This paper examines the dynamics between scientific reason and cultural diversity by: a) analyzing the epistemic structure of 'universalism' as conceived by science, both theoretically and through its historical determination; and b) focusing on the situation of science in Africa, presenting its limits and challenges. It calls for a coconstruction of science at an international scale, which represents a key factor of development and cultural transmission, in particular, transmission of scientific scholarship.

In recent years, it was notorious the presence of a persistent interpretation of the political field in terms that find in the notion of crisis its main narrative. In order to assess this historical sensitivity ―which is an effect of the rupture of the grand narrative of progress― the analysis of Janet Roitman has been particularly relevant. Her critical perspective on this historical matrix is based on her assumption that such sensitivity leads to a strong paralysis in terms (...) of political agency, mainly through its claim of being the same incarnation of moments of truth. The central aim of this paper is to challenge this interpretation of the narrative of crisis as a case of post-historical meaning through the analysis of the transhumanist philosophy as deployed by Nick Bostrom. It is thanks to the scrutiny of the affective dimension involved in this sort of historical meaning focused in the role played by anxiety, that is possible to explore the kind of agency that may result from this framework. (shrink)

This article responds to Samuel Knafo and Benno Teschke’s recent critique of Political Marxism and their proposal for an alternative, ‘radical agency-centred’ historicism. While sympathetic to the critiques raised by the authors, I am less convinced by the conclusions they reach. Rather than abandon Political Marxism altogether, I argue that there remains much of value in the tradition. Through an analysis of the differential path of capitalist development in settler-colonial Canada, I suggest that bringing the methodological insights of Uneven (...) and Combined Development to bear on the theoretical material of Political Marxism can alleviate the problems identified by the authors. (shrink)

This paper concerns Marx’s case, especially in the German Ideology, for the relative privilege of his own conception of history. I argue, against what I call the standard interpretation, that Marx’s case does not rest on an inversion of Young Hegelian “idealism”; against the “revisionist interpretation,” I argue that Marx nevertheless sustains a concern with the justificatory adequacy of his position. Marx’s argument, on my interpretation, is that an account of productive agency is a necessary constituent of any understanding (...) of history, and in turn requires a reflexive component. The reflexive character of agency can only be adequately realized under conditions in which historical processes and the causal effectiveness of individual agency are aligned. Marx’s justification, then, relies on an account of the internal character of historical agency rather than on metaphysical claims about the real. Marx, I suggest, was attempting to offer a distinctively “practical” justification. (147 words). (shrink)

This article discusses a case study that explored the potential of nonfiction graphic novels to develop pre-service teachers’ understanding of agency in a social studies methods course. White pre-service teachers were aske'd to read one graphic novel and then add frames, re-narrate frames, and reflect on their decisions. The positionalities of researchers, who are White males, and participants were part of our analysis. The researchers found that pre-service teachers made revisions to the graphic novels to change the historical (...) actors’ decisions: within the constraints of the historical situation's circumstances; to better fit their own ethical framework; and to critique the author's interpretation of the historical event and the amount of agency assigned to certain historical actors. We also reported findings related to shifts in understanding related to positionality. The pre-service teachers’ revisions demonstrated their understanding of historical actors’ ability to make choices; however, for most pre-service teachers those decisions were limited by, and insignificant in comparison to, the constraints of societal structures. Most pre-service teachers viewed these structures as operating outside of the realm of ethics that they used to articulate and identify agency, and thus, these structures were not responsive to changes in individual or collective agency. Implications are provided for social studies teacher educators. (shrink)

A challenging question regarding compensation for historic injustices like slavery or colonialism is whether there is anyone to whom it would be just to ascribe duties of compensation given that allegedly all the perpetrators--the guilty parties--are dead. Some answer this question negatively, arguing it is wrong to ascribe to anyone compensatory duties for injustices committed by others who died multiple generations ago. This objection to compensation for historic injustice, which I call the Historical Responsibility Objection (HRO), takes as its (...) core premises (1) that one must be guilty of wrongdoing with respect to a given historic injustice in order to bear a duty to compensate for the injustice, and (2) that no one alive today can be considered so guilty because no one alive today was alive when the historic injustice occurred. The result is that we cannot ascribe compensatory duties to anyone for any historic injustic. While all arguments I am aware of that refute HRO reject premise (1), this paper sketches a novel refutation of HRO by exploring the implications of rejecting premise (2). Doing so would invoke the state as a collective agent, distinct from its constitutive individual agents, liable to acquire compensatory duties for wrongs it commits that none of its constitutive individuals bear. To the extent that states that are collective agents committed historic injustices, such states have duties to compensate for historic injustice. (shrink)

