Есето преди есето: Платон, Епиктет, Августин
The essay before the essay: Plato, Epictetus, Augustine

Summary/Abstract: According to a popular view, the essay begins with Montaigne and once born it quickly has become the essential genre of modernity because of its shortness, effectiveness, and subjectivity. The author of this article, however, suggests that the essay can be born in every epoch, as far as it fulfils three requirements: an epistemological, an existential, and a functional one. The epistemological requirement is that the one who speaks in the essay feels unconfident about his ability to get to know anything, so that he tries to find new ways of knowing. This requirement is demonstrated through an analysis of the way Plato has portrayed Socrates’ maieutic method of eliciting knowledge. The existential requirement is that this search of knowledge is born out not of a feeling of joy and happiness, but of a crisis. It is demonstrated through an analysis of Augustine’s conception of time in book ΧΙ of his Confessions. And finally, the third requirement is that the essay functions as a therapeutic text, a text that not only shares knowledge and experience, but tries to find solutions of a crisis. The third requirement is demonstrated through an analysis of Epictetus’ conception of freedom in his Discourses

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