Il classico: dalla storia della parola alla storia delle idee

This paper is a study of the word “classic”, from its latin origins to the variety of meanings that have flowed into this concept throughout the 20th century. The term first appears in the pages of Aulus Gellius, a roman writer and jurist of the first century CE, and turns itself through the centuries, moving from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and into the contemporary age. In this sense, the first part of the paper tries to reconstruct the history of the word “classic” and then to observe the “classic” phenomenon within the larger framework of the History of ideas, a discipline born in the early twentieth century. On the basis of the reading that french historian Le Goff offers of this perspective of study, the reflection on the classic, conceived as a value, widens to the pragmatist-oriented philosophy of gesture. The underlying idea is that of the classic as a literary gesture, i.e. as the highest expression of language, which has its accomplished form in the theater. If etymology reveals the deepest meaning of words, the classics show all the capacity of language, which, in turn, demands a fully human understanding, capable of containing all the possibilities of experience and all the latent faculties of thought.