From the eighteenth century, the study of Latin and the greek has become increasingly an exercise in self-referential. It's time to reassess the great humanistic and pedagogical potential
Luigi Miraglia
Despite some claims informed most of the empty rhetoric, the general impression that you receive today is that the ruling class, political power, who rules the economy, and often, unfortunately, even by those who should teach it and pass it on, classical culture, and humanities is looked upon with disdain, if not with contempt. What is the reason for this general devaluation? I believe that, as always happens in historical phenomena, the causes are multiple es'intreccino between them. I will try to name a few.
Since the late eighteenth century classical studies and turned increasingly to the work of Wolf and many others in so-called "science of antiquity", were gradually moved away from this reality and live, creating an unbridgeable gap between life and studies. Despite the undeniable commitment of many scholars and intellectuals of liberal arts education in moral, political, civil progress, the setting of the classical disciplines in schools, especially in universities across Europe and overseas has been transformed in an attitude of archaeological study of the past, seen as distant and separate from us, thus alleviating much, or even scoffed at as naive and amateurish, the value of ethics, civil and formation of conscience that, in comparison with the great writers, humanists had seen and cultivated. A praepostera diligent, scholarly pedantry has pervaded all the classics after a just stance on the need for a historical perspective that avoids arbitrary update. Gradually accentuated what divides us, overshadowing what unites us, hath been lost synthesis, in favor of a detailed analysis, have prevailed in a very strong historical grammar, textual criticism, the detail on the look Overall, the laboratory microscope on the wide view of who stands high on a knoll and sweeps a broader perspective. The loss of a sensus communis that has characterized this transformation has meant that anyone who was not a specialist, and who did not intend to dedicate his life the study of monuments from the museum covered in dust and mold, is no longer able to understand why all those who were destined to occupy positions of some importance in society were to study Latin, greek and ancient history, and the defenders of the disciplines Classic have not been able to do anything, then, that clinging to the defensive positions, inventing a justification, which have heralded everywhere until they lose all force of argument, the formal Bildung: "Latin and greek, it's true - they said - are dead languages, dead is the civilization that used them to express themselves, the world is dead languages \u200b\u200bto which they belonged. But we do not study them to learn to speak or to write, all in all we care too little current laws include them, what matters is that through them we will charge to school children and university students with a 'mental gymnastics', an exercise of analysis and patience has no equal in any of the other disciplines that may present itself, he will develop accuracy, diligence, fortitude in the face of obstacles, will analyze and scrupulous method and the most difficult problems, 'exercise his attention, his memory, his intellect, and any other psychic ability '(FA Wolf, Consilia scholastica). "
Until the secular prestige of the humanities has exercised its power, even instrumentally exploited by unscrupulous leaders, this incredible justification is sufficient, because Latin and greek remained to occupy a primary place in schools across Europe '. However, this gradually diminished prestige for some external causes, some internal, has run the common man began to ask what should have been asking since the beginning: they can not possibly exist other matters, the most useful In practical terms, they constitute the same "training" of logic, patience, attention and memory? They could not perform this task mathematics, formal logic, the study of a living language, like German, or, today, the computational logic? On the other hand, even if you do not have the courage to admit it, is often evident that certain systems and the setting that gives the study of classical languages \u200b\u200band civilization produces a selection on the contrary, those who do not excel, as he wrote Cicero, I am able, because of their fiery temperament and live in aspectum lucemque proferre, in medium to educate AGMEN in pulverem in clamorem in castrates what is learned in classrooms, but those who abdiderunt litteris ita ut nihil ex possint eis to communem adferre fructum: those that Petronius called doctores umbratici, hence the false impression that these disciplines are alien to real life and real, the challenges of modernity, by urgent and pressing needs of the modern world.
to these objective reasons, a drift is added, which is partly the consequence and becomes due at the same time, the modern era, which lost any vision of the world, when making something the highest end of human existence, can not help but celebrate a pragmatism meant the accumulation of sudden gains, the historicist view, which informed the Italian school in particular the influence of two great men as the Cross and the Gentile, is now losing a foot in front of a sweltering prevail shopkeeper and merchant perspective of business people stalk of each faction. The reasons why the proponents of this approach not only the school but the whole society, are hostile to the study of the classics, humanism, literature, philosophy and history are evident, and a fine portrait in the novels of Aldous Huxley and Ray Bradbury, that all young people should read to better understand what is happening today, but unfortunately the Greek and Latin languages, in particular, offer easy connections to the side, for the reasons I expressed above, which makes them very vulnerable and hardly defensible; ma anche la storia antica ha avuto i Suoi colpo mortality and her philosophy in tutt'Europa รจ in grave Pericolo.
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