Agency: What Does It Mean to Be a Human Being?

Abstract

This paper will look at the results of what has been termed “the crisis of modernism” and the related rise of postmodern perspectives in the 19th and 20th centuries. It concentrates on what is arguably the chief casualty of this crisis – human agency – and the social science that has developed out of the crisis. We argue that modern and postmodern social science ultimately obviate human agency in the understanding of what it means to be a human being. Attention is given to the contemporary intellectual world and the way in which it has been deeply informed by neo-Hegelian and other postmodern scholarly trends, particularly in accounting for how agency has come to play little role in social science understanding of human action. The paper also offers an alternative conception of human agency to the commonly endorsed libertarian model of free choice. Finally, the paper argues that this view of agency preserves meaning and purpose in human action and counters the pervasive social science worldview that sacrifices agency and meaning to powerful invisible abstractions.

Theory as truth and as ethics.

“…This article is written in the spirit of what might be called a "primer" for careful philosophical explication of the fundamental issues of humanity that constitute the deeper questions and concerns of the disciple, but which seldom rise to the surface or find a place in the disciplinary discourse or in the training of its professionals. Examples of deeper and more sustained treatments would include work by authors such as Taylor (1985Taylor ( , 1989Taylor ( , 2016, Bishop (2007), Brinkmann (2010, Merleau-Ponty (1962), R. N. Williams et al (2021), Goodman (2012), Freeman (2014), Sokolowski (2008), andMartin et al (2009). The purpose of this article, however, has been only to flip a conceptual switch that may throw some light on the intellectual road less traveled by proponents of the mainstream of the discipline, a road neglected now for essentially the entirety of the discipline's existence.…”

“…This article is written in the spirit of what might be called a “primer” for careful philosophical explication of the fundamental issues of humanity that constitute the deeper questions and concerns of the disciple, but which seldom rise to the surface or find a place in the disciplinary discourse or in the training of its professionals. Examples of deeper and more sustained treatments would include work by authors such as Taylor (1985, 1989, 2016), Bishop (2007), Brinkmann (2010), Merleau-Ponty (1962), R. N. Williams et al (2021), Goodman (2012), Freeman (2014), Sokolowski (2008), and Martin et al (2009).…”

“…2This article pursues an understanding of truth in a way that differs markedly from the more technical approach common in various species of analytical philosophy seeking to unpack the intertwining of linguistics and epistemology. Our concern is, rather, to locate a description and understanding of truth in terms of meaningful lived experience, one that grounds itself in the fundamental question of human being and the concerns that arise to a being for whom things matter congenitally and at many levels (see, e.g., Sokolowski, 2008; R. N. Williams et al, 2021).…”

Questioning Consilience and Autonomy in Self‐Determination Theory: A Critique and Hermeneutic‐Phenomenological Alternative

“…This is not a mixed discourse in which mechanistic terminology is invoked to provide a deeper, all-inclusive, causal account of human autonomy and related phenomena. Rather, it is a singular discourse focused on concernful involvement in cultural forms of life that are intrinsically meaningful -that is, forms of life that humans as agents encounter in their life's journey and through which they take stands on themselves (i.e., becoming a certain kind of a person with a certain identity, at least in certain contexts) by virtue of how they actively participate in the world (for more on this point, see Brinkmann, 2011;Guignon, 2002;Richardson, et al, 1999;Taylor, 1989Taylor, , 2006Yanchar, 2021;Williams, 2002;Williams et al, 2021;Wrathall, 2014). Hermeneutic-phenomenological scholarship that emphasizes this kind of discourse, and these sorts of phenomena, could surely incorporate biological terminology and inquiries, but would do so by interpreting them in light of meaningful human involvement in the world and agentic theorizing, rather than the reverse (see, e.g., Jensen & Moran, 2013;Kearney & Treanor, 2015;Merleau-Ponty, 1962;Spackman & Yanchar, 2014).…”

“…Hermeneutic‐phenomenological theorizing contends that agency, situated in a world of significance, purpose, and possibility, must be taken as a basic, irreducible given of human existence; that is, human agency is the fundamental starting point for understanding all human actions, events, and relationships. Beginning with agency in this way – what might be thought of as an “agency‐first” strategy (Yanchar, 2021, p. 27; see also Williams & Gantt, in press; Williams et al., 2021; Yanchar, 2011) – is theoretically significant, in that it brings with it a number of commitments that run counter to what is typically seen in psychological theorizing about motivation, personality, and related phenomena.…”