017）等学者都从文本中的空间历史性跟晚期医学和医生的社会角色来尝试进行一些新的探索。这样的进展，意味着对于思想的演变需要从更细致的地方进行思考，关于在抛弃“古典”框架后后世学者是如何理解和继承地中海观念的，我们可以从下一段的一些文本中窥探地中海史观在被整合为一种世界意识后，又如何变成一个区域性主义。

希波克拉底在作品《On Airs, Waters and Places》中描述道：亚洲人和欧洲人相比温和懦弱是因为气候不冷不热（οὐ μεγάλας τὰς μεταβολὰς ποιεύμεναι,οὔτε ἐπὶ τὸ θερμὸν, οὔτε ἐπὶ τὸ ψυχρὸν,ἀλλὰ παραπλησίως）所以缺乏对精神的冲击，身体也没有激烈变化。这种将人体和性格归纳进自然环境，进而演变为一种世界观的论点对后世有着巨大的影响。探险家沙尔丹在1686年的游记《Journal du Voyage du Chevalier Chardin en Perse & aux Indes Orientales》第一卷第一百一十二页认为，科尔基斯地区在夏天土地的湿气被太阳加热至蒸发导致空气被污染，对外国人来说这种空气难以忍受（Cet air eft infupportable aux Etrangers），所以身体会慢慢变得瘦弱最后生病。在第二卷中则认为炎热天气使得身心疲惫，也正因如此亚洲人的智识被限制，以至于只能重复古典文本而无法发展工业；孟德斯鸠也有类似的观念，他在《Lettres Persannes》第三十三封信中认为灵魂是被身体主宰（L'âme, unie avec le corps, en est sans cesse tyrannisée），所以生理会对精神有决定性影响。而孟德斯鸠在《Voyages de Montesquieu》二百一十九页认为，当时那不勒斯荒凉的原因是在罗马崩溃后，当地人的奢侈心造成了房屋移动的困难，久而久之欠缺耕作的土地就产生了坏空气，也就阻碍了人口增长，当下地区也因此败落。苏格兰医生阿尔巴斯诺在1733年的著作《An essay concerning the effects of air on human bodies》中认为，空气会对人体产生潜移默化的塑造效果。正是因为在不同国家的人身处在不同空气之中，人类才会产生差异。例如北方地区空气炎热所以人们焦虑不安，热带地区过于炎热所以人懒散。

引用希波克拉底说欧洲人勇敢的原因，是因为气候多样性和寒冷（Hippocrates tells us, that the Europeans owe their Courage to the Variety and Coldnefs of their Climate）。在十七十八世纪，大量的学者都会进行“大陆游学”（ the Grand Tour），而在旅途中将所见景色和地理环境纳入一套运行的世界体系进行分析则是延续古典世界的传统。我们可以从在游记本身记载的引用中发现这一点，这说明古典传统在启蒙时期的自然知识中依然有着巨大的影响，依然可以作为地理世界观的文化划分界限或者自然科学方法论来使用。

卢克莱修在《De Rerum Natura》中分析雅典黑死病时，也认为埃及内陆深处的空气翻腾过平原后涌向潘迪昂的子民（aeëra permensus multum camposque natantis, incubuit tandem populo Pandionis omni. inde catervatim morbo mortique dabantur），这和上文中孟德斯鸠跟阿尔巴斯诺等人的观点如出一辙。当时的皇家科学院院士阿斯楚克在一本叫《Dissertation sur l'origine des maladies épidémiques》的研究集中也认为是毒空气（les émanations pestilentielles）的粒子（les particules imperceptibles）感染人体使其生病，并且还在第十八页引用了老普林尼在《Naturalis Historia》中认为黑死病并非欧洲的疾病，而是来自南方和地中海东部的疾病这个观点（Qua in re observatum,a meridianis partibus ad occafum Solis pestilentiam semper ire）来进行佐证。同时，在孟德斯鸠的Spicilège.518号笔记（一份撰写书前的必读书单）也能发现老普林尼、卢克莱修和托勒密等学者都是必读的，在其作品中也确实能发现很多可以对应的观念。而地中海主义正是基于这种时期的地理观建立的，例如地理学家费舍尔1906年的著作《Mittelmeerbilder》在五十三页认为地理特征决定了阿尔巴尼亚人没有体现出民族独特性和团结的意识，但是希腊人会一次又一次崛起（immer wieder emporrangen），这也说明了地中海沿岸的国家软弱落后，需要德国的帮助。

对于古典文化和现代地理世界划分确实具有大量的刻板印象和东方想象。这在古典学内部已经成为非常普遍的认识，福柯在《词与物》中认为，民族精神和身份成为了承载语言功能的使命，历史领域中语言系统的探讨文本让语言具有了自身的历史，阅读历史也就是阅读以现代民族语言为中介的历史，语言的历史开启也就代表时间次序开启（L'ordre du temps commence）。

萨义德在福柯的基础上对于十九世纪兴起东方主义形象的讨论，也启发了桑西奇-魏登伯格(Heleen W.A.M. Sancisi-Weerdenburg)，她在1987年的文章“帝国的颓废或本源的颓废？从本源到综合.克特西亚斯”（Decadence in the empire or decadence in the sources？From source to synthesis.Ctesias）中对古典学研究中古希腊文本的东方主义进行了批评。因此，普林斯顿古典学系所说的古典学者常把古希腊和罗马的文化视作模范（splendid isolation）确实是一个学界早有的共识，并且学界很早开始就对此进行批判。

