philology

noun

1. (US, countable, especially, uncountable)The humanistic study of texts and their languages, especially ancient or classical languages.

   “Philology and philosophy are treated as reciprocal. They exist on equal footing, and neither functions satisfactorily without the other. Their methods ... are opposite; philology attains to knowledge through induction, whereas philosophy starts from a concept. To formulate his concepts soundly, the philosopher needs an adequate fund of knowledge or data; too many philosophers ... lack a basis in knowledge or tradition”

   “[…]his early philosophical studies converged with his original love of philology as he pursued the “prehistory” of Kantian critique in Descartes, Galileo, and Copernicus, back to Plato.”

2. (Commonwealth, archaic, countable, especially, rare, uncountable)Historical or comparative linguistics.
3. (countable, rare, uncountable)Love and study of learning and literature, broadly speaking.

   “Indeed Philology properly is Terſe and Polite Learning, melior literatura (married long ſince by Martianus Capella to Mercury) being that Florid skill, containing onely the Roſes of learning, without the prickles thereof in which narrow ſenſe thorny Philoſophy is diſcharged as no part of Philology. But we take it in the larger notion as incluſive of all human liberal Studies and prepoſed to Divinity as the Porch to the Palace.”