Practical Holism and Nomadic Thought

This book presents practical holism as a framework for understanding the ways in which our society and individual lives are affected by moral, legal, political, economic, and other considerations. Only nomadic thought is able to capture the interactions among all those crucial aspects.

---

Practical Holism and Nomadic Thought invites us to think of societies as organizations built with moral, legal, political, and economic materials that interact in dynamic, and often simultaneous, ways. According to this view, which Carlos Pereda calls “practical holism,” our practical life is constantly motivated by many different kinds of values that often conflict with one another. This book examines how practical normativity, guiding how we behave from seemingly trivial interactions to the deepest existential dilemmas, is crossed by tensions. Pereda argues that only nomadic thought—willing to transgress received conceptual distinctions or groupings—is capable of capturing those many interactions. No qualitative or quantitative typology is indisputable; leaving behind hitherto well-established pathways is not impossible. At its best, nomadic thought considers all of these as proposals worth pondering and discussing, to be approved or rejected, always in a provisional form.