而在考察十七世纪以来地理学或者艺术史领域的记载，再到十九世纪各大高校古典学系建立的历史之后，我们会发现“希腊和罗马文化以及被工具化（ the cultures of Greece and Rome have been instrumentalized）”也所言非虚。这样的趋势要求古典学者必须进入古代世界共时性脉络中讨论问题。近几年的不少学术会议都要求跨时间、跨学科地进行欧亚/亚非的文明交流研究，例如芝加哥大学2019年的工作坊“跨越欧亚大陆的文学文化：中国及他者”（ Literary Culture Across Eurasia:China and Beyond）第二部分就叫“全球中国，全球希腊”（ Global China，Global Greece），这便是近些年在古典学领域兴起的“跨区域运动”（trans-regional movements）。

去年张颖主持的杨邵允和卡尔德里斯（Anthony Kaldellis）之间的对谈，就代表了中国史学者和拜占庭史学者之间的对话，张颖主要考察十四到十八世纪女性史和文人政治问题，她去年的新作《Religion and Prison Art in Ming China （1368-1644）: Creative Environment,Creative Subjects》考察的是明代官员入狱后如何利用诗歌对理解周遭环境，将监狱视作一个创造性环境考察囚禁者在早期现代宗教、诗歌、音乐等多个领域的主体创造性；杨邵允19年的作品《The Way of the Barbarians：Redrawing Ethnic Boundaries in Tang and Song China》则认为公元800到1127年之间文人话语和道学的兴起颠覆了仪式实践对中国身份的中心地位，对于蛮夷的重新诠释并非是政治变革的直接产物，而是新知识体系对蛮夷划分的流动和对国家历史连续性的思考造就了观念转型；卡尔德里斯19年的著作《Romanland:Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium》指出从未有一个称呼自己为“拜占庭”的皇帝，我们所称呼的“拜占庭帝国”是在十九世纪被剥夺了特性的再造概念，而对于领土扩张一直是由一个被叫做“罗马尼亚”的多元民族国家所完成的，东罗马帝国并非是一个天下主义的帝国，而是具有明确民族界限和蛮夷之分的民族国家。这看似三个完全不同方向的学者在对谈中讨论当时社会如何看待蛮夷划分，以及当他们使用正统民族这种修辞时该如何识别这些群体。这样的讨论并不少见，通过第二段的考察我们发现无论是对于希腊文的学习还是古代文本的学习都是基于新的问题出现和学科的必然发展，那么同样，在学科方向内部出现新的问题，有更多领域可以进行交流的情况下，学科自然而然会再次以问题为核心导向，这也正是古典学最初的初心。

奥斯陆大学收藏的一份莎草纸

六、古典学改革的必然和古典世界的语言

从古希腊文本的语境考察到十九世纪历史学和古典学的独立本身就告诉了我们古典和古典学并非是一成不变的。它同样处于史学史之中，同样会和当时的时代与其他学科进行对话。那么在史学发展的今天，与非古希腊和罗马地区的共时考察自然也会被吸纳进这个正在不断向前的学术脉络之中。

对于古典语言和文本的考察也已经不局限于一种语文学范式之中，巴特罗（Guiseppina Di Bartolo）2020年的作品《Studien zur griechischen Syntax dokumentarischer Papyri der römischen Zeit》基于公元一至四世纪希腊化埃及的莎草纸上古希腊语记载，考察了文本段落中语法的改进和句法的特殊现象，揭示了传播过程中对于语言的改变以及对于当下希腊语的影响。贝德纳雷克（Bartłomiej Bednarek）2021年5月的新作《The Myth of Lycurgus in Aeschylus, Naevius, and beyond》研究来古格士在叙利亚人和弗里吉人等民族中承担神职，他那“被塑造出来的神话”被用作狄俄尼索斯秘仪跟俄耳甫斯教秘仪的开启标志，而埃斯库罗斯的悲剧则是塑造这个神话的最重要文本。

这些研究对应了第二节古典学的问题意识和研究的问题导向、第三节古典学作为学科的方法论和本身作为语文学的分化学科出现，以及第四节古典学对古典的反思和学科发展的进展，也可以看做是古典学从兴起到建立再到进展的阶段。顺着这三个阶段，我们可以总结出普林斯顿大学古典学系改革的思想基础和理论根据：

1.  长期以来学界对于“古典”概念本身的反思；

2.  作为一门建立在历史科学之上的学科会要求对研究本身祛魅；

3.  基于问题导向，面对诸如近东研究等学科的发展新成果必须进行充足的对话。

基于这三点，我们发现普林斯顿大学的改革是来自学科内部的进展和作为一门历史科学的学术自觉，不管是伯克利将古典学系改为希腊罗马研究用以缩小范围，还是普林斯顿大学取消语言强制学习以拆掉门槛跟扩充古典范围，都是基于这三点的不同路径，这也恰好证明了古典学作为一门跨领域学科的拥有强大的活力和生命性。

七、最后关于语言问题的一些个人想法

对于最有争议的语言问题，我们不可否认的是，这样的政策确实会造成不少本科生不学古希腊文或拉丁文，也确实有一定可能会出现不懂古希腊文和拉丁文的年轻学者，但学术研究本身的潜性需求只会培养出掌握更多语言能力的学者。正如普林斯顿所回应的，对于无心从事学术研究的学生来说强行逼迫其学习反而更痛苦，不如拆掉门槛让真正希望学习的人进来，这反而是一种学术训练的“世俗化”，去掉了神圣的语言外衣。况且对于古典语言其实比古希腊文和拉丁文要丰富得多，格林纳达（Emily Greenwood）在十几年前的作品《Afro-Greeks: Dialogues Between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century》就讨论如何把古典学和亚非研究相结合，佩恩（Richard E. Payne）的著作《A State of Mixture: Christians,Zoroastrians,and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity》运用语文学方法和视角研究一直被忽视的萨珊波斯，指出以往古典学研究都重视罗马的拉丁/希腊文语境中的叙利亚语文本，但其实更多文本是在波斯书写的，这需要学者掌握波斯文、阿拉伯文、亚美尼亚文和古叙利亚文，还有林丽娟的新书《Die Helfer der Vernunft:Scham und verwandte Emotionen bei Platon》中使用阿拉伯文、古叙利亚文和亚美尼亚文重新审视柏拉图。

