Is there a clear cut distinction between Philosophy and Philology?

Question

I’ve been recently mulling over semantic and linguistic issues and I realized that my understanding of these fields may not correspond to the commonly accepted wisdom, so to speak.

Although the dictionary and encyclopedic entries for Philosophy and Philology do vary somewhat in terms of implications, is that actually the case in practice?

From OED a couple of possible variants on meaning:

Philosophy:

1. The love, study, or pursuit of wisdom, truth, or knowledge.

2. A particular system of ideas or beliefs relating to the general scheme of existence and the universe; a philosophical system or theory.

3. The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, and the basis and limits of human understanding; this considered as an academic discipline.

4. The study of the general principles of a particular subject, phenomenon, or field of inquiry.

Philology:

1. Love of learning and literature; the branch of knowledge that deals with the historical, linguistic, interpretative, and critical aspects of literature; literary or classical scholarship.
2. The branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of languages or language families; the historical study of the phonology and morphology of languages; historical linguistics.

All are in common acceptance to varying degrees in varying parts of the world. (I’ve excluded the obsolete or uncommon)

Clearly, philosophy(1) is quite similar to philology(1) and we can not reasonably expect a clear cut distinction. Also, philosophy(4) and philology(2) are in close alignment when considering the field of language.

But philosophy(2) and philosophy(3) are quite distinct.

Answer 1

There's a branch of philosophy called philosophy of language which is closely related to Philology and you may take a look. Personally I'll view philosophy is innately related to any field including philology, but the borderline normally lies in whether it's non-disputed scientifically or empirically proved knowledge or not...

Regarding your first comparative study:

Clearly, philosophy(1) is quite similar to philology(1)

For me it seems obvious the extension range of philosophy covers that of philology, the latter mainly focus on just linguistic category of knowledge, the former is interested in any category generally speaking.

Regarding your second comparative study:

philosophy(4) and philology(2) are in close alignment when considering the field of language.

You're right that when considering the field of language, the descriptions here are in close alignment, but still same as above, the category of philology is much more specific than philosophy, such as philology focuses on etymology, phonology and morphology of natural languages while some philosophers may not be interested in. However, even having a part of their respective properties same or aligned by no means there cannot be clear cut distinction. For example, we can all easily identify a white silk cloth from a white paper. You may value their shared whiteness as their essentials thus tend to believe there's no clear cut distinction, which is of course false. Even if you try to add "paperness" to your two comparison objects, it still may cause distinction although a silk cloth or even a computer screen may be interpreted as having some "paperness" in addition to their shared "whiteness"...

Having said above about their distinction, your study and mulling over the intricate resemblance and relation between them reveals a good insight which was popularized as the linguistic turn movement by contemporary philosopher Richard Rorty in his 1967 anthology:

The linguistic turn was a major development in Western philosophy during the early 20th century, the most important characteristic of which is the focusing of philosophy and the other humanities primarily on the relations between language, language users, and the world.

These various movements often lead to the notion that language 'constitutes' reality, a position contrary to intuition and to most of the Western tradition of philosophy. The traditional view (what Derrida called the 'metaphysical' core of Western thought) saw words as functioning labels attached to concepts. According to this view, there is something like 'the real chair', which exists in some external reality and corresponds roughly with a concept in human thought, chair, to which the linguistic word "chair" refers.

Answer 2

Some of my observations/opinions:

• Describing philology as "love of learning" seem overly broad to me; surely that's not what the academic discipline of philology is. Wikipedia says that it:

is more commonly defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. [...] The meaning of "love of learning and literature" was narrowed to "the study of the historical development of languages" (historical linguistics) in 19th-century usage of the term.

• Likewise for defining philology as "The branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of languages or language families; the historical study of the phonology and morphology of languages; historical linguistics." There's an Oxford page that more clearly notes:

In British English, the word ‘philology’ denotes the historical study of language.

However if you read more detailed disussions on linguistics fora you can find statements like:

philology today has retreated so far under the pressure of linguistics that it is no longer represented as an academic unit per se in American universities. [...] the idea of linguistics as something different from philology TODAY is based on the idea that "linguists" have theoretical and methodological training in the "scientific study" of language, both "Language" in general and languages, especially modern spoken languages. The focus on theoretical rigor [...] is primarily what, to linguists, distinguishes them from philologists. [...] In short, philology focuses on the study of TEXTS, and includes many disciplines (linguistics [increasingly including subjects studied in the subfields of linguistics], study of particular languages and language families, language pedagogy, literature, history, art, music, anthropology, etc.), while linguistics focuses on the study of LANGUAGE, and includes many subdisciplines (phonology, syntax, pragmatics, typology, historical linguistics, study of particular languages and language families, applied linguistics [i.e., language pedagogy and especially the THEORY of language pedagogy!], etc., to the exclusion of other disciplines such as those listed above under philology).

You're basically using (waay) overly broad definitions of philology as it understood today as an academic enterprise.

As for what is philosophy,... that's been addressed on site before (albeit rather poorly, I should say--e.g. one answer proposed "love of wisdom". On that level you cannot make a distinction if you take philology just a broadly defined.)

It's not hard to see that there's little overlap between academic philosophy with philology in the narrow/academic sense, except maybe when one (e.g.) gets into an exegesis on Aristotle's works (in their original language) and similar analyses of "ancient" philosophers' writings.

You might also notice that e.g. the SEP page on Philosophy of Linguistics doesn't even mention philology. And a more general search generally finds mentions of "philology" mostly in the references section, for the kind of historical figures I mentioned.