Abstract
”The Praxis of Understanding” offers a comparative reading of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics as well as Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method. The article elaborates on the two following theses that turn out to be both separate and highly interconnected. The first thesis is fleshed out in an analysis of Aristotle’s three modes of activity; namely poiesis, theoria and praxis. Here, it is suggested and argued that – contrary to Aristotle’s own self-understanding – praxis (rather than theoria) is actually the most essential human form of activity. The second thesis moves on to show that there is a conspicuous and underappreciated structural analogy between these Aristotelian modes and the three modes of understanding history in Gadamer’s Truth and Method. As such, the priority of effective-historical consciousness above what Gadamer refers to as enlightenment and historicism can be said to realize a latent potential in the Ethics, which both presupposes and transcends the Aristotelian analysis of praxis.
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