Phronetic Science: a Fundamental Implication for Development Theory

As a discursive framework, each development theory necessarily includes some interrelated characteristics whose implication would lead to a general theoretical system. The fundamental, the situational, the explanatory, and the normative are the four characteristics which together shape the implicational aspect of any development theory. Focusing on the fundamental implication, the present study attempts to show how a development theory might help in figuring out the developing criteria besides the strategic policy-making process via an intellectual understanding of the interrelation between the human-kind, the society, and history. In such doing, as a discursive-actual system, development theory would identify the present challenges in the society, and explain the roots of such critical situation. Here, we attempt to explain that in the fundamental aspect, such theory should avoid the metaphysical-positivistic approach, and apply a phronetic one in order to introduce a normative system of progress.