我们可以看一个学术实例：在新疆尼雅遗址中曾经发现过一片编号HTB000405的佉卢文木牍，其中正面第四行“huta taṃ kalaṃmi s̲e caṃpira bharya paṃcapriyae dura oḍita ede bharya-”（时候，詹毗罗放走妻子五爱，丈夫），第九和第十行“sarajitaṃti caṃpira uthita ima paṃapriyae dura oḍita yo/tatra jaṃñatriyaṃmi nikastaǵa taha sarva dura oḍita priti [sne-”（ 协议:詹毗罗启奏，放女子五爱走。婚姻中被送出者，如此一切也已见放。据此良好），可见这是一封放妻书，其中提到了既然詹毗罗把五爱放走（也就是主动离婚），那么一切都归五爱。这样的规定在古印度文本《Artha-śāstra》3.3.15中也有记载，其中规定双方不同意哪怕厌弃了也不准离婚（amokṣyā bhartur akāmasya dviṣatī bhāryā,bhāryāyāś ca bhartā），如果男方要离就要把所取得的一切交给女方（strī.viprakārād vā puruṣaś cen mokṣam icched yathā.gṛhītam asyai dadyāt）；同样，萨珊波斯的Passox 7.5号巴列维语文献也记载男方在女方无过错前提下要离婚是不合法的（enyā mard apādixšāīhā zan ī xwēš abēhamdādestānīh ī ziyānag az zanīh hištan nē pādixšā）；粟特语Nov3-4号慕格山文书也记载相同法律，同时还有一句“rty ZNH n'm'k wyspy n'βy prm'n ZY šw'm'k”（此文书全境有效），跟这封佉卢文文书背面第九至十句的“sarva deśaṃmi pramāna“（此文书）全境有效”一模一样。其中对此的一种解读是在亚历山大东征时期带来了较为完整的一套司法体系，因为就《Select Papyri.vol 1:Non-literary Papyri.Private Affairs》所记载的古希腊也有类似的“αθη δέ ομολογιά ητε κυριά εότω πανταχη όυ, αν επιφε ρηται”（该协议在所作全处生效）。

同时一份公元前十三年编号BGU113号的离婚文书页规定自己要离婚后不得索要嫁妆不得起诉同居，这样相同的规定提醒了我们，对于古希腊，或者说整个古代世界都有着极强的流动性，所谓古典或许比我们想象的更加活跃，这也对学习者的文献和语言能力有了更高要求。况且对于将语言神圣化的人来说，学习语言会成为一件很尴尬的事情。例如西塞罗会在《De officiis》中吐槽不懂希腊文的人都是粗人（ut non modo Graecarum litterarum rude）；维吉尔会在《Aeneis》深情赞美古希腊人造雕塑栩栩如生技艺高超（excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, vivos ducent de marmore vultus）；保萨尼亚斯则会在《The Description of Greece》中赞美古希腊诸位名人多么威武多么有才（καὶ ἤδη τὸ μετὰ τοῦτο ἐς ἀνδρῶν ἀγαθῶν φορὰν ἔληξεν ἡ Ἑλλάς…）；若是追捧色诺芬他们学习了诗歌，结果却发现柏拉图在《理想国》中说诗歌赞美诗令人厌烦会妨碍真正的思考（μουσικὴν γυμναστικῇ θρεπτέοι οἱ νεανίαι）。若是一味追求古典则不存在一个古典，因为古典无法成为描述时代特性的术语，也不需要和某种语言绑定，只需要回归问题本身来考察脉络和文本进行研究即可。

我们当然不能断言，不强制要求学习古希腊文和拉丁文是不是一件好事，但起码从学科发展来说，这是正常的调整。另一方面，我们应该思考，为什么在使用基础信息检索就可以得知原信息的情况下，此事仍然引起了如此大的争议？其中一方面原因，是古典学本身的门槛造成的信息差导致的不了解；另一方面我们则需要思考，为什么会有适合这种信息传播的土壤存在？毕竟这算不上什么精心编织的谣言，只需要打开网页一看便知。

（“金星原”与“Hilaria”对本文亦有启发。）

 

The philosophy of porn - Prospect Magazine

Prospect Magazine · by John Maier · July 19, 2021

Sex and analytic philosophy are not promising bedfellows. But when it comes to feminist philosophy, it is no mere pun to say that sex is where the action is. The revival of this neglected feminist concern is principally owed to Amia Srinivasan, the 36-year-old star of Oxford philosophy and Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College. Srinivasan began her career making influential contributions to formal epistemology and shot up the academic rungs; she has since found a public audience as a critic and essayist of remarkable precision and range. In her new essay collection, The Right to Sex, Srinivasan writes about consent, pornography and the ideological shaping of desire, attempting “to remake the political critique of sex for the 21st century.” Here, the political isn’t just personal; it’s intimate.

Readers may approach the book with misgivings. With what authority does academic philosophy address itself to the sexual imagination, fantasy and our intimate lives? There are other ways that philosophy can fail us besides being false; bad philosophy—like bad sex—can be formulaic and uninspired. When it comes to our ethical lives, philosophy wins authority not just by telling the truth about things, but by making sense of them. Philosophy, beyond being true, ought to ring true. Notoriously, when the heavy artillery of analytic philosophy—reduction, abstraction and theory-building—is turned on the landscape of moral and political life, the result is usually desolating.

