> We must distinguish between theoria, praxis, and poiesis. Must we? > When I clean my house, I don't do this for its own sake, I do this for the sake of havi

> We must distinguish between theoria, praxis, and poiesis. Must we? > When I clean my house, I don't do this for its own sake, I do this for the sake of having a clean house to live in. Why not both? A clean house isn’t necessary for survival. Why do you enjoy a clean house? For its own sake perhaps? Many would argue that we do these things for the sake of them as much as we do these things out of necessity. Reframed slightly, we do many things for the sake of doing them, and we seem to enjoy bringing this mindset to the necessities of life. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explores this extensively in Flow, and it’s a recurrent theme in many contemplative traditions. > When I cook dinner, I don't cook it for its own sake, I cook it to feed myself and others. Again, why not both? If the only value gained from cooking is sustenance, why do we enjoy dessert? Why do we enjoy it more when other people are with us? I’m not saying we don’t do things for reasons or that it’s uninteresting to assign labels to those reasons and explore them, but such intellectual/philosophical framings are ultimately just reductions of unfolding experience into a low resolution explanation of reality relative to our immersion in it. Should we explore these ideas? Yes. Must they be the foundation from which we explore other ideas? I don’t think so. Sometimes, sure.