Abstract

What is it that enables agents to find the business of reflective endorsement, deliberation, and willing meaningful? I argue that our having motivating reasons to act-and thus reason to lead a life-depends on a set of background "frames" of agency being in place. These "frames" are attitudes toward and beliefs about our own agency that, under normal conditions, are simply taken for granted as we lead our lives as agents and that thus do not enter into our normative reflection, deliberation, planning, and intending. Those frames include a perception of our lives as meaningful, lack of alienation from one's own normative outlook, a belief in the effectiveness of instrumental reasoning, and confidence in our relative security from disastrous misfortune. When those background frames are disrupted, we may find our agency not defeated, but emptied of significance.