Praxis (from the Greek πρᾶξις, “action”) — denotes free human action considered not for what it produces but for the way it is carried out: an activity whose end lies within itself. The term derives from the verb prattein, “to do,” “to act.” In Aristotle, praxis is opposed to poiesis, the making that aims at an external product (a house, a shoe): whereas the craftsman acts for the sake of something distinct from his activity, the person who acts well realizes his own good in the action itself. Accordingly, Aristotle divides the sciences into theoretical (which contemplate what is necessary and unchanging), practical (ethics and politics, concerned with action), and productive (techne, concerned with making). Excellent praxis is not governed by fixed rules but requires phronesis, the practical wisdom that deliberates case by case about what should be done. In the modern era, Marx radically reinterprets the concept: praxis is the sensuous, transformative activity by which human beings produce their material conditions and themselves within history. His eleventh thesis on Feuerbach captures the shift: philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. Gramsci’s “philosophy of praxis” — the phrase used in the Prison Notebooks — understands Marxism as a unity of theory and political action capable of forming a historical consciousness. The concept is closely tied to Aristotelian phronesis and to the Marxist notion of labor.
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