August Böckh Ordre des livres

The publication of the theoretical part of August Boeckh's work, titled Encyclopedia and Methodology of the Philological Sciences, addresses a significant gap in French philological studies. Released posthumously in 1877 by E. Bratuschek, a disciple of Boeckh, this work remains relevant today. Boeckh, a prominent student of Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher and a leading philologist of his era, regarded this work as his most personal and vital scientific contribution. The intellectual backdrop for Boeckh's work includes the debate with Gottfried Hermann regarding the nature and objectives of philology, sparked by Boeckh's publication of the Corpus inscriptionum graecarum. He defines philology as 'the knowledge of what is known,' emphasizing the recognition of established knowledge. Boeckh's division of philology into formal and material aspects clarifies its scope. The formal aspect encompasses two intertwined processes: hermeneutic or 'absolute comprehension' and critique or 'relative comprehension.' He identifies four fundamental types of interpretation, which include grammatical and historical interpretation, focusing on the objective conditions of texts, and individual and generic interpretation, which examine subjective production conditions. The interplay among these types reveals their interdependence. Boeckh extends the universalization of hermeneutics beyond Schleiermacher, contributing to the development of philo