“Sometimes,” Srinivasan writes, we just “don’t need another crank of the reason machine,” another spin of the “intellectual assembly line, endlessly performing the same task on different, fungible objects.” Philosophy, Srinivasan once admitted, is “a thing I love but whose instantiations often fill me with boredom and despair” (as good a characterisation of the subject as any).

“Maybe I shouldn’t say this,” Srinivasan starts, “but anyway, I’ll say it: philosophically-orientated theorists have been systematically failing to meet the moment very clearly since, I think, 2008 onwards… and, I think, for a lot longer than that.” Not only can philosophy sometimes alienate its readers, but in certain styles it fails to acknowledge where the theory of politics must yield to politics itself. All too often, Srinivasan explains, theorists have an “unjustified conviction… that what activists or political actors need are better philosophical tools and better philosophical concepts.”

“I think the problem,” she laughs, “is that often what they need is just more political power. So, if you really want to help the cause, you should probably just be joining your union and going on the picket line.”

“Porn has, in Srinivasan’s idiom, ‘world-making’ power”

The Chichele chair, named after a medieval archbishop of Canterbury who founded All Souls, will not be a seat of armchair philosophy, remote from worldly struggle, while Srinivasan is sitting on it. Her “world-directed” approach accounts for her apprehensive philosophical style, the sense she conveys—on the page and in person—of there being something at stake. As a young scholar, Srinivasan was turned off by the distasteful tendency in political philosophy to play intellectual games with matters of moral seriousness. Raised in Taiwan, New York and Singapore, she came to Oxford from Yale in 2007. Just when she might have gone back to the US, to law or graduate school, she won the coveted All Souls prize fellowship.

At Oxford, she “feared that being a philosopher and being a public thinker were simply two different things.” Even her previous byline at the London Review of Books wryly advertised her divided loyalty: “Amia Srinivasan teaches at Oxford but surfs in LA.” Now it simply refers to her Chichele appointment, doubtless itself a source of conflicted feeling to a philosopher who cares resolutely for radical politics and the possibility of “revolution.” (A wary ambivalence in the revered chair is not entirely new: GA Cohen, Srinivasan’s Marxist predecessor-but-one, once told the following joke: “Question: ‘How many fellows of All Souls does it take to change a light bulb?’ Answer: ‘Change?!?’”)

Talking to Srinivasan from her room in Oxford felt initially like being back in a philosophy tutorial: having my long-winded, ill-formulated questions charitably reconstructed and then answered with consideration and poise. In other ways it was not quite the same. For instance, though as an undergraduate it very often would have been true, it seldom seemed apropos to announce, an hour or so in, as I did to Srinivasan: “I’d like to talk about gay porn now, if that’s alright.”

One of the essays in Srinivasan’s book, “Talking to my Students about Porn,” refers back to the “Porn Wars” of the 1980s, when pornography was considered a robustly contestable political phenomenon. It has since become unfashionable to subject pornography, and the market of desire it serves, to ethical critique, largely because of the broader embrace of an ethic of “sex positivity”: we have learned to think “you do you” (or indeed anyone else) when it comes to people’s shocking sexual tastes or self-abasing kinks. We have become—for sound political reasons—nervous of diagnosing false consciousness; sexual desire is implicitly considered to be “pre-political,” assimilated to a private sphere immune from political critique.

Srinivasan’s work rehabilitates a more questioning attitude. To anti-porn feminists, porn was a metonym “for sex that took no account of women’s pleasure, for sadomasochistic sex, for prostitution, for rape fantasies, for sex without love, for sex across power differentials, for sex with men.” Its power, though, was more than totemic. As Catherine MacKinnon influentially argued, porn effectuates its message: it has, in Srinivasan’s idiom, “world-making” power. Porn is a machine for reproducing ideology; it eroticises women’s subordination and cultivates in men an ethic of entitlement and aggression. Porn tells lies about women, but it tells the truth about men.

When pornography existed on centrefolds, videotapes, and the backs of playing cards, campaigners might have succeeded in suppressing it. Now, it seems, nothing short of a technological armageddon could loosen porn’s grip on the collective imagination. With some irony, Srinivasan writes, “the warnings of the anti-porn feminists seem to have been belatedly realised: sex for my students is what porn says it is.”

So, as I was asking, what about gay porn? Whatever its negative qualities, these cannot straightforwardly consist in sexist conditioning or the objectification of women. As the philosopher Les Green has suggested, gay porn might even provide a positive service to gay men by objectifying them, giving them a robust sense of themselves as sex objects. This notwithstanding, perhaps the more disagreeable conventions of mainstream gay porn—of gay life, generally—involve a kind of imitation of the pernicious features of its heterosexual counterpart. Srinivasan agrees: “I think it’s undeniable that some of the problematic dynamics you find in mainstream gay male culture take their model from the heterosexual dynamic. That’s just obviously the case.”

But, Srinivasan argues, what mainstream porn of all varieties embodies is a vast, and perhaps irreversible, pedagogical failure. Its grip on the imagination is to be regretted, its disabling power owed as much to its cinematic qualities as anything else. The “logic of the screen” pacifies the viewer, compelling him to identify with his on-screen surrogate. “It etches deep grooves in the psyche, forming powerful associations between arousal and selected stimuli… if the viewer times things right—online, unlike in the cinema, one can always pause, fast-forward, rewind—it becomes his semen on her face and breasts.”

