I will soon be discussing difficult action as it pertains to the rationality of hard rock climbing. But, for those who engage in rock climbing as a praxis, what decision-making powers are available to us to pursue the sport as an end in itself? For someone who rock climbs for the sake of rock climbing, why choose to make it as hard as possible?
This post specifically focuses on one small element of this broad question. That element is the following question:
What sorts of goals can we set for ourselves within the undertaking of praxis?
The basis for goal-directed action in humans is that “people must choose to discover what is beneficial to their welfare, they must set goals to achieve it, they must choose the means for attaining these goals, and then they must choose to act on the basis of these judgments” (Latham and Locke, 213). These four fundamental behaviors can be analyzed in the context of praxis.
(1) Choosing to discover what is beneficial to our welfare.
In choosing to discover what is beneficial to our welfare, we are pursuing our own life as an end. The action that is beneficial is the means to that end (of survival). The question then is whether “living” as an omnipresent end is itself a further means to continue to live? If life as an end is the means to that end, we can pursue our own survival as an act of praxis. However, if life is a future end that is distinct from the actions we take to continue being alive, then the pursuit of our own survival would be in poesis.
Balaban discusses matters of life and death briefly. First, that “Poesis (labor) can produce the suitable conditions for life, but it must not be confused with these suitable conditions nor with life itself” (187). I believe the suitable conditions which Balaban references are the effects of labor under capitalism; in other words, poesis—or production—can provide for our survival via moneymaking. Through our labor, we can eat, take shelter, etc. However, our labor itself is not equivalent to these acts. These acts are the telos (end) of our labor and thus they are entirely separate entities which we wish we could attain with no labor at all (or at least as little labor as possible).
Something that is beneficial to our welfare, such as eating (paying for groceries, cooking a meal, sitting down and eating it, etc.), is inherently not pursued as an end in itself. Perhaps eating is a poor example since we’ve all experienced eating for the sake of eating (ex. the post-Halloween candy feast is not a means for survival). However, if one went a prolonged period without eating, is their eventual choice to eat necessarily a choice to survive or is it the satisfaction of hunger? Are these the same thing?
One clarification that might assist in answering this question is that activities can be “beneficial” to our welfare without being essential for our welfare. Eating is essential. Exercise is beneficial. If an activity is beneficial but not essential for our welfare, does this change whether it might be a praxis? One instinct might be that an activity that is beneficial because it provides us with happiness is a praxis because the effect comes from the activity itself and not what we’re left with once the activity has ended. This indeed seems true, at least as Balaban conceptualizes the matter:
For example, happiness, being praxis, cannot be a kind of ideal state; happiness is not an ideal in the sense of being something that is beyond activity. It may be generally asserted about ideal states that they can never be ends that lie beyond the act; but, like values, they are something that is realized in the action itself- in praxis. Happiness resides in the happy action, and is not the end of action. Were happiness not in action itself, then that action, indeed every action - would be taken to be unhappy. At best it could be a means that exists for attaining happiness; and once this were attained, the action would be completed and life as an activity would cease (Balaban, 195).
As I’ve previously quoted, Balaban also claims that life itself is a praxis. He states this “not because it has no limit—for it has—but because its limit is extrinsic. Life ceases with death, but death is not its telos” (Balaban, 196). If life is a praxis, and we simultaneously pursue our own welfare (the continuation of our lives) as an end, is this pursuit automatically a praxis as well? By nature of it being a praxis, life must be an action done for its own sake; we don’t live to die. It might seem that by acting for the purpose of an action which itself is done for its own sake, the first action is simply the commencement in a big praxis chain. However, means and ends are not to be taken as the means and ends to all other means and ends. Balaban calls for the existence of an end which is absolute and non-relative in order to prevent an infinite cycle which would undermine Aristotle’s very definition of poesis. In the case of praxis, the infinite chain never begins because the ends are self-contained within a set of means. However, this doesn’t quite answer whether acting to purse life (a praxis) is itself a praxis.
It seems that what needs to be answered is in fact the question:
What is living?
And I’m not so sure I’m prepared yet to take this one on.