– How praxis appears when legitimacy decays and nothing guarantees coherence

This essay opens the sequence on An Aimsir – the weather in which legitimacy decays, authenticity becomes necessary, and action must find its form without guarantees. It sets the ground for the conversations that follow, where I speak with Marx and Sartre from within the conditions of the present…

There are moments in the decay of legitimacy when the self discovers that action is no longer organised by inherited grammars, and yet the world continues to press upon it. In this space, where the practico‑inert has decayed but nothing coherent has replaced it, the possibility of praxis appears – not as a stage of development, not as a historical necessity, but as a horizon revealed when the self acts authentically within the prevailing conditions of Wounding.

This understanding of praxis differs from the traditions that shaped the modern philosophical imagination. It is not the engine of history, as Marx conceived it, nor the culmination of collective freedom, as Sartre hoped it might become. It is something smaller and more exacting: a mode of action that arises when the self confronts the world without the shelter of legitimacy and without the promise of teleology. Praxis here is neither destiny nor doctrine. It is the form of action that becomes possible when nothing external guarantees coherence, success, or meaning.

This shift in the role and function of praxis allows a different approach to historical materiality. It makes room for actors – not as heroes, not as representatives of classes or groups, not as bearers of historical necessity, but as individuals acting under pressure, through injury, and within climates they did not choose. It allows us to speak of history not only as movement, but as the accumulation of actions taken by selves navigating the collapse of their organising structures. In this sense, praxis becomes a way of understanding how history is shaped by those who act authentically in conditions that offer no assurances.

It is from this position that I turn to Marx and Sartre – not to correct them, not to inherit them, but to speak with them. To ask what they saw, what they missed, and what becomes possible when praxis is no longer tied to destiny, class, or collective fusion. Their work remains essential, but the terrain has shifted. The climate has changed. And in this new weather, the actor stands differently in relation to history.

David Marshall
Estella
January 2026