“Srinivasan asks whether we can subject our sexual desires to reflective criticism and some degree of wilful control”

Better sex education, Srinivasan argues, is now an impotent remedy. It fails to meet porn on its own terms, attempting to counter its immersive power with something cognitive and discursive: “porn does not inform, or persuade, or debate. Porn trains.” A remaining hope, Srinivasan concludes, is the onset of a kind of “negative education.” “What we need,” she explains, “isn’t a kind of positive hermeneutics to be inculcated in viewers of pornography, so that they can better interpret what is going on… what we need is the onslaught of images to just stop for a moment.”

I put it to Srinivasan that her critique shares some of its spirit with conservative objections to porn: the worry that porn’s logic of commodification corrupts the value of sex, manifest perhaps in the creeping feeling—all too easily evoked whenever one finds oneself choosing from a menu with pictures—that one is engaged in something debasing. “I totally agree,” Srinivasan says—“the conservative way of putting it is that we have this kind of sacred thing that’s being degraded by being placed on this screen. I more specifically want to say the thing we’re losing is a certain kind of creative capacity which then gets dulled by its over-reliance on the screen.”

Such arguments, she adds, are another reason to read conservative philosophers—“to understand that part of us, which is very much drawn to and recognises the truth in conservatism, because it’s a very false radical politics that thinks that progress does not come with loss.”

It is inherent to sexual life, with its vast comedy and small tragedies, that our desires can take us by surprise. But Srinivasan asks whether we can subject our sexual desires to reflective criticism and some degree of wilful control. Proposals along these lines are similiar to those of the “body positivity” movements, which invite us to find fat or disabled bodies attractive: to resist hegemonic standards of “fuckability.”

Srinivasan hopes that, with greater self-understanding, more enlightened desire might re-assert itself, “cut against what politics has chosen for us and choose for itself.” The task of sifting one’s authentic desires—those which are genuine or autonomous expressions of the sexual self—from those that are ideological deposits seems to me potentially paranoia-inducing. But that is only, Srinivasan replies, if one subscribes to the fantasy of the “pre-political desire” or “purely authentic self.” The point, she says ruefully, is not to ask whether we can sift the clean from the tainted—“the point is that everything is tainted.”

I wonder whether this project of radical sexual self-criticism recommends liberalism: an environment of free and self-examining enquiry; perhaps, in that rather quaint phrase of John Stuart Mill’s, “experiments in living.” I almost inquire whether Srinivasan considers herself a liberal, but—even following on from all the talk about sex and gay porn—it seems rather too personal a question. “There is,” though, she says, “a certain aspect to liberalism that is profoundly attractive, and shouldn’t only be owned by liberals, which is the fundamental respect for individual life, projects and forms of experimentation.”

In its totality, however, Srinivasan regards liberalism as tragic. In matters of sexuality, it purchases an equality in respect for taste at the price of deceiving us about the immutability of desires. Srinivasan thinks stories about fixed sexual preference, and the “born-this-way” narrative, are political, not metaphysical, claims. They have been very useful in seeing off prejudice. But it would be better if we could live without them, while retaining, indeed augmenting, the political equality they have secured. “I am not some kind of Whiggish person,” she says, “but I believe that the kind of defence of queer lifestyles in terms of involuntariness has got to be a fleeting historical moment that we get past, and it’s got to be high up on the agenda for a radical queer politics to get past it.”

But don’t the political forces at work on us, I put it to her, make us into creatures unfit for utopia? “That has to be right,” Srinivasan agrees: “I think it’s an extraordinary and striking fact that Moses doesn’t live to see the promised land, and he’s destined not to… as a metaphor, I think that’s right.” We are tied, by relations of nostalgia and rebellion, to the world we seek to liberate ourselves from. “But,” she adds, “I think that’s a hopeful thought too, because it means that I’m not going to have to be forced to live in a world in which I’m uncomfortable either. I’ll help to bring it into existence and then die.”

On Taste: How do we know whether art is any good?

 

On Taste

How do we know whether art is any good?

by Thomas Kaminski

For much of the 20th century The Man with the Golden Helmet was esteemed one of Rembrandt’s greatest paintings. The brilliant play of light on the gilded helmet, the subject’s shadowed face and pensive, down-turned eyes, and the secondary glint off the metal of the gorget seemed to most viewers a bravura display of the master’s technique. But by the 1960s some scholars had begun to question whether Rembrandt had in fact painted it; and two decades later, after extensive analysis, a scholarly consensus arose that it had probably been done by one of Rembrandt’s students.

What are we to make of this? Is the painting still a masterpiece? Did we set too high a value on it when we mistakenly thought it a Rembrandt? It is still the same picture: do we get less pleasure from it now that we strongly suspect it to be by a lesser hand? Why did we love it in the first place: because it was a brilliant artistic achievement, or because (as we thought at the time) it was by Rembrandt? These questions have no simple answers. They are all related to the intractable problem of taste.

Judgments and Standards

Taste is the faculty by which we make judgments about art. The term of course has broader social uses: a gift, a comment, any form of public display may, depending on the circumstances, be thought in either good or bad taste. Yet even in our social interactions, things are rarely straightforward. Who is to say that an act is in bad taste? One person might ignore certain social conventions, thinking them out-of-date, while another, more finicky sort might judge that behavior a violation of good manners.

Such conflicts are inevitable: the very notion of taste contains within itself two ideas in constant tension. First, taste is always personal: a judgment, but one’s own judgment. The idea derives from our physical sense of taste. It takes no great powers of observation to notice that different people prefer different foods. I like cilantro, you do not. As the Latin tag has it, de gustibus non est disputandum—there is no disputing about tastes.

