On theory and practice

Marx suggested that theory and practice must be united in the new philosophy. Conceptually this thesis is much harder to explain than meets the eye. It is, after all, easy to talk about doing things but quite another matter to do them. Two examples will suffice to show what I mean: love and violence. In both, we have a unification of a state of being (this is the par excellence form of theory) with an embodied, enacted state (the par excellence form of practice). Both self-evidently exist, i.e. they are true to human experience and have no meaning beyond human experience. One can have theories about both, but these are descriptions that lack the essence of the thing itself. Putting it another way, the essence of both arises from precisely their unification. The one without the other is mere kitsch. It is not the real thing. For this reason, love and violence are explosive qualities of being. There are many such qualities. To identify such states in ourselves is to acquire self-knowledge. To do them with exceptionality is to become saintly or monstrous. To live without them, is to not live at all. Whenever we are asked why we do them our answers amount to "because". Wherever such unifications exist in our experience, we meet our essential maker. However we become separated from them is of less consequence than the alienation that flows through that division.