In the current research, using methods of oral history of philosophy, oral communication (in particular, interviews) is considered only as a technical phase in preparing the final text. The author claims that the primary audio or video recordings of such an interview, an "oral draft," should be considered independent material. After all, the written text does not reflect the interlocutors' intonations; comparing the source material and the final text may become important for future researchers. After the transcribed and agreed text (...) of the interview took its final shape, it should be analyzed by the interlocutors and supplemented with a commentary. This commentary aims to (1) clarify vague points of the text and (2) record the further opinions of the interviewer and interviewee. Therefore, the purpose of an interview that uses an oral history of philosophy should be an audio/video recording, a final text, and a commentary. (shrink)

The paper determines the status of the “Oral History of Philosophy” within the history of philosophy as a discipline. The author formulates his theses as answers to the fundamental questions Serhii Yosypenko asked in 2019. The latter subjected the first attempts to comprehend the then-new concept of “Oral History of Philosophy” to fruitful criticism. It is in response to his criticisms that the former gives now his answers which can be summarized in six points: (1) Oral History of Philosophy is (...) fundamentally different from Oral History and is not limited to the application of the interview method; (2) it is a set of dialogical methods of producing new information in the field of the history of philosophy, that is, a new methodology that can be used in any historical-philosophical research; (3) the main difference is the orientation of the Oral History of Philosophy not to personal testimony, but to joint reflection; (4) this focus on reflection determines all the methods of Oral History of Philosophy; (5) the name “Oral History of Philosophy” is due to the specifics of the situation that gave rise to this methodology rather than a conscious conceptual reflection; (6) this methodology can be given a more exact name: “Dialogical forms of historical-philosophical reflection”, while the name “Oral history of philosophy” can be used for those dialogical forms that rely on oral speech. (shrink)

The article analyses how the oral history of philosophy can be conceptualized as a genre and a discipline of the history of philosophy. The need for this kind of conceptualization arose due to recent spreading of interviews in the genre of the oral history of philosophy, which in turn became a subject for the special issue The Oral History of Philosophy in Filosofska Dumka. Analysing this issue, the author proves that the “dialoguing” nature of the interview builds inflated expectations about (...) the oral history as well as its boundaries as an approach in a historical-philo-sophical study. He also suggests distinguishing the interview as a genre of oral philosophy – dialogue, which is a traditional philosophical literary form, from a tool in historical-philosophi-cal study. In the latter case, it is important to determine who will play a role of a historian: an author of historical narration, an interviewee or an interviewer. Depending on the answer to the previous question, the author distinguishes three possible perspectives of the oral history of philosophy development: an interview as a self-sufficient study in the history of philosophy, an interview as a self-sufficient source for historical-philosophical research and an interview as one of sources for historical-philosophical research. Each of them has its opportunities for a historian of philosophy and plays its role in recruiting students and doctoral students to research work. (shrink)

On November 25, 2019, a scientific seminar organized by the Student Society of Oral History of Philosophy was held at the Department of the History of Philosophy of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The main topic of discussion was the status of the oral history of philosophy as a scientific discipline: its research goals and place among research practices. There were two main points in the discussion: OHF as a set of empirical interview-based methods and OHF as a (...) separate historico-philosophical discipline with its own area of research. Were also discussed the criteria of distinguishing between "philosophical" OHF and OHF, which is a simple application of oral history techniques in the realm of interviewing philosophers. (shrink)