Relation to oneself· Presence
Primacy of action
Axis: Interiority — Should we examine our inner life, or fulfill ourselves first and foremost through action?
It is through action, commitment, and accomplishment that we discover and shape ourselves, not through introspection. Scrutinizing our inner life too closely risks paralysis, or even inventing imaginary problems: the self reveals itself by acting in the world.
Movements 3
Cynicismexplicit
Since philosophy's sole object is to live well, and living well is a matter of conduct, physics, logic and learned disputation are wasted time: one does not become temperate by defining temperance. Hence the Cynic rejection of theory, which is not lack of culture but consistency with the primacy of . A thesis is refuted by an act as much as by an argument: hearing motion denied, Diogenes, for all reply, stood up and walked. The gesture serves as demonstration, and the sage's life, exposed in public, stands in for a treatise.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 39 · Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 70-71
Marxismexplicit
Marxism resolutely privileges praxis: the truth of a thought is proven in practice, and philosophy is worth only what it does as a force of transformation. The eleventh thesis on Feuerbach disqualifies contemplative interpretation in favor of collective action directed at social change.
Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, II and XI (1845)
Show inferred positions (1)
Pragmatisminferable
A belief is not a contemplative mental state but a habit of action: what tells one belief from another is the conduct it disposes us toward, as Peirce establishes. Thought then arises from a break in action, doubt, and is stilled only by the restoration of settled conduct, fixed belief. Inquiry is thus no spectacle set before a ready-made world: in Dewey it is the active transformation of a troubled situation into a controlled one, a stretch of the organism's continuous dealing with its environment. The thesis rejects the inherited split between contemplative theoria and subordinate , a split that demeaned doing in favor of seeing: for pragmatism, to know is a kind of acting, and the detached « spectator » is a philosophical fiction.
Peirce, 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear' (1878) · Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916)
Philosophers 5
Diogenes of Sinopeexplicit
Since philosophy's sole object is to live well, and living well is a matter of conduct, physics, logic and learned disputation are wasted time: one does not become temperate by defining temperance. Hence the primacy of over theory, which is not lack of culture but consistency. A thesis is refuted by an act as much as by an argument: hearing motion denied, Diogenes, for all reply, stood up and walked. The gesture serves as demonstration, and the sage's life, exposed in public, stands in for a treatise.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 39 and 70-71
Marxexplicit
So long as consciousness is held to be the place where man relates to himself, 's materialism stays contemplative: it grasps the real as an object to be internalised, never as an activity to be exercised. Marx overturns this primacy: it is in , the sensuous activity that transforms world and man in a single gesture, that what I am is enacted and proved, not in a reflexive turn upon oneself. Inner examination cut off from action is but one more ideology, and the philosophy that shuts itself within it misses its task: hence a resolute primacy of action over introspection.
Theses on Feuerbach, XI · Theses on Feuerbach, II (truth as a practical question)
Show inferred positions (3)
Beauvoirinferable
Lucid self-examination matters, but freedom proves and realizes itself only in action and engagement: one becomes what one is only by acting in the world, not in inner contemplation alone. The leaning goes toward the primacy of action, without abandoning the demand for lucidity.
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), freedom realized in action
Sartreinferable
Consciousness is wholly turned outward: there is no inner life folded upon itself, for consciousness is intentional, always consciousness of something, and the ego itself is a transcendent object, in the world. Man reveals himself not through introspection but through his acts and his engagement. The leaning thus runs toward the primacy of action, even if reflective lucidity remains required.
The Transcendence of the Ego (1936) · Existentialism Is a Humanism (man is the sum of his acts)
Camusinferable
is first uncovered in a lucid consciousness that faces its condition squarely, which presupposes an inner examination. But Camus refuses to stop there: and action, to heal, to create, to resist, are the living answer to the absurd, hence a near-median balance between the examined life and the primacy of action.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) · The Plague (1947)
Characters 2
Calliclesexplicit
To Socratic self-examination he opposes that philosophy is charming in a young man but makes the grown man who lingers over it ridiculous and helpless, ignorant of the laws and of affairs, exposed to being slapped with no recourse. Life lies in action, reputation and power; he presses Socrates to give up such trifles for "the music of affairs".
Plato, Gorgias, 484c-486d (the praise then the critique of philosophy)
Odysseusexplicit
Odysseus's life is first of all action, enterprise and engagement with the world, more than contemplative withdrawal: he acts, sails, negotiates, governs. His worth lies in intelligence thrown into the ordeal, not in self-examination; yet his soliloquies, his narratives and his tears show he is not, for all that, without an inner life, and that in him the opposition is never clear-cut.
Odyssey, IX-XII (the narration of his exploits to the Phaeacians) · Odyssey, XIII-XXII (the patient action of the return)