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April 7, 2007

For the Hermeneuts, then, language takes precendence over praxis in the constitution of meaning. That which cannot be said cannot be meant, and the purported meanings embedded in wordless praxis presumably must somehow be founded by language in some sense of the term. This view contrast with that of the Founders, who recognize praxis as at least an equal contributor with language to the constitution of meaning, and with that of the Pittsburgh Hegelians, who give precendence to language, but conceive language as itself fundamentally tied to language. We have at this point, then, the three majors positions before us. To begin sorting them out it will help us to have a more thoroughgoing conception of praxis and social practices at play. We thus turn now to the work of Theodore Schatzki.

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 To sum up, then, the Pittsburgh Hegelian view gives praxis a significant role in the constitution of meaning, but one that remains clearly subordinate to that played by language. Meaning as such, for these philosophers, is inherently linguistic, though this contention is leavened somewhat by what they see as the thorough embeddedness of language in praxis. On these accounts, praxis in the absence of language might not be meaningful at all, but language has its meaning by virtue of being part of praxis, and at least for beings trained in language, there are meanings implicit in practices independent of those concretized in language.