释义 |
praxis|ˈpræksɪs| [a. Gr. πρᾶξις doing, acting, action, practice, n. of action f. πράττειν to do; whence med.L. praxis (Albertus Magnus Metaphys. v. v. ii, c 1255).] 1. Action, practice; spec. a. The practice or exercise of a technical subject or art, as distinct from the theory of it (? obs.); b. Habitual action, accepted practice, custom.
1581Sidney Apol. Poetrie (Arb.) 39 For as Aristotle sayth, it is not Gnosis, but Praxis must be the fruit. 1644Milton Educ. Wks. 1738 I. 136 If after some preparatory grounds of speech..they were led to the praxis therof in some chosen short book. 1678Salmon (title) Pharmacopœia Londinensis. Or, the New London Dispensatory..As also, The Praxis of Chymistry. 1800Coleridge Talleyrand to Ld. Grenville Poems 1877 II. 156 In theory false, and pernicious in praxis. 1892J. Robertson Early Relig. Israel xv. 390 This code is merely the embodiment of praxis or the crystallisation of custom. c. A term used by A. von Cieszkowski in Prolegomena zur Historiosophie (Berlin, 1838), then adopted by Karl Marx Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie, Einleitung in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (1844), to denote the willed action by which a theory or philosophy (esp. a Marxist one) becomes a social actuality. Also attrib. and transf. This term, frequently translated as practice, practical ability, or practical activity, has been increasingly used since the 1960s, following the translation and availability of Marx's early writings.
1933S. Hook Towards Understanding K. Marx ii. ix. 76 That is why Marx claimed that only in practice (Praxis) can problems be solved. 1936― From Hegel to Marx viii. 281 Practice (Praxis) was something much wider than practicability. It was selective behaviour... Marx's theory of the Praxis could explain what all other philosophers recognised but which they could not begin to account for, without writing fairy-tales, viz., how knowledge could give power. 1966L. Dupré Found. Philos. Materialism viii. 216 But for Marx, praxis is more than a principle of consciousness: it is a prereflective unity of nature and consciousness which can be explicated in thought but not initiated. 1969D. McLellan Young Hegelians & Karl Marx i. ii. 10 The main agent in this transformation was not to be thought, as in Hegel's philosophy, but will, which was the motive force for that synthesis of thought and action for which Cieszkowski coined the term, so influential later, of ‘praxis’. 1971R. J. Bernstein Praxis & Action (1972) p. xi, Marx..went on to develop a thorough, systematic and comprehensive theory of praxis—a theory, which I shall argue, provides the key for understanding his basic outlook from his early speculations to his mature thought. 1974Times Lit. Suppl. 31 May 582/5 ‘The embattled imagination’ and ‘maimed utopia’, whose values are under threat in the praxis-obsessed intellectual climate of the Federal Republic. 1976Survey Summer–Autumn 255 He ascribed to Marx, not a voluntarist doctrine as the negation of determinism, but a philosophy that conceived itself as historical praxis. 1978Daily Tel. 23 Nov. 8/8 The new theology is seemingly based on the Marxian concept of praxis—the involvement of the oppressed in the historical processes of change. d. Action that is entailed by theory or a function that results from a particular structure.
1953E. L. Allen Existentialism from Within ii. 27 The Greeks did not speak of ‘things’ but of pragmata, implying that I have to do something (praxis) about them. 1962Macquarrie & Robinson tr. Heidegger's Being & Time ii. iv. 409 What is decisive in the ‘emergence’ of the theoretical attitude would then lie in the disappearance of praxis. Ibid., And just as praxis has its own specific kind of sight (‘theory’), theoretical research is not without a praxis of its own. 1966B. Haigh tr. Luria's Human Brain & Psychol. Processes i. 42 At first glance it may appear that lesions situated in very different parts of the brain may lead to a disturbance of praxis. 1968J. M. Heaton Eye iii. 46 Thus, even at this early age, praxis has emerged, i.e. the activity of looking has become meaningful, an end in itself to the infant. 1970E. Paci in J. M. Edie Patterns of Life-World 131 Since instruments are extensions either of the sensing body, or of the acting body, or of the body as organ of will and praxis, they represent a fusion of the self and nature in the body. 1972Piccone & Hansen tr. Paci's Function of Sci. iii. xix. 360 Science loses its function and society hides the meaning of praxis through technistic ideology. e. (See quot.)
1950[see lexis 1]. 2. a. An example or collection of examples to serve for practice or exercise in a subject, esp. in grammar.
1612Brinsley Lud. Lit. xx. (1627) 235 Perfected and adjoyned as a praxis in the end of the Radices. 1762Lowth Introd. Eng. Gram. 173 A Praxis, or Example of Grammatical Resolution. 1779Beattie Let. in Forbes Life (1806) II. 42, I..send you inclosed a little book, containing about two hundred, with a praxis at the end, which will perhaps amuse you. 1843W. Baillie (title) The First Twelve Psalms in Hebrew, with..Grammatical Praxis. b. A means or instrument of practice or exercise in a subject; a practical specimen or model. ? Obs.
1751Harris Hermes Wks. (1841) 114 They [mathematics] are the noblest praxis of logic, or universal reasoning. 1786–97Gillies Aristotle II. 348 (Jod.) The pleadings of the Ancients were praxises of the art of oratorical persuasion. 1800Jefferson Writ. (ed. Ford) VII. 429 It [a Parliamentary Manual] may do good by presenting to the different legislative bodies a chaste Praxis. |