Institutionalism gives priority to structure over agency. Yet institutions have never developed and operated without the intervention of interested groups. This paper develops a conceptual framework for the role of agency in historical institutionalism. Based on recent contributions following the coalitional turn and drawing on insights from sociological institutionalism, it argues that agency plays a key role in the creation and maintenance of social coalitions that stabilize but also challenge institutions. Without such agency, no coalition (...) can be created, maintained, or changed. Similarly, without a supporting coalition, no contested institution can survive. Yet, due to collective action problems, such coalitional work is challenging. This coalitional perspective offers a robust role for agency in historical institutionalism, but it also explains why institutions remain stable despite agency. In addition, this paper forwards several portable propositions that allow for the identification of who is likely to develop agency and what these actors do. (shrink)

Judging from the contemporary debate in the philosophy of history, philosophers seem to think of history as an important but also as a very peculiar discipline. They cannot make up their minds on how exactly to describe the epistemic status of historical knowledge or how exactly to situate history among human activities ranging from the arts to the natural sciences.1 The difficulty of philosophically accounting for the character of history goes back to the very beginning of history as a (...) professional discipline within academia in the 19th century. In order to be given the title of a science history had to prove that its knowledge is as objective and rigorous as the knowledge gained by the natural sciences. Yet philosophers and historians recognized that its domain of human agency and human institutions was particularly ill suited to fit the model of methodological monism demanded by the ruling positivist conception of the natural sciences. They nevertheless suggested that history should still be regarded as a worthy member of the scientific community, because its own method of empathetic reenacting or "reliving" the experiences and thoughts of past agents allows it to acquire objective knowledge of the past. (shrink)

Why should a person, and in the context of this conference particularly an art historian, take seriously the notion of the aesthetic, its discovery and/or rediscovery? Aesthetics might after all be considered at best something of a distraction from bread and butter historical and sociological analysis, and at worst entirely incompatible with it. Pursuing the line further it might be urged that, since on the one hand aesthetics is about 'how things appear'—i.e. is subject to individual predilection, taste and (...) feeling—and on the other, historical analysis is about the careful and scholarly reconstruction of a past social reality, the two must be at loggerheads. What the art historian writes about on a weekday whilst wearing her hard hat at the office must not be confused with what she personally feels, wandering around a gallery in her woolly hat at the weekend. (shrink)

This essay argues that Knafo and Teschke fundamentally misread Brenner’s original contribution to the transition debate. They equate his rejection of trans-historical or trans-modal laws of motion with the notion that social-property relations do not have strong rules of reproduction that structure the actions of agents and give rise to ‘developmental patterns’ specific to each form of social labour. Knafo and Teschke’s critique of Brenner’s analysis of capitalist expansion and crisis is also theoretically and empirically questionable.

How is it possible for human subjects who are socially constructed to engage in effective and authoritative acts of resistance to the social norms and institutions within which they were formed? Judith Butler, in her engagement with the work of Pierre Bourdieu, locates this possibility in the nature of `speech acts', and in resistance to social norms emanating from the abjected margins of social life. She criticizes Bourdieu for undermining the promise of agency contained in habitus by reducing it (...) to the social field in which it was constituted, thus re-closing `the iron cage' of structural/institutional determination. For Butler, social norms and institutions, dependent as they are on reiterative performance, are intrinsically open to disruption. It is possible, she claims, using as her example Rosa Parks's historical act of resistance in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, to resist with authority, yet without prior institutional authorization. This article argues that Butler's theory of iterability works to endow the capacity to authorize against the grain of institutional authority with individuals and their acts and hence neglects the social contexts that inform and de-limit this capacity. `Resisting with authority' is possible precisely because it is not endowed by individuals or their acts, but is collective and interactional. (shrink)

This paper provides a concise description and discussion of bottom–up and top–down approaches to misattribution of agency in schizophrenia. It explores if first-person accounts of passivity phenomena can provide support for one of these approaches. The focus is on excerpts in which the writers specifically examine their experiences of external influence. None of the accounts provides arguments that fit easily with only one of the possible approaches, which is in line with current attempts to theoretical integration.

