BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE
83
… a coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative
human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity
are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of
excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that
form of activity. 10
MacIntyre’s definition seems to rest on a distinction between a set of acts
on the one hand, and these acts when they are embedded in a more
comprehensive cultural and social structure on the other. Moreover, he
seems to want to restrict the meaning of ‘practice’ to the latter case. Tictac-toe,
for instance, is not a practice according to MacIntyre, nor is
throwing a football with skill; but the game of football is, and so is chess.
And whereas bricklaying and planting turnips are not practices,
architecture and farming are. So also are the enquiries of physics,
chemistry and biology, and the creation and sustaining of human
communities in the Aristotelian sense. A practice, he concludes, involves
standards of excellence and obedience to rules as well as the achievement
of goods (also in the Aristotelian sense).
MacIntyre’s reference to Aristotle suggests that his notion of practice
has a Greek equivalent and if we look at Aristotle, I think we may find
two concepts more or less closely related to the modern notion of a
practice; praxis and poiesis. In his Metaphysics Aristotle introduces his
well known division of the human sciences into three classes; the
theoretical, the practical and the productive. 11 The theoretical sciences
give us knowledge that is true and necessary, i.e. episteme. Praxis is the
Aristotelian term associated with the second class of sciences; ethics and
politics. These both have their goals in themselves, Aristotle explains.
Their goal is the good life or eupraxia, i.e. ‘good praxis’. 12
Poiesis is the
Aristotelian term associated with the third class of sciences. These
sciences have their goals outside themselves, i.e. in their products. 13
Central to the last class of sciences is also the concept of techné. Techné
is a Greek term not easily translated, however, it refers to a system of
practical knowledge, or skills. In English the term is often translated by
‘art’.
In the Aristotelian model, both praxis and poiesis refer to sets of acts
having a goal, whether this goal is seen as internal to the activity or not.
10
MacIntyre (1984), 180-203.
11
1025b25ff.
12
1098b22
13
Cf. e.g. 980b25ff., and also 1140a1ff.