Browse

The theme of action has to do with issues related to the dynamic of potential acts, hu-man action, agency and so on. It has a long history in philosophy, running through Aris-totle, Thomas Aquinas, RenГ© Descartes, David Hume, Johann G. Fichte, Max Weber, John Searle, to mention some famous thinkers on this topic from ancient times to the contemporary epoch. Philosophy of action has had and still has three major speculative interests: (1) the study of human action in connection to general theoretical or specula-ti...

From the beginning of his book Le discours de lВ’action (1977), Paul Ricoeur empha-sised the fact that a В‘philosophy of actionВ’ is not a В‘science of actionВ’. He underlines that the practical ethical dimension is the specific kind of discourse that the question of ac-tion has had since the ancient era in philosophy. The dialectics between the practical dimension both as a В‘physicalВ’ dimension and as an В‘ethicalВ’ dimension have not only been the basis for the rationalisation and differentiation of philosophy...

Why is it possible to reasonably ask В‘How do you loosen a screw?В’ while it is not rea-sonable to ask В‘How do you raise your arm?В’ For Ricoeur, the exercise of a capacity does not simply result from knowledge. In fact, I do not В‘knowВ’ my body when I am acting: I am able to act; that is all. I am able to do it because В‘I canВ’. The corporal events В‘I knowВ’ are not what В‘I doВ’. However, if a paralysed man were to ask the question В‘How do you raise your arm?В’, it would have the same meaning and logical ar...

For Ricoeur, the discourse of action – more specifically, the ‘say your doing’ – can and must be examined from different levels and from different traditional philosophical per-spectives, as follows: (1) conceptual analysis (i.e. the analysis of concepts used to de-scribe action), (2) logical analysis of statements of action (i.e. the proposition by which action is expressed and represented), and (3) the logic of action (i.e. the argumentative construction through which a strategy of action is built and just...