Phenomenological realism, in the tradition of Dietrich von Hildebrand, is advanced as a promising methodology for a theistic philosophy of divine and human agency. Phenomenological realism is defended in contrast to the practice of historicalism -- the view that a philosophy of mind and God should always be done as part of a thoroughgoing history of philosophy, e.g. the use of examples in analytic theology should be subordinated to engaging the work of Kant and other great philosophers. The criticism (...) of theism based on forms of naturalism that give exclusive authority to the physical sciences is criticized from a phenomenological, realist perspective. (shrink)

The literature on epistemic injustice has been helpful for highlighting some of the epistemic harms that have long troubled those working in area studies that concern oppressed populations. Nonetheless, a good deal of this literature is oriented toward those in a position to perpetrate injustices, rather than those who historically have been harmed by them. This orientation, I argue, is ill-suited to the work of epistemic decolonization. In this essay, I call and hold attention to the epistemic interests of those (...) who are epistemically marginalized on account of relations of dominance and oppression. To do so, I draw on Kristie Dotson’s work, which uses a systems approach focused on epistemic agency. I develop Dotson’s insights further to argue that epistemic inclusions may be just as pernicious as epistemic exclusions Specifically, I highlight some of the ways in which epistemic agents can be included in epistemic systems in a manner that is epistemically exploitative—extracting epistemic labor coercively or in ways that are distinctly non-reciprocal. I then turn to María Lugones’ distinction between horizontal and vertical practices to discuss avenues of resisting both exclusions and inclusions that thwart the epistemic agency of marginalized knowers. (shrink)

This paper provides a concise description and discussion of bottom–up and top–down approaches to misattribution of agency in schizophrenia. It explores if first-person accounts of passivity phenomena can provide support for one of these approaches. The focus is on excerpts in which the writers specifically examine their experiences of external influence. None of the accounts provides arguments that fit easily with only one of the possible approaches, which is in line with current attempts to theoretical integration.

Researchers need the concept of agency to address diverse and urgent social problems of our time. Cultural-historical activity theory, originally started with Vygotsky, is widely used in education, psychology, sociology, and transdisciplinary contexts. Scholars and students in diverse disciplines will benefit from this volume.

Charles Taylor has been one of the most original and influential figures in contemporary philosophy: his 'philosophical anthropology' spans an unusually wide range of theoretical interests and draws creatively on both Anglo-American and Continental traditions in philosophy. A selection of his published papers is presented here in two volumes, structured to indicate the direction and essential unity of the work. He starts from a polemical concern with behaviourism and other reductionist theories (particularly in psychology and the philosophy of language) which (...) aim to model the study of man on the natural sciences. This leads to a general critique of naturalism, its historical development and its importance for modern culture and consciousness; and that in turn points, forward to a positive account of human agency and the self, the constitutive role of language and value, and the scope of practical reason. The volumes jointly present some two decades of work on these fundamental themes, and convey strongly the tenacity, verve and versatility of the author in grappling with them. They will interest a very wide range of philosophers and students of the human sciences. (shrink)

The article discusses Berlin’s Poor Relief Policy from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century, posing the question: how can premises of theoretical and political feminist discussion be put into practice? In analysing the shift in poor relief, I have taken up three essential aspects: (1) power relations must be examined in a context that cannot be reduced simply to the opposition between ruler and subject or men and women; (2) when does gender become a principle of social order?; (...) and (3) gender as a construct and women’s way of action need to be linked. I show how a method that combines the different statements made by the texts as conflicts and discourse is useful, in that it facilitates working out the diversity of poor relief politics and historicizing the term ‘poor women’. At the same time it can show how social change in everyday life was structured and established. (shrink)