And yet, however much we have a right to our own likes and dislikes, such judgments are often measured against a standard. For instance, the man who refuses to eat spinach or asparagus is unlikely to be considered a discerning judge of fine food. These two principles—the autonomy of the individual taste and the existence of some broader principle of excellence—are perpetually at odds. Each of us navigates between them, sometimes vindicating our own preferences, other times yielding to (and perhaps learning from) the taste of others.

Taste in the arts adds another level of complexity. Even when we are talking of the physical senses, we recognize that all people are not the same. Most of us know someone with a more delicate palate or a more sensitive nose than we have. Your eye doctor can even test your ability to see the full spectrum of colors. We find similar variety in people’s sensitivity to art. Some are more attuned to the play of words, others to the visual arts, still others to music. And within each category, the difference in responsiveness is enormous.

Alan Bennett makes this point in his play A Question of Attribution; his speaker is     Anthony Blunt, the art critic and Cambridge spy: “Kenneth Clark was saying the other day…that people who look at old masters fall into three groups: those who see what it is without being told; those who see it when you tell them; and those who can’t see it whatever you do.” This remark, cold and hard as it is, seems largely correct. Ask anyone who has taught literature or art history at the college level: the professor will recognize these three groups—the sensitive, the teachable, and the dull. It is not necessarily a matter of intellect. I once heard a brilliant economist talk about a novel: he noticed everything in it but the art. It is a matter of taste.

Before I go any further, let me add a few caveats. I intend to draw most examples from the visual arts. My arguments will apply just as well to literature and music, but the terrain is too vast to stick one’s nose into every hollow or fissure and hunt about for illustrative specimens. On top of that, having spent my academic career teaching literature, I hope to escape the dead hand of professionalism by working in the spirit of the amateur. Finally, I want to avoid—at least until the end—any contentious disputes between high and low taste, between Mozart and Mötley Crüe. For the purposes of this essay, there is such a thing as great art.

Back to Alan Bennet, and one qualification about Kenneth Clark’s typology. Those who see what is going on in an Old Master painting “without being told” can do so only because they already know something about the form. Art is never transparent. There are no wholly intuitive responses to it, not even to the Old Masters. We assume, perhaps rightly, that anyone can enjoy the beauty of a sunset or the scent of peonies: the pleasures of nature must certainly be available to all. But the response to art is different. Art is not a part of the natural world; it is a human contrivance, and to appreciate it we must undergo some form of acculturation. Before Western music conquered the world, the shamisen (a three-stringed traditional instrument) would have sounded as natural to Japanese ears as the guitar does to our own. But nature had nothing to do with it: we hear a culture’s vibrations in the strings of each instrument. No one, in fact, is born a connoisseur of Old Master paintings, just as no one is born a reader of Alexander Pope or a devotee of Mozart. Our responses to art involve both nature and nurture, an inherent sensitivity shaped by experience. Taste must always be trained.

Current Trends

The idea of training one’s taste may seem alien, even repugnant. Perhaps beauty should be recognizable in any circumstances. But one’s own experience will generally tell against this claim. Consider the Byzantine icon. Those of us who have trained our taste on the Western tradition of religious art from Giotto to Guido Reni are likely, upon first encountering an icon, to find it static, distant, artistically unsatisfying. In trying to make sense of it, we might see it as a “precursor” of Cimabue or Duccio. But how can that be relevant? The work was never intended to aim toward something grander. Created in a tradition, it had had its own purposes and expressed a particular artistic idiom. Such works seem alien to those never exposed to that tradition. Whatever made them precious eludes us.

And yet, strange or unfamiliar art will sometimes break through our prejudices, upsetting our expectations and becoming a part of our own personal aesthetic. Japanese prints, for instance, had a marked influence on 19th-century European art, as did African masks in the early 20th century. An openness to such experience may in fact be a sign of a particularly responsive taste. We may still know nothing of the work’s original social and cultural meaning, but that does not matter, for we have fit it into our own aesthetic world and conferred our own meaning upon it.

In the process of learning to see art, we also learn to tell good from bad—and the best from the good. But where did this scale of values come from? Didn’t we say at the start that we are each autonomous in matters of taste? How did it come about that we are now to judge by someone else’s lights?

More than two centuries ago David Hume took up this problem in “Of the Standard of Taste.” All responses to art, Hume’s essay argues, are fundamentally personal, but not all are equally valid. Some people are more sensitive to beauty than others. Some, better at recognizing what makes a work artful, possess sounder judgment. In Hume’s view, the man of taste possessed both sensibility and sense.

Because we have no simple means of identifying these paragons, however, they must reveal themselves by a sort of test: declare themselves “critics” and offer their judgments to the public. If they can bring others to see things as they do, they shape the current taste. In this way, by trial and error, a standard emerges. If Hume is correct about this process, as I think he is, any standard must be provisional, for it rests on nothing more solid than received opinion.

And received opinion certainly does change over time. The church of San Luigi dei Francesi stands just off a street that connects the Pantheon with Piazza Navona in Rome. If you enter the church today, you are likely to see a small crowd of people at the top of the left-hand aisle, waiting for someone to pop a euro into a metal box that will illuminate, for a minute or two, Caravaggio’s three great paintings of the life of Saint Matthew. With the striking effects of his lighting and his use of crude Italian peasants to represent the Apostles and the Holy Family, Caravaggio is today considered one of the great painters of the Western tradition. It was not always so. A century after his death, the most important guidebooks for English travelers to Rome—Edward Wright’s Observations Made in Travelling through France [and] Italy (1730) and Thomas Nugent’s The Grand Tour (1749)—made no mention of these paintings. Readers who carried either book to San Luigi would find their attention directed elsewhere, mainly to the Saint Cecelia chapel frescoed by Domenichino. As far as received opinion was concerned, Caravaggio wasn’t worth a look.

