We insist on addressing the ‘practical’ in abstraction from the order that is its only true beginning and end. It is the bane of truly human existence it is the bane of our age. Practical thinking unhinged from such ‘speculative’ thinking is precisely that: unhinged. Somehow this kind of thinking must be integrated into our daily lives. Of everything we do.Īnd so it can and should be the object of our thinking: the object of study, reading, meditation, observation. The order of ‘nature!’-the foundation, the context, the point.
Lifecraft quickutz bird full#
And it is what transcends human life, and transcends our full comprehension. And it is human nature, in its origins and ends. This is nature in the richest of senses: yes, it is birds, mountains, trees, and stars. Yet in what can seem a paradox, they can only be well addressed when seen as stemming from and leading back to a richer, deeper ‘order’: an order human reason cannot originate but rather must discover. How can we get this done, how can we solve this problem, how can we make this work? These are central, practical questions of human life. Practical thinking always moves in the ‘order’ or realm of what we can enact, or make. It has been largely expunged from our lives. The very name of the latter has the connotation of the unsure and superfluous.
One of the great and most overlooked distinctions about human life is between practical thinking and ‘speculative’ thinking. The danger is that the demands of life funnel our thoughts into well-worn tracks, from which like a luge sled they do not emerge. What do we spend our time and energy thinking about? For most of us, living what is traditionally called the ‘active life,’ practical issues require most of our attention. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics “There is an order that reason does not establish but only beholds, such is the order of things in nature.”
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