A PREFACE TO PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS

Abstract

irruption. And it defies any conventional notion of progress. Although we like to imagine that a philosophical advance represents enduring progress from more rudimentary times, more often it overcomes an obstacle in the moment. It confronts a new problem. It finds a new way out. Philosophical methods evolve, but that does not mean that earlier approaches are wrong or no longer operative. Nor does it mean that those earlier approaches gave birth to better ones. They addressed a different time. They faced a different conjuncture. They resolved a discrete problem. They served a special purpose. And often, they unveiled one illusion only to expose another. Indeed, a philosophical praxis from an earlier time may be just as performative today, perhaps even more so. It depends on the situation it confronts. We may need it just as badly, or even more than we did at an earlier time. The exigencies of a new crisis may demand a return—though even that is never simply a repetition. To believe otherwise would be to buy into a speculative philosophy of history that has no purchase today. We have long A PREFACE TO PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS