when people talk, as Tahir did, of practice as something broader, they are often talking about the way, say, individualism shapes so much of what we do in the united states. i hope i don't have to get into the nitty gritty but what that means is:
yes, at one time, individualism wasn't an ideology. it was a theory, or rather built up from a bunch of theories, all espoused by people who, in hindsight, we see as consciously giving reasons or explanation for political practice. In the case of bourgeois individualism, theories espoused by various thinkers - Smith, Hume, Hobbes, Mill, etc. - which have become "common sense". no one needs to theorize them in a conscious way but you can see the theory in operation in the way people behave or, almost universally, in the way they behave when someone stops acting the way you are "supposed to". You don't have to learn this common sense at a school desk or by reading stuff. you simply live in the world and it's taught to you in simple acts such as the way someone borrows a lawn mower or stands on the elevator or ducks when walking between people having a conversation.
i can't say that this is how Tahir is using it, so don't want to speak fo rhim, but when he wrote what it did, it's what it brought to mind in terms of my own work.
At 09:08 AM 1/27/2012, Carrol Cox wrote:
>Let me repeat one point from my previous post.
>
>Theory has no existence outside conscious and self-conscious human minds.
>
>Some of the comments seem to reify it as something out there. But it is not
>a Platonic Form, existing from all eternity.
>
>So when we talk about the relation of Theory to practice we have to focus on
>consciously held abstract principles consciously controlling the practice.
>
>Carrol
>
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