Quo vadis, humaniora?
Quo vadis, humaniora?

Summary/Abstract: The article is an introductory contribution to the present special issue, which is devoted to new developments in the humanities. The first part attempts a survey of the „archeology of humanities”, from its birth and main stages of development to relations with other disciplines and its social functions. The second part addresses the topical issues of humanities today and provides a brief introduction to the following articles. Although we may search for the sources of the humanities in ancient Greece or Rome, there is no doubt that humanities are a 19th-century invention. That century of science is famous not only for the formation of the humanities, but also for developing a whole new system of knowledge. Humaniora is but one – albeit very important – branch on that new „tree of knowledge” that still constitutes the backbone of our modern interpretation of sciences. Naming being inseparable from any classificatory attempt, every branch of the new tree immediately found itself in need of an appropriate name to cover both the essence and ambitions of that branch. As most of the midwives and godfathers of the humanities were Germans, the newborn disciplines were first named Geisteswissenschaften. By today, every language has developed its own terms, eloquent of the historical development of those disciplines in each country. The developments in the humanitarian sciences over the recent years could be characterised by the following three keywords: florescence of methodological „turns”, appreciation of interdisciplinarity, and extensive travelling of concepts. Looking at the list of titles of the books and articles produced by humanitarian and social sciences over the recent years one is led to believe that we are living a time of „turns”. Hardly a month has passed without somebody announcing yet another methodological turn. Among the numerous „turns” the linguistic, cultural, cognitive and performative ones could be pointed out as the more relevant in the present context. Although each turn practically takes place within a concrete discipline, their ambition is usually bigger, proclaiming changes in the humanitarian and social sciences in general. This indicates that scholars are eager to find methodological platforms to bridge the current classifications of sciences and create new interdisciplinary fields of research. Clifford Geertz has aptly termed the process „blurring of genres”. Cultural geography and biosemiotics, as well as anthropology of religion and cultural psychology are good examples of the new „inter-disciplines”. As has been demonstrated by Mieke Bal, in the humanities interdisciplinarity mainly relies on concepts. Progress in the humanities means, first and foremost, emergence of new concepts and change or expansion of the semantic space of the old ones. The last few years indeed appear to have been the heyday for travelling concepts. Of those, some of the widest travelled are „narrative”, „gend

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