"Niewątpliwie mniemania" : literatura wobec rzeczywistości kulturowej

Abstract

The epistemological issues generated in sphere of cultural anthropology direct our attention to the question of the examination of the European humanities as a whole: how to investigate this discourse without crossing its limits? Such a problem was formulated in the discussion between Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault concerning the relation between the history of madness and Cartesian rationalism: “[...] is it possible that there exists something before or outside the scientific discourse?” Descartes’ Discourse on Method, analysed from an anthropological perspective as a relation between text and context being an element of cultural reality, reveals its hidden references: “temporary morality” (popular knowledge) turns out to be the basis of rationalism and its “suppositions”, as “unquestionable” ones, anticipate, as it were, a scientific text.