The epistemological turn and the episteme of the social in the intellectual discourse of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

The article presents a synthesis of the author’s findings on the antiquarian and erudite texts from  England,  France, and  Germany that were produced during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  It is demonstrated, for the first time, that  European intellectuals’ sustained interest in the construction of individual “fragments” of social reality predetermined the consistent development of certain descriptive schemes for the realisation of this project, initially focusing on the example of various categories of nobility, and subsequently on other social groups.  The author places particular emphasis on the accessibility of comprehensive techniques in conjunction with narrative schemes, which are employed in the portrayal and classification of the nobility.  Indeed, the author’s argument hinges on the assertion that such techniques facilitated this so-called antiquarian/erudite episteme, which in turn permitted the evaluation of perspectives for the construction and depiction of the “social” during this period.  Whereas a new episteme completely transfigured all foregoing workings in understanding of intra- and extra-group communications, what is meant here is an epistemological turn occurred in the  Early  Modern intellectual discourse.  Using various tools of discourse analysis, the author demonstrate, for the first time, that the kernel of the epistemological turn lies in a reinterpreting of a descriptive efficacy of the medieval corporate theory, which viewed all individual and collective agencies as collective or fictitious bodies devoid of personal identity.  The new narrative scheme introduced in antiquarian and erudite texts diversified the functional model of social relations relevant to medieval epistemology.