Tradition and Practical Knowledge

Abstract

The first task of this chapter is to indicate how the topic of practical knowledge might involve, or why it should involve, an analysis of the notion of tradition. Such an indication is in fact not difficult to give. After all, both practical knowledge and knowledge embedded in tradition are kinds of knowledge that seem to lie outside the domain of reflection or reasoning; both presuppose an epistemological subject whose activity encompasses more than the life of pure cognition – a subject to whose make-up traits other than mental essentially belong. No wonder, then, that philosophers with an eye for the dimension of practice in knowledge will usually not fail to draw attention also to the special ways in which that dimension is transmitted: to ways of custom, to institutions of handing down, to traditions.