Empraxis

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The term Empraxis is a gräzisierter neologism with the basic meaning "physically bound in action, law enforcement knowledge". It was introduced into the German philosophy of language by the language theorist and psychologist Karl Bühler in his book Language Theory - The Form of Representation of Language . Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer uses the term in his philosophy of self-confidence and Volker Caysa has further developed it in the context of sports philosophy for the anthropology of the body . The term is also discussed transdisciplinary in relation to art.

example

Empractical action is functioning enforcement action e.g. B. in sport, dance, art and sex, which happens "as if on its own" and without a word without first thinking about the execution of the action. Empractical action is pre-rational, pre-theoretical, intuitive action and requires tacit knowledge .

Origin of the term

In his “Theory of Language” (1934), Karl Bühler speaks of the fact that “integrating speaking into other meaningful behavior deserves its own name”. He calls this speaking "empractical speaking". “To speak figuratively, it is the same with their appearance as with the properly placed signposts on human paths; as long as there is only one clearly identifiable path, no signposts are needed. But they are always welcome at crossroads where the situation becomes ambiguous. ” By these signs, Bühler means indicator words that control the recipient's actions in a very simple and yet highly complex manner. For example, when someone calls for help, that one word is enough to trigger a highly complex series of actions. Or often "only one word is necessary, any language sign such as 'right', 'straight ahead' or 'this' or 'parquet sixth to ninth row' and the additional control required by the recipient's behavior is achieved." The person is even so positively attuned to these empractical speeches and relied on that he would at least consider someone dumb if they did not understand the objection. People know how to reduce this objection in a meaningful way in order to carry out actions without deep thought. Therefore, all too often it is not tolerated if someone needs additional explanations. This becomes very clear when driving a car. Anyone who is unable to immediately translate the simple signs and indicators of the traffic control systems into highly complex, flexible action has to expect at least a slight abuse.

The Empractical in Philosophy

According to Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, even the reflective science of philosophy works, the activity of which essentially consists in reflection, such as sport, sex, empirical science and art on the basis of the empirical. In the empirical, man has implicit knowledge that appears as having knowledge in being able to do. In practice you know what you know as long as you are not asked about it. Or to put it differently: Empirical knowledge is knowledge that you have for as long as you don't problematize it meta-level. The difficulties begin when you explicitly ask what you implicitly know. Only then do you begin to reflect that you actually (meta-level) don't know what you know. On the level of the empirical, man is in a state not just of a learned but a learned ignorance, in a state of apparently naive skill in which the acting person appears as a fool, an idiot or a genius . In the empirical, everything seems to succeed by itself, there you are in the state of a child immersed in his play . In play, the child knows what to do, because in his contemplation he has forgotten to know and that is precisely why he knows. The Empraktische appear at this level as a presuppositionless, reflection-free fresh start as a groundless beginning, when "a game, a rolling off wheel, a first movement, a holy saying yes." In empractical man becomes a child again and It is the child's innocence and its forgetting that creates new values. The empirical is the always necessary childhood of practice , through which theoretical and theory-led practice becomes possible. The secondary practical emerges from this primary practical, which then, with theory, imagines itself to be the master of practical being. The secret of functioning practice lies in empraxis.

Empraxis is the everyday experience and behavior of childhood. One experiences them again and again as a child, just like the adult thinker as a childhood of thinking . And by learning to reflect meta-levelly on this ever-present childhood of thinking , one becomes an adult, one awakens over oneself. But this means that the fundamental prerequisites of explicit knowledge are given in the empirical and that thinking cannot go back behind it, but always can only try to understand the previous execution in retrospect. But that is the task of philosophy: to understand through reflection why something works in our life or what makes something happen.

Empirical knowledge, viewed from a philosophical point of view, is not identical to the zone of meta-level reflected knowledge that is explicitly expressed in verbal language . Dasein is itself a knowledge-having, which is not identical with scientific knowledge. Knowing in practice is not identical to having knowledge in science.

What does the philosophy of the empirical ask for?

The philosophy of empraxis asks about the preformative ground of the explicit theory-practice relationships and the related subject-object relationships. It is about the intuitively different of reflected, theoretical practice, which justifies it and which makes all conscious work possible in the first place. It is based on the idea that initially it does not belong to the essence of original practice that it is reflected in meta-stages. But only in the meta-stage reflection is subsequently separated what previously worked as an undivided one. What can be differentiated afterwards in the reflection is inseparable beforehand.

