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Agency in a Praxiological Approach

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The Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present

Part of the book series: Studies in Universal Logic ((SUL))

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Abstract

The paper presents issues of agency in the approach proposed by Tadeusz Kotarbiński, the Polish philosopher from the Lvov-Warsaw School, author of the philosophy of practicality with its dominant: praxiology. It also outlines a number of other approaches to this notion as well as notions similar and related to the notion of an agent. The conclusion points out that praxiology provides an insight into the reality it studies, but the use to which this is put depends on the users themselves. That use is indirect more often than direct, since it requires reflection on the agent’s own practicality and some meta-skills that should characterize reflective practitioners.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The paper was not published until 1927.

  2. 2.

    Tadeusz Kotarbiński described praxiology as the science of efficient action. Praxiology according to Ludwig von Mises (1987) is the science of means and not goals of action. Both founders of praxiology schools—the Polish and the Austrian school—referred to the French initiator of praxiological research, Alfred Victor Espinas, who focused on analysing the means of achieving goals (realizing intentions). Let us add that in his sociological theory of action, Florian Znaniecki [28] favoured indicating the intention of the acting subject rather than the goal of the activity. See also [3].

  3. 3.

    Subsequently published as Czyn (1934).

  4. 4.

    Presented here are excerpts, with minor editing, from the author’s earlier works listed in the references [5,6,7,8,9,10,11].

  5. 5.

    Change is also indicated by Mises, who writes that human activity is one of the factors that cause change, it is an element of cosmic activity and becoming; it cannot be reduced to its causes but must be treated as an ultimate given and studied as such [27, p. 32].

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the editors of Transformacje annual, in which the Polish version [11] of the present paper is being published, for encouraging me to consider agency in a praxiological approach.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Koźmiński University, Warsaw, Poland

    Wojciech W. Gasparski

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  1. Wojciech W. Gasparski
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Correspondence to Wojciech W. Gasparski .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Fundamental Mathematics, UNED, Madrid, Spain

    Ángel Garrido

  2. Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

    Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska

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Gasparski, W.W. (2018). Agency in a Praxiological Approach. In: Garrido, Á., Wybraniec-Skardowska, U. (eds) The Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present. Studies in Universal Logic. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65430-0_12

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