What Are Thinking and Acting Beyond the Theory/Practice Pair?

Abstract

This article rehearses Derrida’s articulation in Theory and Practice of an analogy between Althusser’s and Heidegger’s treatments of the theory/practice pair. The analogy motivates a question about what remains for thinking and acting in the wake of Marx’s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, when the traditional sovereignty of theory over practice becomes untenable. In the seminar, Derrida develops a line of inquiry about the edge distinguishing theory from practice, which philosophy would presumably over􀏔low as it ceases to merely interpret the world and begins to change it. The article shows how Derrida’s analogy between Marxist philosophy and Heideggerian thinking exposes some pitfalls of any attempt to definitively escape prescientific philosophy or metaphysics while also opening up the possibility of allying Heidegger’s destruction of technological humanism and retrieval of an originary ethics with the Marxian imperative to change the world.