By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
On the issue of theory and practice: could one hold that the theory without which practice would not be human practice at all—or, in other words, the theory constitutive of self-understanding and life-praxis simply as such—is displayed by the double structure of the speech act as some propositional content together with some act indicating the use to which the propositional content is put? In other words, if you wish to identify the theory implicit in praxis itself, you need to analyze out the double structure of the praxis in question.
Theory in the stricter sense of critical reflection, then, is displayed by just such analysis, as well as by the procedures of (1) critically interpreting the praxis in question and of (2) critically validating the claims to validity that it makes or implies.
30 March 1991
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