Concept
Classics
Overview
Classics, also known as classical studies or ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of ancient Greek and Roman literature and their original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics may also include as secondary subjects Greco-Roman philosophy, history, archaeology, anthropology, architecture, art, mythology, and society.
In Western civilization, the study of the ancient Greek and Roman classics was considered the foundation of the humanities, and they traditionally have been the cornerstone of an elite higher education.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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The Greeks, by peculiar good fortune and natural enlightenment of mind, had no classics but themselves. They were at first the only classical authors for the Romans, who strove and contrived to imitate them. After the great periods of Roman literature, after Cicero and Virgil, the Romans in their turn had their classics, who became almost exclusively the classical authors of the centuries which followed. The middle…
Michel de Montaigne, Literary and Philosophical Essays
Names Classics several times.
Secondly, the help of ancient culture was found to be necessary as a weapon for the intellectual protection of Christianity. Even the Reformation could not dispense with classical studies for this purpose. The Renaissance, on the other hand, now begins, with a clearer sense of classical studies, which, however, are likewise looked upon from an anti-Christian standpoint: the Renaissance shows an awakening of honesty…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, We Philologists
Close in meaning to Classics; the term itself is not named.
During this course of study, part of the three unoccupied months of each year will be spent in public examinations, to test the degree to which the instruction has been assimilated. The pupils will of their own accord continue their esthetic pursuits, even supposing their natural tastes in this direction not to be encouraged as they ought to be.
Auguste Comte, A General View of Positivism Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and Life
Close in meaning to Classics; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Classics
- Heraclitus
- William of Conches
- Simone Weil
- J. L. Austin
- Richard Swinburne
- Friedrich Schiller
- Hannah Arendt
- Wincenty Lutosławski
- Nicolás Gómez Dávila
- John Punch (theologian)
- James Doull
- Richard McKirahan
- Cornelia Johanna de Vogel
- Georges Chapouthier
- W. F. R. Hardie
Related ideas
- Aristophanes
- Ancient philosophy
- Germany
- Greek language
- Classical Greece
- Greece
- Athens
- Hebrew language
- Homer
- Philosophy
- Ambrose
- Hesiod
- Hero
- Heraclitus
- City-state
- Italy
- Elitism
- Ancient Greek
- James Joyce
- Julius Caesar
- Jesuits
- Ancient Greek philosophy
- Latin
- Latin literature
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Greek language.