Praxis occupies a contested but generative position across the depth-psychology corpus, drawing its force from an ancient tripartite distinction—theoria, praxis, poiésis—that successive thinkers have alternately preserved, collapsed, and radically reinterpreted. Ricoeur, the corpus’s most sustained theorist of the term, insists on retaining Aristotle’s plurality rather than forcing praxis into a hegemonic unity with acting or power-to-act; for him, praxis names a hierarchy of human doing that culminates in narrative configuration and the ‘good life,’ binding ethics, selfhood, and temporal existence into a single hermeneutic arc. Vernant anchors the classical distinction: where poiésis is a kinesis whose end lies beyond itself in the product, praxis is energeia whose actuality resides within the act—a contrast that governs much subsequent thinking about authentic agency. Giegerich introduces a pointed critical inflection, arguing that depth-psychology degenerates into mere pragmatism the moment its theoretical outlook is instrumentalized; paradoxically, he insists that genuine praxis must itself remain theoretical rather than practical. Hillman traces the word’s dayworld, ego-laden etymology only to subvert it, proposing that psychotherapeutic work with dreams is a praxis in the sense of skilled exercise rather than purposive intervention. Lacan, reading Plato’s to pragma, identifies praxis with the essential thing from which theory itself emerges. Evagrius’s Praktikos supplies the corpus’s ascetic register, treating practical life as the disciplined preparation of the soul for contemplative gnosis. Together these voices reveal praxis as a term perpetually in tension between action and contemplation, ethics and theory, technique and transformation.
the kind of plurality that Aristotle preserves by leaving theoria, praxis, and poiésis side-by-side seems to me to agree better with the sort of philosophy I prefer, one that is not too quick to unify the field of human experience from on high
Ricoeur argues for retaining Aristotle’s irreducible tripartition of theoria, praxis, and poiésis against any philosophical temptation to subordinate the entire field of human experience under a single unifying principle.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
when human activity creates nothing outside itself, it is praxis, and the actuality is located within
Vernant, following Aristotle, defines praxis as self-contained energeia whose telos is immanent to the act itself, distinguishing it from the externally directed movement of artisanal poiésis.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis
Depth-psychology exists only if its outlook is not practical (pragmatic), but theoretical (theoretical even where it is a praxis). One cannot really reproach Jungians for not realizing that the best way of praxis (the best way precisely to serve the patient, too) is for psychology to have a relentless theoretical comm
Giegerich contends that authentic depth-psychological praxis is paradoxically theoretical through and through, and that any instrumentalization of its concepts for pragmatic ends destroys its essential character.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis
the end [telos] for which we live is a certain kind of activity [praxis tis], not a quality [ou poiotés]. Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions — what we do — that we are happy or the reverse.
Ricoeur cites Aristotle’s Poetics to establish that praxis, as the imitation of action and life, is the fundamental ontological category for human happiness and the ground of narrative configuration.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
The same relation between praxis and narrative is repeated on a higher level of organization: we recalled the text of Aristotle’s Poetics in which he compares praxis and bios: ‘Tragedy is essentially an imitation [mimésis] not of persons but of action and life.’
Ricoeur identifies a structural homology between praxis and narrative across ascending levels of organization, linking Aristotelian action-theory to the narrative unity of a life.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
The word praxis has a bad history. Homer used it for business affairs; Plato made it mean more the technical knowledge of applied sciences. Aristotle then toughened the word further by using it in the context of ethics and politics. It always meant action, and it couldn’t be more dayworld, more ego.
Hillman subjects the etymology of praxis to depth-psychological critique, exposing its ego-bound, dayworld lineage before reclaiming it as a mode of skilled, receptive practice appropriate to dream-work.
, The Dream and the Underworld, 1979thesis
It is the essential to pragma, the thing, the praxis. You can be certain that the theory, which term comes to birth at the same epoch (however contemplative it may affirm itself to be and it is not simply contemplative as the praxis from which it emerges, the Orphic practices, sufficiently demonstrate)
Lacan, reading Plato’s Letter VII, identifies praxis with to pragma—the essential thing or great affair—and argues that theory itself arises from a prior, generative praxis rather than standing opposed to it.
, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015supporting
the aspect we are emphasizing here is less the function of assembling-together, performed by the narrative at the summit of the scale of praxis, than the connection the narrative makes between estimations applied to actions and the evaluation of persons themselves.
Ricoeur articulates how the narrative unity of a life functions at the apex of the scale of praxis, connecting ethical estimation of actions to the self-evaluation of persons as moral subjects.
, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting
action - bios praktikos- does not imply any exterior object; compare Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics: tes men gar poieseos heteron to telos, tes de praxeos ouk an eie gar aute he eupraxia telos
Vernant cites Aristotle’s Politics and Nicomachean Ethics to confirm that the practical life requires no exterior object because eupraxia—acting well—is itself the telos of praxis.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
Practices, we observe following MacIntyre, are cooperative activities whose constitutive rules are established socially; the standards of excellence that correspond to them on the level of this or that practice originate much further back than the solitary practitioner.
Drawing on MacIntyre, Ricoeur specifies that practices—the socially constituted units of praxis—are governed by historically transmitted standards of excellence that precede and exceed any individual agent.
, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting
The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer… Translation and Introduction by John Bamberger OCSO
Evagrius’s Praktikos establishes the ascetic dimension of the concept: praktike names the disciplined, passions-regulating work of the monastic life that prepares the soul for contemplative gnosis.
, Praktikos, 2009supporting
“The effects of keeping the commandments (i.e. apatheia) do not suffice to heal the powers of the soul completely. They must be complemented by a contemplative activity appropriate to these faculties and this activity must penetrate the spirit.”
Evagrius subordinates praktike to theoria, insisting that ascetic practice alone is insufficient and must be crowned by a contemplative activity that transforms the soul at its deepest levels.
, Praktikos, 2009supporting
Does not this unity belong to the metacategory of being as act and as power? And does not the ontological significance of this metacategory preserve what we have already termed on several occasions the analogical unity of action
Ricoeur grounds praxis ontologically in Aristotle’s act-power distinction, proposing that the analogical unity of human action across its diverse forms is preserved by this fundamental metaphysical category.
, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting
praxis, 195; imaginal, 115; background, 4, 50
An index entry locating Hillman’s discussion of praxis within his broader account of imaginal and dream psychology, signaling its systematic role in that work.
, The Dream and the Underworld, 1979aside