ABSTRACT
Contrary to a common notion, the humanities are not direct descendants of classical Greek philosophy (Kristeller, 1961: 3-23). In their recognizably modern form, the humanities date from the early nineteenth century, when universities were taking shape as institutions of research, as associated with the German tradition of Wilhelm von Humboldt (Fallon, 1980; Rudy, 1984). The understanding of knowledge as a product of research had been preceded by at least two alternative conceptions of knowledge, either as self-awareness (summed up in the Delphi oracle’s admonition to “Know thyself!”) or as traditional learning, administered and passed on by a class of learned people (Kjørup, 2001: 20-22). While the latter two concepts are still encountered as subtexts, it is the development of analytical procedures and conceptual frameworks for research which has occupied humanistic scholars during the immediate ‘prehistory’ of media and communication research.
