Vol. 6 · No. 1 · 2000

William L. Mcbride

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In commenting on the three previous diverse and interesting papers above, I have decided to take the 'category route'. The categories that I have chosen are praxis, stasis, and ethos. (I am attempting to maintain some consistency in my categories!)

Praxis
I once thought that I knew what it meant; I even wrote an entry about it in the Encyclopedia of Ethics. I said there that it had something to do, at least in a contemporary context, with attacking the prioritising of theoria that characterised Aristotle's and other classical Western philosophies. (…)

Stasis
Matthew Ally used the word 'stasis' in the original version of his paper. It was in the context of talking about history. Referring to Francis Fukuyama's 'ridiculous phrase' (Ally's expression), 'the end of history', he there wrote: 'There is no historical stasis, no "end of history" '. (…)

Ethos
Matthew Ally uses this word in the title of his paper, which makes abundant use of Sartre's Cornell Lectures. In one text near the end of these Lectures, Sartre unwittingly helps me to bring my comments back full circle to praxis, as follows: 'Thus ethics,' he says, 'as a particular zone of human activity, could not even be conceivable if all praxis did not first constitute itself as ethos'.