The concept of biological mimicry is viewed as a ‘process of life’ theory rather than a ‘process of change’ theory—regardless of the historical interest and heuristic value of the subject for the study of evolution. Mimicry is a dynamic ecological system reflecting the possibilities for mutualism and parasitism created by a pre-established bipartite signal-based relationship between two organisms – a potential model and its signal receiver (potential operator). In a mimicry system agency and perception play essential, interconnected roles. (...) Mimicry thus describes emergent biologically meaningful relationships based on synergy, and is not an object-based theory. Biosemiotics offers a particularly valuable discipline for analysing the dynamics and nuances of mimicry systems, and can thus pave the way for a better and more complete understanding of how mimicry has evolved in the past, and how it might evolve in the future—presented here with special reference to the need for an integrated, ‘third way of evolution’ approach to biological relativity. A revised definition of mimicry is proposed. (shrink)

It is not very surprising that it was no less true in antiquity than it is today that adult human beings are held to be responsible for most of their actions. Indeed, virtually all cultures in all historical periods seem to have had some conception of human agency which, in the absence of certain responsibility-defeating conditions, entails such responsibility. Few philosophers have had the temerity to maintain that this entailment is trivial because such responsibility-defeating conditions are always present. (...) Another not very surprising fact is that ancient thinkers tended to ascribe integrality to "what is" (to on). That is, they typically regarded "what is" as a cosmos or whole with distinguishable parts that fit together in some coherent or cohesive manner, rather than either as a "unity" with no parts or as a collection containing members (ta onta or "things that are") standing in no "natural" relations to one another. 1 The philoso phical problem of determinism and responsibility may, I think, best be characterized as follows: it is the problem of preserving the phenomenon of human agency (which would seem to require a certain separateness of individual human beings from the rest of the cosmos) when one sets about the philosophical or scientific task of explaining the integrality of "what is" by means of the development of a theory of causation or explanation ( concepts that came to be lumped together by the Greeks under the term "aitia"). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetorical Agency as a Property of QuestioningNick TurnbullAttention to agency has increased with the ongoing crisis of thought arising from the critique of metaphysics. With the absence of a foundation for reason comes an increased scope for choice in the interpretation of the world and the necessity to persuade others where demonstrative reason is lacking. Hence the "rhetorical turn" accompanies the problematization of knowledge. Even identity itself (...) has been "rhetoricized" with the death of the subject, and attention turns to how discourse constructs knowledge of the world and of ourselves. The rhetorical turn supports an increased capacity of agency in the use of language to construct identity and to relate to others. Agency is a fundamental property of rhetoric: we can debate the discourse of an interlocutor through resort to argumentation even if, as Gerard Hauser notes in the call for papers, that interlocutor is a monster. Philosophy itself has been rhetoricized in that the many philosophical systems of history have been revealed to be unsupportable now that there is no firm foundation upon which to ground inference in general. In a discourse without foundations we are free to choose between different philosophies, so much so that some have rejected philosophy itself in favor of general arbitrariness. This is apparent in deconstruction in philosophy and the rehabilitation of sophism within rhetoric.Where there is choice there is agency, of the rhetor and the audience. But the agency that is so positive for rhetoric is also that for which rhetoric has been condemned. Rhetoric has long been associated with sophistic, in which discourse can be used to deceive others or to simply demonstrate the status of the rhetor regardless of the truth of the conclusions reached. Rhetorical agency permits deception and stands in contrast with logical demonstration, in which necessity and self-evidence are the hallmarks of ideal reason. We have no choice but to accept necessary conclusions. Hence the apparent weakness of rhetoric in relation to logic and the questionable status [End Page 207] of the ethical properties of agency. And if agency is condemned as relativist, is not humanity condemned along with it? The rise of rhetoric also encompasses the "rhetoric of inquiry," which shows that even science employs rhetorical devices to construct the world and to persuade its audience. Science is especially rhetorical in the process of discovery, which is nonscientific. Nonetheless, the status of rhetoric is still problematic because of the freedom it permits. It is viewed by many as a weakness to be eliminated rather than a positive quality to be embraced. The contrast between rhetorical agency and logical necessity lies at the heart of contemporary debates about knowledge, identity, and postmodernity.In this paper I address the nature of rhetorical agency. This requires an examination of the foundations of knowledge and the division between logic and rhetoric. Although this division has been addressed many times in this journal, I believe it is still useful to revisit the debate. We must try to move beyond the postmodern impasse if knowledge is to progress and if rhetoric is to overcome its residual status. I draw on the philosophy of Michel Meyer, who offers a unique perspective on the status of rhetoric and the nature of philosophy. First, I outline the rhetorical turn as part of an increasing problematization of thought. I suggest that the rhetorical turn is incomplete because although problematicity is present in postmodern times, it remains unthematized on its own terms. The division between logic and rhetoric arises from an underlying conflict between freedom and necessity that suggests we inquire into the nature of the problematic itself. Next, I propose that Michel Meyer offers a solution to the problem by effecting a synthesis of freedom and necessity in his consideration of questioning as the foundation of reason and the consideration of the historical crisis faced by philosophy at the end of the twentieth century. Finally, I suggest that agency can be understood as a fundamental property of questioning that arises from the necessity of questioning as the foundation of reason. Rhetorical agency is thus a defining characteristic of humanity.1.The Aristotelian division of logic and rhetoric separated the necessary from the contingent... (shrink)