Even in his own day, Caravaggio had been controversial. One of the three paintings he originally completed for San Luigi—Saint Matthew and the Angel—was rejected by the priests who had commissioned it. In that work the saint sits cross-legged with a book on his knee as an angel directs his hand in writing the Gospel. But the saint’s naked legs and feet—with one brilliantly foreshortened foot seeming almost to protrude from the canvas—struck the patrons as below the dignity of an evangelist. Luckily for all concerned, a nobleman accepted this picture and paid Caravaggio to paint another, more decorous version of the same subject, which hangs above the chapel’s altar today. (The original version of the painting, sad to say, was destroyed in Berlin during the war.)

Despite such controversies, during the 17th century painters all over Europe followed Caravaggio’s example. But by the 18th, new ideas of propriety, even more strict than those of Caravaggio’s clerical patrons, had come to dominate contemporary taste. Raphael and Guido Reni now set the standard. The typical tourist at San Luigi was unlikely even to look into the dark chapel that housed Caravaggio’s works. It would not be until the first half of the 20th century that the Italian art historian Roberto Longhi, playing the role of Hume’s taste-shaping critic, would resuscitate Caravaggio’s reputation. Times change, tastes change. That’s the way of the world.

Received Opinion

In fact, more often than not, our initial introduction to art is an unwitting exercise in absorbing received opinion. We are likely to know the names of important artists or hear the titles of famous paintings long before we have learned to look with any sensitivity at a work of art. Who hasn’t heard of the Mona Lisa? Who doesn’t know the names Michelangelo and Van Gogh? This naturally leads us to think in terms of hierarchies, even when we haven’t seen enough paintings to tell good from bad, let alone good from great.

It is only later that a family member or a teacher will help us look, perhaps pointing out some excellence in a favorite work or introducing us to an artist that we hadn’t known before, nudging us closer to a real aesthetic experience. It was Lincoln Kirstein’s remarkable good fortune to be guided, while still in his teens, through several art shows by John Maynard Keynes. When he balked at a Cézanne, Keynes told him, “Keep your eyes open, clean of received opinion and prejudice.” It was good advice, but not without its ironies: by admiring Cézanne in 1924, Keynes and his Bloomsbury friends showed their adventurous taste. A century later, Cézanne is the darling of received opinion.

Few are so fortunate as to have a mentor like Keynes; the rest of us must be content with absorbing the taste of the time. There is no shame in that, however much we might prize independent thought, for the untrained taste is inevitably naïve. Consider a young person interested in the arts who particularly values the expression of “authentic” feeling. How is he to know what authenticity looks like in a sophisticated piece of art?

In our untutored state we are all given to what I.A. Richards called “stock responses,” the tendency to mistake commonplace but comfortable notions for real insight. In the end, even the sensitive student of art requires some direction to avoid being taken in by the flabby, the meretricious, or the merely sentimental. And if this is true of the receptive viewer, one with some affinity for the arts, what will be its effect on those with only a passing interest? At best we can hope that those who are teachable will assimilate the taste of their teachers, which in most cases will track with received opinion.

And yet, since it is only received opinion and not the art itself that one must master, even the dull can learn what to say about art without ever having been truly touched by it. Almost anyone who has taken a course in art appreciation, however insensitive, should be able to tell you of Piero’s quiet dignity or Monet’s ability to capture light. One need not truly see the paintings in order to know what to say about them. In two of his Idler essays, Samuel Johnson, a contemporary of Hume’s, gives us a humorous portrait of the fictional Dick Minim, who makes a name for himself as a literary critic by listening to the wits in the coffee houses and repeating their observations to his acquaintances. Minim knows nothing of literature, but he has learned what to say in order to be taken for a man of taste.

The same applies equally to the visual arts. Quite a few people, I am sure, have praised a Picasso or a de Kooning without having derived much pleasure from viewing it. Knowing what one is supposed to say of such works, they dutifully follow the script. Such feigning is the arty version of hypocrisy for those who want to be seen as having sophisticated taste.

The Tyranny of Experts

We are now ready to answer the questions posed at the beginning about The Man with the Golden Helmet. Before the painting was reattributed to one of Rembrandt’s students, received opinion had pronounced it a masterpiece, and those who followed the dominant taste would have agreed. These same people would likely have found it less compelling after its demotion. Those who relied on their own taste would probably reserve judgment until they could see the work again. Had they too judged more by name than by eye, they might wonder. (It is a fault hard to avoid.) Was the splendor of the helmet artful or merely showy?

Such a question, in its new context, is very difficult to answer. What one had considered genius in the master’s hand might be excess in his student’s. How is one to judge? There is no rule. One can only look, feel, and think for oneself.

The world, though, will rarely give us that leisure. We are beset by a related problem—the tyranny of experts. Let us return to the example of Caravaggio in the 18th century. The authors of the guidebooks had already determined what was worth seeing. If a visitor to San Luigi had peered into the dark chapel by chance and been deeply moved by Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, what would his contemporaries have thought? Was he a man of independent judgment or of degenerate taste? For most, I suspect, it would have been the latter.

Perhaps the most instructive example is the early history of the Impressionists. They had rejected the dominant, Academic style of painting’s formal polish and idealized subjects, searching instead for an art of greater immediacy. But their revolutionary techniques—the new, brighter palette, the loose application of paint, working en plein air—were all dismissed, even ridiculed, by contemporary critics, who largely excluded Impressionist works from the Academic salons. For decades, a Bouguereau would command a far greater price than a Monet.

