As part of his outline of the praxis tradition in Western thought from Aristotle to 20th-century philosophical hermeneutics, Pilario (2005: 34) argues that the problematic faced by Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, was how to preserve the gains of modern science and its scientific-mathematical method (i.e. theoria in Aristotelian terms) without abandoning the autonomy of ethics and human self-determination (i.e. praxis in Aristotelian terms).
In effect, Kant sought to extricate himself from the philosophical knot into which Descartes and his followers had tied themselves, in which episteme (systematised knowledge), in the form of mathematical theory and hypotheses, with mathematics understood as the language of the universe, overwhelmed the emphasis placed upon practical wisdom, i.e. phronesis in Aristotle and prudentia in the medieval authors. For Descartes and his followers, episteme reigns supreme in the actual workings of both productive (poiesis) and ethical (praxis) sciences. Phronesis was thereby no longer considered as a legitimate type of knowledge because its certainty could not be established with mathematical accuracy. By holding that one kind of knowledge, episteme in the form of mathematics, is the only kind, by implication Descartes deemed other areas, particularly ethics and politics, where mathematical knowledge is irrelevant, radically irrational.
In order to extricate himself from this position and these assumptions, Kant divided philosophy into the theoretical and the practical. He further sub-divided practical philosophy into the morally practical and the technically practical. At first glance these categories may seem to reflect Aristotelian kinds of knowledge: episteme (theoretical, systemic), phronesis (morally practical) and techne (technically practical). On closer examination, however, Pilario points out, Kant’s categories have little to do with Aristotle’s.
Pilario makes it clear that Kant excludes Aristotelian ethics, i.e. political and eudaimonistic ethics (eudaemonia: a full, active life governed by reason), from the practical domain. Kant reasons that such ethics are founded not on mere practical reason but on human nature, for example, when happiness is an end, or on some factors of the human condition, such as social arrangements, political constitution or moral feelings.
Pilario argues that Kant sought to found moral law on reason in order that it be applicable regardless of situations and whatever its consequences. In this way, Kant sets up a concept of praxis that is far removed from the uncertainties and ambiguities of actual human conduct and his moral ‘ought' has no obvious relationship with what people actually do, an ethics in which it may be the case that no-one could carry out what it prescribes.
References
Pilario, D.F. (2005). The Adventures of praxis: a critical encounter of three traditions. In: Back to the rough grounds of praxis: exploring theological method with Pierre Bourdieu. Leuven, Belgium: University of Leuven Press, 1–97.