From substrate to purpose : rethinking the book through Aristotle's four causes

Gerčar, Jaka (author)

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.

• Language: English
• Keywords: theory of the book, publishing theory, book definition, reading
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication version: Author Accepted Manuscript
• Publication date: 01.01.2025
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 9-21
• Numbering: Vol. 36, iss. 4
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-183778
• UDC: 655.4/.5
• ISSN on article: 0957-9656
• DOI: 10.1163/18784712-20240052
• COBISS.SI-ID: 280635651
• Publication date in RUL: 18.06.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Logos
• Shortened title: Logos
• Publisher: Whurr, Brill
• ISSN: 0957-9656
• COBISS.SI-ID: 14226437

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: teorija knjige, založništvo, branje, definicija knjige