This book argues that the negotiation of agency is central not only to the experience of war but also to its representation in cultural expressions, ranging from a notion of disablement, expressed in victimization, immobilization, traumatization, and death, to enablement, expressed in the perpetration of heroic, courageous, skillful, and powerful actions of assertion and dominance. In order to illustrate this thesis, it provides a comprehensive analysis of literary representations of the American War of Independence from 1775, the beginning of (...) the war, up until roughly 1860, when the Civil War marked a decisive historical turning point. As the first national war, it has an unquestionably exemplary status for the development of American conceptions of war. The in-depth study of exemplary texts from a variety of genres and by authors like Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Sedgwick, William Gilmore Simms, and Herman Melville, demonstrates that the overall character of Revolutionary War literature presents the war as a forum in which collective and individual agency is expressed, defended, and cultivated. It uses the military environment in order to teach the values of discipline and self-subordination to a communal good, which are perceived as basic principles of a Republican virtue to guide the actions of the autonomous individual in a popular democracy. (shrink)

I want to explore one small corner of the concept of mental causality. It’s the corner where discussions about mind-body interactions and epiphenomenalism take place. My basic contention is that these discussions are framed in the wrong terms because they are infected by a mind-body dualism which defines the question of mental causality in a classic or standard way: How does a mental event cause my body to do what it does? Setting the question in this way has consequences for (...) ongoing interdisciplinary (psychological, neuroscientific, and philosophical) discussions of mental causation, as well as free will, and for our understanding of what we mean by a sense of agency for action. These concepts, in turn, have much to do with our understanding of what goes wrong in certain instances of psychopathology. I’ll try to get to this issue in the final part of my paper. Let me first set the historical scene of what I am calling this standard way of understanding the problem of mental causality. (shrink)

