ABSTRACT
Whether or not we accept that ‘philosophy’ is a universal human phenomenon, it is clear that the modes in which it is expressed – the genres of texts that are labelled as philosophical – vary from culture to culture. This textual aspect of philosophy is frequently overlooked or ignored by philosophers, who often deem such concerns as outside the scope of philosophy itself. But if it is granted that there is an important relation between form and content, that the form in which philosophers adopt to express their ideas has some bearing on the ideas they express, then this is a significant oversight. One of the central goals of a university education in philosophy is acquainting a student with a certain kind of ‘philosophical’ text, usually of a quite particular sort. In time, reading such texts becomes second nature, to the extent philosophers become blind to questions of textuality, forgetting that this particular moment in the history of philosophy is marked by particular kinds of texts – for instance, the journal article and the monograph – that have their own institutional histories. Had philosophical conventions developed differently, Donald Davidson might have presented his ideas in dialogue form, or Quine might have written rhymed couplets. 1
