Politics and the Contemplative Life

If there is practice without theory, perhaps there is theory without practice. We have fairly fixed notions of practice without theory—action without reflection, hand-to-mouth existence, meeting problems as they arise, disdain of plans or strategy, and so on. Of theory without practice there seems but one common idea—theory that because of abstraction or irrelevance cannot be applied. Plato told us the story of Thales of Miletus who, gazing at the stars, fell into a well. A little maid laughed to see such sport. Her laughter still rings in our ears, reminding us to practice navigating the earth rather than contemplate the stars. Theory without practice, then, seems to be theory that cannot be applied. Applied to what? Applied to problems. Which problems? Problems that arise among men or in the community. Who there defines a problem? Not to get bogged down at the start, let us say merely that some men do or that some part of the community does. We can also conceive of a theory not being applied because it seems farfetched or too costly or immoral, or because the moment for its need is not yet at hand. These are not the main objections, even though they all have a bearing in one way or another on the ideas we are about to discuss. The main objections are usually the ones already mentioned—theory irrelevant or too abstract. Abstractness, for our purposes, can be dismissed. It means either that the theory cannot be understood—a matter of communication, we assume—or that steps are lacking to bring the theory down to the applied level. We are really back to the question of application. Either a theory has relevance but for one reason or another cannot be put into practice, or it has no relevance at all and that is the end of that.