Tuesday, December 10, 2019
A Monster of Teutonic Arrogance?
Bernard Williams (1929-2003), Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), pp. x-xi (on Eduard Fraenkel):
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Fraenkel was presented by the malice of the common rooms as a monster of Teutonic arrogance. He could certainly be alarming when presented with a rash or pretentious error, but the quality he conveyed in his teaching and taught one to respect was humility in the face of dense and complex philological fact; and while he possessed classical learning on a scale that I suppose is not matched by anyone now living, he saw himself as poorly informed by comparison, for instance, with the master whom he called "the great Leo".
