Textual culture as an object of study in the history of philosophy

Abstract

The'turn towards the text',which can be witnessed in recent social and cultural studies, is determined by the ever-expanding textual space and the increasingly mass character of textual activity. The latter circumstance is an indication that the textual constituent of philosophy has risen to prominence. In this paper, the author discusses what it takes for a philosophical text to succeed as such, which historical and cultural destiny it has. How does one write a philosophical text, who will be its readers, how will it be understood? To answer these questions, the phenomenon of a philosophical text must be viewed against the vast background of 'textual culture', the totality of means employed to create, preserve and transmit the texts. Within textual culture there can be singled out its 'format', which is a set of conditions determining the way a text originates, its form and the nature of the communicative situation proper to it. The analysis of the format of textual culture allows the student of philosophical texts to take full account of extratextual facts while sparing him the risk of reductionism, in particular from that of excessive philologism which prompts one to regard a philosophical text as one of literary kind. Proper understanding of the importance of textual culture may lead to expanding the existing research programmes in the history of philosophy and adding to them the study of philosophical textology.