Is Homer worth reading? Yes, but perhaps not for the reasons Homer was read before. Reading outside the canonical construct of the ‘canon’ does not necessarily mean rejecting the canon, but it can mean and should mean de-canonising the canon. In this sense all discourse is recourse, it builds and responds to what has been said before. We talk, and the only way forward is to talk more. We read classics because we are humans are interpreters. Stories shape who we are, but they can be reshaped. The stories of European imperialism, colonialism, the emergence of the very concept of Western Civilisation, the construction of whiteness and race, the role of classics as a discipline in evolving an idea of classics that grafts the present onto the past as a legitimising tool of power and oppression – all these are stories that require our critical engagement and analysis, at the same time that we critically read the stories that are their content, and the stories currently being told about them. in a canonical sense, and how this shapes our present, things like contemporary and historical white supremacism, we need to understand how the classics has evolved to situate and tell that story, even at the same time that we can critique that narrative. If we want to understand why the so-called western world has privileged the classics, esp. Indeed, we ought to wrestle with how and why it is a ‘given’, as well as how it ought to be contested. That the classics have positioned themselves as the basis of western civilisation is both a given and a contested. We also are creatures that tell stories, and the way we tell those stories, what we include and what we exclude, is as important, often more important, than the contents of those stories themselves. On the one hand, to understand our own world, we are to some degree obliged to engage those histories on the other, the way those histories are intertwined with the historical injustices that create our present moment, and have silenced other peoples and peoples’, warrants that we turn our attention to minoritised voices. The history of Europe, its colonialism, imperialism, and thus inordinately large influence on the rest of the world, has been a reason for a historical weight given to its cultures, etc.
The histories, cultures, and literatures of certain Mediterranean peoples are not intrinsically or inherently more worthy of our attention than others. That, however, is also true of other histories, which also deserve our collective attention. Our world, whether we like it or not, is shaped by the histories of antiquity, and we do better to understand this world by understanding the worlds that went before. We are the product of time and causality, both real and fictious. We read classics, too, because we are storied creatures.
At the same time, the very fact that I read Vergil raises other questions – who is not in this conversation? who has been excluded from this conversation? who could I invite to this conversation? and are there times when Vergil should not be invited to the conversation? I am listening for what is the same and what is different, and exploring the spaces in between. I read Vergil because I am interested in understanding Vergil, and because I am interested in what Vergil says about who we are as humans, yet at the same time I am listening for the differences, the vast gulf of culture and chaos between then and now, between them and me. So classics is a conversation across centuries. We are engaged in a movement from the particular to the common, and back again. Times and places do, but what is it to be human? We share far more with those of Rome and Greece, than the degree by which we differ from them. We read classics because human nature, arguably, does not change. It is because we are interested in the human, that we engage the classics. For those who do not share a belief in God, what else is there to study but what there is to be human? And for those who do, we are inescapably bound by our human condition, whether we reflect upon it or not. And the humanities are, I would argue, the study of what it is to be human. Putting aside the question of the knowledge of the rest of creation that is not human, that which is not theology is the humanities. This may seem an odd place to start a discursive piece reflecting on the place of the classics, but here Calvin divides all knowledge into two parts : the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.” “Nearly all the wisdom which we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.
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