Over time, however, a small group of dealers and collectors began to champion Impressionist works, giving rise to a new, dissident taste in art. The older style, which lavished its perfected technique on stale sentiment or decorative eroticism, seemed allied to the conventions and platitudes of bourgeois society. The Impressionists, on the other hand, offered vitality and novelty, the verve of the city and a countryside unencumbered with sentimentality or moral lessons—in other words, the Modern. Establishment critics now found themselves challenged by radicals and upstarts, the original avant-garde. Taste in art had become a barometer of one’s social opinions.

With a great shift in taste under way, the Impressionists had two qualities working in their favor: the paintings themselves were visually appealing, and the new aesthetic was easy to assimilate. One did not have to be a profound theorist to accept that our visual world is constructed from small blotches of color. And, once again, the paintings themselves were so pretty!

Things became more difficult, however, with Post-Impressionism and Cubism, which put new demands on the viewer. One was now expected to accept the painter’s expressionist caprice as the true source of art. If you found the work itself odd or ugly—well, whose fault was that? And with the advent of abstraction, the critics came fully into their own. Many art lovers who enjoyed the detail of a Dutch genre scene or admired a portrait by Ingres were more puzzled than moved by Jackson Pollock’s drips or Franz Kline’s swaths of black. What were they to make of such things?

A Decadent Age

Most, of course, were too intimidated to speak up for fear they would be dismissed as philistines and declared incapable of appreciating “true” or “difficult” art. The late 20th century, when the art that most pleased the experts left the typical viewer cold, was the great age of the aesthetic hypocrite. One could only wonder what someone meant when he said that he “liked” a piece of modern art. Did he find the arrangement of colors in that work, however random or chaotic, beautiful in itself? Perhaps. Was that Cubist disassembly of a female torso psychologically compelling? Maybe the first time one saw that sort of thing. Or was our viewer merely watching out for his reputation, in effect saying to himself, “Everyone knows that Matisse is a great artist, and by nodding approval I show myself a man of taste”? Our motives, of course, are often unclear even to ourselves; and who is any one of us, after all, to dispute received opinion?

At the heart of the matter is the question of who determines what constitutes refined or sophisticated taste. For nearly a century we have ceded authority in such matters not to particularly sensitive viewers of art, Hume’s tastemakers, but to intellectuals. The latter judge as their theories or their politics require, with little concern for the actual experience of looking.

Ours, sad to say, is a decadent age, in which we have allowed the critics to argue us out of our senses. (Of all the arts, music has undoubtedly suffered the most from this deference to the intellect and denial of the sensual. Does anyone outside of music schools really enjoy the latest cacophony foisted upon restive but intimidated concertgoers as “modern” music?) And yet, once again, despite the failure of much modern art to convey anything either meaningful or pleasurable to most of us, there are still many who find abstract and conceptual art compelling and who derive real aesthetic pleasure from viewing it. So malleable is human consciousness in responding to the artifice of our fellow man, and such is the power of received opinion to shape those responses.

But the tyranny of critics is hardly the greatest obstacle to a rich experience of art today. For the past half-century, the very notion of a refined taste has come under attack as oppressive, just another means by which the privileged keep down the masses. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that a familiarity with the arts constituted a form of cultural capital that elites employed to exclude others from the inner circles of wealth and power. Historically, there was some truth to this, especially in Europe where the pretentions of social class rested largely on the distinction of one’s ancestors. In the descendants, these pretentions manifested themselves in an arrogant demeanor and an exquisite taste.

This way of thinking, though, never made much headway in America, where successful men often took pride in their humble origins. Some self-made men, it is true, married their daughters into the European aristocracy, but if we are to trust the imaginative insights of writers like Henry James, these young Americans were alternately attracted to and repelled by their new society’s high tone yet dubious morals. In any case, the American model has come to prevail against the European one. Today, wealth and power are far more closely tied to entrepreneurial success than to a love for Mozart or one’s family pride in owning a Rubens. If a refined taste still confers any social capital, it can do so only among the few nowadays who care about such things. When was the last time that a lack of taste prevented someone from becoming rich?

What We Make of It

After all these quibbles, hesitations, and uncertainties, what finally can we say about taste? It is simply the means by which we appreciate art, especially great art. Its importance rests on two assumptions. First, that art provides valuable experiences for human beings. And second, that some of those experiences are richer and more meaningful than others.

Take music. Its popular forms today, especially rock and rap, provide an incessant accompaniment to the lives of the young. The sound is rhythmic and sensual, its pleasures emotionally exuberant and rebellious, often Dionysiac. And those pleasures are real.

Nevertheless, some of us think them shallow, expending themselves in the endocrine system. Those who dissent from the popular taste will tell you that a Bach cantata, a Beethoven symphony, or a Wagner opera can not only stir our sensual nature but penetrate to the recesses of the human heart. Modern literary theorists and cultural critics sneer at such a claim, decrying it as a form of bourgeois sentimentality or just another attempt by the well-off to justify their “privilege.” Ultimately, the question is impervious to attempts at demonstration: either you have experienced the power of art or you haven’t.

Unfortunately, our contemporary Solons talk and write as if they have never had an aesthetic experience, which, if it is in fact the case, renders them unqualified to judge. No one doubts that Game of Thrones can entertain its audience, but it cannot move us as King Lear does. The one is an amusement, the other an exploration of human vanity, ignorance, cruelty, and desire.

History, of course, is littered with moral monsters who were themselves “men of taste.” One may indeed stand open-mouthed before a Velasquez, stay awake at the opera, and shudder at the murder of Desdemona without ever doing a kindness for one’s fellow man. But this reality merely reminds us of the crooked timber of which we are made.

To live a good life, taste is neither necessary nor sufficient. It can, though, enrich our experience and, perhaps, deepen our understanding of human life. What use we make of that enrichment and that deepening is up to us.