Praxis and theory

Melzer and, I assume, Leo Strauss, argue that esoteric writing arises from a perceived conflict between theory and praxis. The ancients believed that there was always such a conflict because "the many" would never be able to appreciate philosophy. The moderns, beginning with the Enlightenment leaders, believed that there was a temporary gap between theory and praxis but, once praxis had been reformed according to theory, it would disappear. On this modern account, esoteric writing is only a temporary thing until social practices had been reformed.

If that Enlightenment notion puts the stink of Auschwitz in your nose, go to the head of the class.

The ancient view also has its problems. Commenting on the Seventh Letter attributed to Plato, Melzer writes,

The passage begins, for example, with the classic Platonic view that philosophic knowledge is the supreme good of life and that helping others to acquire it, where possible, an act of highest beneficence.

There is something about this reading of Plato that has more in common with religious mysticism than with the kind of philosophy I like to do. I, like Wittgenstein, see philosophy as something we do on a temporary basis in response to puzzles that arise and we do it not as an end in itself but in order to be able to go back to leading our lives. That is not to say, as some have misread Wittgenstein, that all philosophical puzzles can be made to go away but rather that we should not be bewitched by the language. The central mysteries of life will always be there and one of the best things about doing philosophy in a Wittgensteinian manner is that we can face these mysteries as mysteries much as a good Catholic doesn't claim to comprehend the Trinity. We will recognize mysteries through ritualistic behaviour rather than try to dissolve them through analysis.

This approach puts praxis ahead of theory. To put it in ordinary language, it's more important to live well than to be able to say what living well is. And that reverses the order of esoteric thinking: we will now be esoteric in order to protect our praxis from theory, our own theory as well as that of others.

Encountering another as a person definitely does not mean "dissolving" that person, taking him or her apart psychologically and thus seizing power over the other, but seeing the other in his or her difference, even strangeness. Whoever wants to truly recognize another as a person must expect to encounter the unexpected and be led into a new world of which one previously had no idea—a world whose strangeness fascinates but also frightens.

That's Gerhard Lohfink and the primary example he has in mind is Jesus who needs to be protected from our ego which would reduce him to a concept. But the same is true of us in our encounter with social groups beginning with our own families. Others will always want to reduce us to their idea of what we should be. And this would lead to something like the reverse of what Arthur Melzer and Leo Strauss have in mind when they speak of esoteric writing: it would be a way of appearing to go along with theory so as to be able to protect a praxis that is at odds with that theory.

This will be more than what is implied by the common expression "lip service" for we will want not only to provide lip service but also to communicate with others who share our values not as expressed in some theory but as actually lived.