This chapter is devoted to some of the philosophical issues that arise in the context of action, taking issue with the thesis that the turn to practices will lead to a better ‘theory’ of international relations or of social action. I first examine different choice-approaches and show why they are false friends; that is, they rely on misleading analogies. Here rational choice (goal means rationality), technique (techne), or the production of an object, systems (whole/ part distinctions), and teleologies or ideal theories concerned with the clarification of normative principles are found wanting. Common to all these different approaches is the notion that action can be subjected to a theoretical gaze, be it the view from nowhere or of being able to determine where we are from the point of the ‘end of history’. After some preliminary criticism I show 12 important differences that characterize action and that are overlooked when we think that such views are helpful for understanding praxis.

Introduction

Coming last in this collection of essays on one’s work is a privilege and a challenge. It is a privilege not only because one has now different texts articulating different facets of a common concern, but it is a privilege in that it shows that my attempts to rethink the issue of acting with all the conceptual baggage that comes with it has been useful for others, even if they (dis-)agree. Thus, the position alone could tempt one to provide just an overview and impose some weak order, familiar from the ‘contrast and compare’ genre. But one also could do worse, by creating the impression of a synthesis by opting for selective attention, in order to show how we all mean the same thing. Such an approach might be all the more tempting since we all seem to agree, due to the post-modern turn in social theory, that the world out there does not provide us with unadulterated and free-standing facts which serve as last appeals.

These observations point to the challenge part of the task, especially for someone who has warned of last words and grand theories. Similarly, in insisting that we filter our experiences through categories and concepts defining what is normal and making sense, or what is deviant or out of bounds, I can deny neither that these ‘bounds’ are not only logical distinctions – although they serve as criteria of intelligibility – nor that they are merely cognitive. Since they are norms, they not only state regularities but provide – through their counterfactual validity – for the enactments of ‘rules’ and the reproduction of social order, whereby alternatives are excluded and dominum is exercised as rule. Consequently, the notion of a ‘full view’ – attributed to theories when conceived from the point of the ‘view from nowhere’ – seems a doubly problematic metaphor for the social world where the observed order is based on rule-following and intersubjective understandings, some of which are clearly ‘fictions’ (such as corporations, or representations of a ‘people’, comprising also the dead and future generations), or they entail certain ‘truths’ that are held and declared, rather than found and available for inspection.

What do we owe to others when interacting with them and what should we know when asking this question? Those seemingly straightforward queries get quickly more complicated when we realize that many of our actions take place not only in institutional contexts – such as promising or contracting – but also in organizations when we are vested with ‘authority’. In both cases special responsibilities are created, but in the latter case they can no longer be ascribed to us as ‘persons’ when we act as ‘managers’ of an organization, or as magistrates, holding public office.