How Philosophy Works

Can we discover and define the practical significance of philosophy? The main intermediary in its connection to reality is the philosophical text, which has a practical component and a pragmatic nature with communicative properties. The impact of the philosophical text begins with the moment of reflection turning from the world to the self, when the transformation of worldview into world-relation occurs. This moment in philosophical discourse is marked by the expression of obligation, which translates reflection from what is to what ought to be, binds the entire discourse, and ensures its completeness, autonomy, and meaning. Established ways of textual expression of world-relation are called textual behavior, and we consider the two main modalities of obligation (“must be” and “must do”) relevant to the two types of behavior we have identified – aesthetic and ethical. The ways of their implementation in modern formats of philosophical text (dialogue, essay, article, manifesto, biography, etc.), their communicative effect, inevitable semantic aberrations, and the crisis of classical models of behavior are explored in this book.