This paper argues for a reinterpretation of madness and mysticism through an apophatic lens. By using Wouter Kusters' theo-philosophical definition of madness, I argue for a re-evaluation of female mysticism which rethinks ecstatic and ascetic devotion as a form of agency. Focusing on The Book of Margery Kempe, I reconsider theological passion and ground Kempe’s madness within the historical tradition of affective piety, which expresses a desire to join with the humanity of Christ. Within modern readership, there has (...) been an impulse to label Kempe and other mystics with specific psychiatric diagnoses. In resisting this urge, I instead argue for a convergence of madness and mysticism which enables a paradoxical agency through negation of thought and language. This apophatic agency is precisely what imbues female mysticism with the potential for radical, queer social resistance. In extending this discussion to issues of fasting and abstinence, I then consider the role eucharistic devotion plays in enabling women control over the gastronomical and sexual parameters of their bodies. The denial of food and sex becomes integral to Kempe’s mysticism in asserting agency over the psychosexual self. Finally, I end with some reflections on how Kempe’s mysticism might influence contemporary discussions of mental health. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to analyze, clarify, and reconstruct the concept of class consciousness by developing a dialectical account of political agency at work in the concept. I defend a dialectical account of agency, that includes both the way in which individuals come together to form groups, but also the capacity of a collective to transform social conditions. I argue that this account of political agency is necessary in order to understand the possibility of social transformation or change. (...) I trace the development of the relationship between consciousness and agency in the early tradition of Western Marxism, focusing primarily on the account of class consciousness given by Georg Lukács in History and Class Consciousness. Against his account of the world historical agency of a unified proletariat, however, I defend Theodor Adorno’s insistence on nonidentity, and the importance of unreconciled groups in capitalist society. In order to understand these groups, such as the vanguard, party, or proletariat, we must understand the way in which individuals form groups, as well as their inherent collectivity. -/- My account of the political agency at work in the concept of class consciousness is broadly speaking pluralist. I argue that a multiplicity of methodologies is needed in order to arrive at a complete picture of the concept. I defend an account of class consciousness that is neither reductive nor deflationary with respect to other dimensions of social domination. This class forward approach seeks to build intersectional political coalitions in order to undertake revolutionary action. Successful revolutionary social transformation is never guaranteed in advance; however, the concept of class consciousness, reconstructed through the lens of political agency, offers conceptual resources to address the problems of today, for the sake of a better tomorrow. (shrink)

Investigating how a number of modern empires transform over the long century (1789-1914) as a consequence of their struggle for ascendancy in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, Foundations of Modernity: Human Agency and the Imperial State moves the study of the modern empire towards a comparative, trans-regional analysis of events along the Ottoman frontiers: Western Balkans, the Persian Gulf and Yemen. This inter-disciplinary approach of studying events at different ends of the Ottoman Empire challenges previous emphasis on Europe (...) as the only source of change and highlights the progression of modern imperial states.The book introduces an entirely new analytical approach to the study of modern state power and the social consequences to the interaction between long-ignored "historical agents" like pirates, smugglers, refugees, and the rural poor. In this respect, the roots of the most fundamental institutions and bureaucratic practices associated with the modern state prove to be the by-products of certain kinds of productive exchange long categorized in negative terms in post-colonial and mainstream scholarship. Such a challenge to conventional methods of historical and social scientific analysis is reinforced by the novel use of the work of Louis Althusser, Talal Asad, William Connolly and Frederick Cooper, whose challenges to scholarly conventions will prove helpful in changing how we understand the origins of our modern world and thus talk about Modernity. This book offers a methodological and historiographic intervention meant to challenge conventional studies of the modern era"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This book explores and critically reflects on the theory and practice of political agency in contemporary global politics. In light of the changing relationship between the state, the market and the society, it seeks to map both theoretically and empirically contemporary forms of global political agency. This book reflects on the theory and practice of political agency in contemporary global politics. More specifically, it empirically analyses a range of different forms of political agency and explores their (...) significance for understanding and enacting global politics. Reflecting the efforts of scholars from a variety of disciplines from political theory and Sociology to Geography and International Relations, it brings into conversation a wide spectrum of theoretical approaches including Marxism, feminism, post-structuralism and historical institutionalism. The contributors compare a range of forms of political agency; exploring their significance for the theory and practice of global politics; and reflect on the tensions and synergies generated by recent efforts to conceptualise them.Demonstrating an innovative and interdisciplinary approach Contemporary Political Agency will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, sociology, political economy and political theory. (shrink)

This book questions the value of the concept of 'agency', a term used in sociological and philosophical literature to refer to individual free will in archaeology. On the one hand it has been argued that previous generations of archaeologists, in explaining social change in terms of structural or environmental conditions, have lost sight of the 'real people' and reduced them to passive cultural pawns, on the other, introducing the concept of agency to counteract this can be said to (...) perpetuate a modern, Western view of the autonomous individual who is free from social constraints. This book discusses the balance between these two opposites, using a range of archaeological and historical case studies, including European and Asian prehistory, classical Greece and Rome, the Inka and other Andean cultures. While focusing on the relevance of 'agency' theory to archaeological interpretation and using it to create more diverse and open-ended accounts of ancient cultures, the authors also address the contemporary political and ethical implications of what is essentially a debate about the definition of human nature. (shrink)

