Praxis, Humanism and the Quest for Wholeness

In this chapter, Jens Steffek places the praxis approach in the humanist tradition of social and political thought, interpreting it as a quest for wholeness in a modern world full of reductionism and fragmentation. He finds the humanist legacy of praxis in Kratochwil’s epistemological position, which suggests that we can, and should, grasp human agency in all its facets by studying complex, historically situated situations of decision-making. Kratochwil deploys an Aristotelian concept of praxis, in combination with American pragmatism, to argue that there is continuity between scientific inquiry and real-world practices. Having outlined this perspective on praxis, Steffek asks how world-observing scholars can adequately understand a real-world praxis that they do not enact. He argues that the reflexive-critical stance of the social scientist who dissects real-world practices to gain knowledge about them is hard to reconcile with the habitual conduct of actors who rely on tacit and unquestioned knowledge.