Abstract
This chapter (Sects. 4.1–4.6) looks at particular topics of concern in the theory of practice architectures. Section 4.1 explores praxis, the good for the person, and the good for humankind. It is followed by Sect. 4.2, a poem, ‘Choices,’ that concerns a person’s agency in addressing the life situations they encounter. Sections 4.3 and 4.4 discuss contestation, reminding us that practices do not unfold in entirely smooth, untroubled, harmonious ways: their paths are frequently shaped by contests: misunderstandings, disagreements, collisions and conflict. Sections 4.5 and 4.6 focus on learning as an element of practices, and perhaps as a process that always shadows practices as they unfold.
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- 1.
The moral virtues, all except one of which, in Aristotle’s view, are ‘means’ (averages) that steer between ‘extremes’ of excess and insufficiency, are: courage (acting in a way that accords with the ‘mean’ that steers between the excess of recklessness and the insufficiency of cowardice), moderation (between the extremes of licentiousness and ‘insensibility’), liberality (between prodigality and stinginess), magnificence (between vulgarity and parsimony), greatness of soul (between vanity and smallness of soul), ambition (between an excess of ambition and lack of ambition), gentleness (between irascibility and ‘unirascibility’), truthfulness (between boastfulness and irony), wittiness and tact (between buffoonery and crudity, and boorishness and dourness), friendliness (between obsequiousness or flattery, and surliness and quarrelsomeness) and justice (which is a mean without extremes, but whose opposite is injustice) (after Bartlett & Collins, 2011, pp. 303–4). Bartlett and Collins (2011) summarise Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues as (1) art, which is craft or technical knowledge useful in making different kinds of external objects (p. 305); (2) science, which is scientific knowledge (p. 314); (3) prudence (or phronēsis), which is the virtue that permits a person “always to choose the correct action in a given circumstance and to perform it well and for the right reason” (pp. 313–4); (4) wisdom (sophia), “that which the ‘philosopher’, the ‘lover of wisdom,’ most seeks” (p. 316); and (5) intellect (nous), “the intellectual grasp of what something is” (p. 310).
- 2.
In The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Marx (1852) says: “Men make their own history , but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
- 3.
At the time of writing, in January 2019.
- 4.
A similar contemporary contest is being addressed by several Australian universities. They were invited to introduce a course on ‘Western civilisation ’, to be funded by the Ramsay Centre, established in 2017 “to advance education by promoting studies and discussion associated with the establishment and development of western civilisation” (https://www.ramsaycentre.org/about-us/). The Australian National University determined to reject the course, as, so far, the University of Sydney has done. The University of Wollongong recently agreed to offer the course with the support of the Ramsay Centre (https://www.ramsaycentre.org/ramsay-centre-and-university-of-wollongong-sign-memorandum-of-understanding/). Advocates of the course say that it introduces students to the European cultural tradition central to Australian culture; opponents say that Australian culture now draws on many more diverse cultural traditions, and to privilege ‘Western civilisation’ is to privilege Australia’s British and European heritage above others, including the cultures and heritage of Indigenous Australians, and the cultures brought to Australia by immigrants from elsewhere in the world. As in the debate over Australia Day, the conservative side in Australian politics appears to privilege the culture and heritage of European-background Australians over the culture and heritage of other Australians.
- 5.
Adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 13 September 2007, with 144 states in favour, 4 against (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States of America), and 11 abstentions. After the Declaration was adopted, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States of America all reversed their previous positions and adopted the Declaration (https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html).
- 6.
I owe this felicitous distinction to Professor Barbara Czarniawska of the University of Gothenburg.
- 7.
See Sect. 3.4, ‘Intersubjectivity II: Entanglement in Semantic Space ’ for a little more on Wittgenstein and Ryle .
- 8.
Hopwood (2016, p. 90) acknowledges that the mind–body dualism has such a strong grasp on our thinking that it is difficult to overthrow. He suggests that we may be able to override it, however, by following Grosz’s (2004) use of the metaphor of the Möbius strip : Grosz “uses the metaphor of a Möbius strip—holding mind and body in play, yet allowing for their folding together without one collapsing onto or being subsumed within the other”.
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Kemmis, S. (2019). Praxis, Agency, Contestation, Learning. In: A Practice Sensibility. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9539-1_4
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