Does religiosity help or hinder the exercise of agency? This article brings new evidence to bear on this long-standing debate, examining the life and work of the indigenous activist and follower of liberation theology, Rigoberta Menchú, in Guatemala, and the experiences of a millenarian community in Brazil, particularly one of its leaders, Dona Dodô. The two cases elucidate the dynamics of agency and piety, challenging the idea that pious individuals lack agency. In particular, the article interrogates the (...) construction of pious women as doubly oppressed by the forces of religion and patriarchy, and argues that, on the contrary, it was in the course of religious observance that Menchú and members of the millenarian community mounted challenges to ecclesiastical as well as political orders. Thus, the article underscores the possibilities for resistance and contention through piety rather than at odds with it. In studying these historical figures, the article looks beyond the Global North, which has inspired much of the theorising on religion and agency, to women and men marginalised by their ethnicity, poverty and rurality. In doing so, it demonstrates how religion can enable action among those far from traditional centres of power. (shrink)

Paget Henry’s (1997; 2000) narratives about the domains of existence in relation to human/social agency raise interesting issues about the theory and praxis of Afro-Caribbean existential discourse. In it, even when the relationships between agency and the material, social and spiritual domains of existence were thematized differently according to the different phases of Afro-Caribbean philosophical thought, the problematic of agency among the three domains raises similar questions across the different phases of Afro-Caribbean philosophy in relation to the (...) theory and praxis of Afro-Caribbean existential discourse. The problem here relates to the charge whether enslaved and colonized people could be credited with cognitive, ethical and social agency in the face of a structure that presents different existential challenges to the ability of the Caribbean people to realise their personhood and live a worthwhile life. This paper argues that the existential issues raised by causal determinism—whether scientific, social or spiritual, rear their ugly heads across the three domains of existence and also through the historical and analytical phases of Afro-Caribbean philosophical thought. The thesis supported in this paper is that, contrary to western scholarship, the Caribbean people have always possessed agency and have used this to overcome existential challenges at different phases of their history. The question whether they have always succeeded in doing this is a different question. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Inanimate Agents Inanimate Needs Animate Agents: Needs and Wants Volitional Agency: Preliminaries Doings, Acts and Actions Human Agency and Action A Historical Overview Human Action as Agential Causation of Movement.

The aim of this paper, is to provide a logical framework for reasoning about actions, agency, and powers of agents and coalitions in game-like multi-agent systems. First we define our basic Dynamic Logic of Agency ( ). Differently from other logics of individual and coalitional capability such as Alternating-time Temporal Logic (ATL) and Coalition Logic, in cooperation modalities for expressing powers of agents and coalitions are not primitive, but are defined from more basic dynamic logic operators of action (...) and (historic) necessity. We show that STIT logic can be reconstructed in . We then extend with epistemic operators, which allows us to distinguish capability and power. We finally characterize the conditions under which agents are aware of their capabilities and powers. (shrink)

This book consists of eleven new essays that provide new insights into classical and contemporary issues surrounding free will and human agency. They investigate topics such as the nature of practical knowledge and its role in intentional action; mental content and explanations of action; recent arguments for libertarianism; the situationist challenge to free will; freedom and a theory of narrative configuration; the moral responsibility of the psychopath; and free will and the indeterminism of quantum mechanics. Also tackling some (...) class='Hi'>historical precursors of contemporary debates, taken together these essays demonstrate the need for an approach that recognizes the multifaceted nature of free will. This book provides essential reading for anyone interested in the current scholarship on free will. (shrink)

