THE MARRIAGE OF PHILOLOGY AND SCEPTICISM:
UNCERTAINTY AND CONJECTURE IN EARLY MODERN SCHOLARSHIP AND THOUGHT

The Warburg Institute, 22 June 2012

Organised by Gian Mario Cao, Anthony Grafton and Jill Kraye

Philology is nowadays recognized as the foundation stone of modern scholarship: by holding on to documents and sticking to evidence, it is supposed to rescue historical knowledge from scepticism. This assumption can, however, be challenged by moving away from the conventional antagonism – philology vs scepticism – in order to identify the sceptical elements within philology itself. Instead of asking ‘how effective an antidote to scepticism is philology?', the more relevant question is: ‘how can philology cope with its own inner scepticism?’ By attempting to answer this question, the workshop will help us to see textual criticism as a fresh source for understanding sceptical trends of thought.

Programme:

Morning

Chair: Jill Kraye (Warburg Institute)

Jan Ziolkowski (Harvard University and Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection) – Medieval Precedents for Sceptical Philology

Ian Maclean (All Souls College, Oxford) – Vera, spuria and Authorial Intention in the Higher Faculties

Scott Mandelbrote (Peterhouse, Cambridge) – From Polemic to Scepticism: Uncertainty and Conjecture in Early Modern Biblical Criticism

Anthony Grafton (Princeton University) – Divinatio: Meanings of a Technical Term

Afternoon

Chair: Anthony Grafton

David Butterfield (Queens’ College, Cambridge) – Critical Method in Lambinus’s Lucretius

Jill Kraye – Philosophy, Philology and Scepticism in Editions of Seneca from Erasmus to Lipsius

Gian Mario Cao (Warburg Institute) – Richard Bentley vs. Anthony Collins: Atheism, New Testament Criticism, Censorship

Glenn Most (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa) – Children of the Marriages of Philology and Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus and Pierre Bayle