Choice: the essential element in human action

First published in 1987, this title investigates what distinguishes the part of human behaviour that is action (praxis) from the part that is not.

The distinction was clearly drawn by Socrates, and developed by Aristotle and the medievals, but key elements of their work became obscured in modern philosophy, and were not fully recovered when, under Wittgenstein's influence, the theory of action was revived in analytical philosophy.

This study aims to recover those elements, and to analyse them in terms of a defensible semantics on Fregean lines.