20.500.12556/RUL-183778 From substrate to purpose rethinking the book through Aristotle's four causes The definitional boundaries of the book have grown increasingly unstable in an era of hybrid formats, platform publishing, and shifting media practices. Technical, institutional, and pragmatic approaches each capture aspects of the book’s status, yet none provides a framework that highlights the book’s enduring cultural authority. This article advances a causal-ontological model grounded in Aristotle’s four causes (material, formal, efficient, and final). It is argued that the first three causes are often implicitly acknowledged in publishing studies, whereas the final cause, understood as the book’s purposive orientation, has remained largely overlooked in debates on the ontology of the book. It is argued that this dimension, though not metaphysically essentialist, illuminates the book’s epistemic affordances, cultural resilience, and symbolic persistence. By distinguishing between ancillary and ultimate ends, the causal model accounts for the book’s dual status as commodity and cultural instrument. In doing so, it clarifies persistent taxonomic challenges and demonstrates how philosophical analysis can enrich the theory of publishing. theory of the book publishing theory book definition reading teorija knjige založništvo branje definicija knjige true false true Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik Neznano 2026-06-18 16:12:10 2026-06-18 16:12:18 2026-06-19 04:14:15 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2025 0 0 Str. 9-21 iss. 4 Vol. 36 2025 0000-00-00 PostprintKoncna NiDoloceno NiDoloceno 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 2025-01-01 655.4/.5 0957-9656 10.1163/18784712-20240052 280635651 FromSubstrateToPurpose_JG_authorArchVersion.pdf FromSubstrateToPurpose_JG_authorArchVersion.pdf 1 918FF23BD51C9F3059A7F9D3E6ADAA46 718c663365b212d0b00ce80ba8a614a9137a275610a5a8f6b7fff5801f5a40b4 0a16a9b5-6b20-11f1-9b0d-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=235959 https://brill.com/view/journals/logo/36/4/article-p9_3.xml 1 a76da343-6b1f-11f1-9b0d-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=235958 Filozofska fakulteta 0 0 0