Empraxis is itself a "transcendental field" through which an individual adopts the schemes through which he or she acquires abilities and skills to act successfully. This transcendental field itself has different manifestations, which move in the area of ​​tension between individual and cooperative practice. The empractic as a transcendental field comprises the unconscious human self-relationships that are unspoken and unhesitatingly self-evident. That is why, in the empirical, one thinks to be with oneself and to be authentic, while in theoretical practice one perceives being (self) as being alienated from oneself.

Empraxis as executive practice, as primary practice, which only becomes the object of secondary theoretical and theory-based practice in retrospect, can also be referred to as life, provided that one takes into account that life is a separate way of being, which is essentially only in everyday life , accessible to empirical existence. Life in this sense is then to be understood as “the place of the original understanding of every thing” which, as causa sui, is a being that exists through itself, which is free in and for itself insofar as it determines itself from itself. Life as being-through-and-for-itself is essentially the power of freedom to create oneself beyond oneself. Only a life that is able to push itself beyond itself deserves to be called life: life is to be above itself in creating above itself. Life that only wants to maintain itself, that does not want to increase or intensify, crumbles and dies in its static because it lacks ecstasy, just as power crumbles when it doesn't want to be more power and how values ​​devalue when they are no more than just values ​​if they are not real added values, which as such have an economic and moral surplus that makes life materialized and perspectives. Life as being-in-and-for-itself is only for us in the practical being-for-us. In this being-for-us, however, there always remains a being-for-oneself, a being-through-oneself and being with oneself, a being-for-oneself, which in its being-for-itself always evades our instrumental access. The empirical, which is essentially given to us in existence, is consequently a culturally understood precedence structure that establishes the subject-object and theory-practice relationships of the world of imagination, but cannot be fully explained even in this world of imagination. It is the "X", the historical a priori in front of the theoretical-practical subject-object structures, which justifies them, but which themselves cannot fully explain.

Empraxis is an implicit act that always systematically precedes the possibility of explicit articulation . That is why “philosophical analysis and reflection” can always only be a retrospective consideration of “the forms of already established living conditions” . If philosophy has the task of "making implicit forms explicit, bringing them down to the concept", then that means: "the forms of practice hidden in current life and normal action and the supporting institutions (such as language or science, law, of the state, society or the practice of ethical and aesthetic judgment) explicitly articulate and thereby thematize. "

literature

  • Karl Bühler: Language Theory. The form of representation of the language. unchanged new edition. Lucius and Lucius, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-8282-0106-7 . (First edition: Fischer, Jena 1934)
  • Volker Caysa: body utopias. A Philosophical Anthropology of Sport. Habilitation thesis . Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2003, ISBN 3-593-37248-7 .
  • Volker Caysa, Konstanze Schwarzwald (ed.): Experiments of the body. (= Critical Powers. Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Volume 2). Lit, Vienna et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-8258-1202-7 .
  • Konstanze Schwarzwald (ed.): Critique drafts . Contributions according to Foucault. (= Critical Powers. Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Volume 1). Lit, Berlin / Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9150-X .
  • Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer : Philosophy of self-confidence. Hegel's system as a form analysis of knowledge and autonomy. (= Suhrkamp-TB Science. 1749). Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-518-29349-4 .
  • Volker Caysa: Empractical Reason. ; Peter Lang - Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaft 2015, ISBN 978-3-631-66707-1

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hagen Wiel : Empractical filming. In: Volker Caysa, Konstanze Schwarzwald (Hrsg.): Experiments of the body. Münster 2008, p. 160.
  2. ^ Karl Bühler: Language theory. Stuttgart 1965, p. 52.
  3. ↑ a b Karl Bühler: Language theory. Stuttgart 1965, p. 39.
  4. ^ Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari (Ed.): Friedrich Nietzsche: Complete Works. Critical study edition in 15 individual volumes. Volume 4, Piper, Munich / Berlin / New York 1980, p. 31.
  5. ↑ Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer: Philosophy of Self-Consciousness. Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 194.
  6. ↑ a b Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer: Philosophy of Self-Consciousness. Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 49.