Hermeneutics in the twentieth century opened the way for thought of history and time in terms of the very emergence of meaning or the “interpretation” of being as such. Referring to Heidegger and his successors, this chapter contends that the themes of historicity and temporality grant philosophical access to truth and universality in experience without the demand for an “objective” view of things‐in‐themselves or of the very conditions of rationality and human agency. It begins with a reflection on Heidegger's (...) radical appropriation of the older hermeneutic tradition. The chapter also argues that the core themes of hermeneutics, historicity and temporality, open the way for rethinking our relation to truth and universality. Finally, the chapter highlights that while hermeneutics discloses the irreducibly historical and temporal nature of our existential situation as finite human beings without the idea of an independent and objectively certain relation to reality. (shrink)

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe have attempted to save the concept of ?hegemony? from its economistic and essentialist Marxist roots by incorporating the linguistic influences of post?structuralist theory. Their major Marxist detractors criticise their trajectory as a ?descent into discourse? ? a decay from well?grounded, material reality into the idealistic and problematic realm of language and discourse. Both sides of the debate seem to agree on one thing: the line from Marxism to post?Marxism is the line from the economy to (...) language, from ?reality? to discourse. This article focuses on Gramsci?s writings on language to argue against both sides of this debate. It illustrates how language is central to Gramsci?s historical materialism and that he does not oppose it to materiality. It argues that Gramsci adopted the very term hegemony substantially from his university studies in linguistics ? the debates from which Ferdinand de Saussure also developed structuralism. For Gramsci, such linguistic issues were directly related to the ?questione della lingua? and Italian unification. Moreover, language lies at the centre of Gramsci?s understanding of the relationship between coercion and consent. This not only troubles Laclau & Mouffe?s reading of Gramsci, but it illuminates a more productive conception of hegemony that can address recent debates around post?structuralism and the use of ?hegemony? to analyse globalisation and an increasingly technological and electronic world. (shrink)

This article considers two themes in Butler's work: the dialectic of subject formation - that the autonomous subject is instituted through constraint - and the relation between the psyche and the social. With regard to the former, the introduction of a notion of historicity into a conception of the symbolic yields a concept of agency. Nonetheless, this concept of agency still lacks social specificity. By reconfiguring the psyche as an effect of the interiorization of social norms, Butler introduces (...) the destabilizing force of the category of the unconscious into constructivist accounts of identity. This sociocentric reworking of the psyche-social relations provides a nuanced account of gender identity, but it results in a negative model of action as the displacement of constraining social norms. It is also important for a conception of agency to include an account of the creative dimensions of action where actors actively appropriate conflicting socio-cultural values to institute new collective forms of identity. (shrink)

Living agency is subject to a normative dimension (good-bad, adaptive-maladaptive) that is absent from other types of interaction. We review current and historical attempts to naturalize normativity from an organism-centered perspective, identifying two central problems and their solution: (1) How to define the topology of the viability space so as to include a sense of gradation that permits reversible failure, and (2) how to relate both the processes that establish norms and those that result in norm-following behavior. We (...) present a minimal metabolic system that is coupled to a gradient-climbing chemotactic mechanism. Studying the relationship between metabolic dynamics and environmental resource conditions, we identify an emergent viable region and a precarious region where the system tends to die unless environmental conditions change. We introduce the concept of normative field as the change of environmental conditions required to bring the system back to its viable region. Norm-following, or normative action, is defined as the course of behavior whose effect is positively correlated with the normative field. We close with a discussion of the limitations and extensions of our model and some final reflections on the nature of norms and teleology in agency. (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of Robert Stern's work on the theme of Kantian ethics. It begins by focusing on the relation between Kant's account of obligation and his view of autonomy, arguing that this leaves room for Kant to be a realist about value. Stern then considers where this places Kant in relation to the question of moral scepticism, and in relation to the principle of 'ought implies can', and examines this principle in its own right. The papers then (...) move beyond Kant himself to his wider influence and to critics of his work, and the volume concludes with a consideration of a broadly Kantian critique of divine command ethics offered by Stephen Darwall. General themes considered in this volume include value, perfectionism, agency, autonomy, moral motivation, moral scepticism, and obligation, as well as the historical place of Kant's ethics and its influence on thinkers up to the present day. (shrink)

This paper identifies and explains three of the philosophically substantial senses in which Nietzsche writes of the historical character of things and argues that, according to Nietzsche, recognizing these three distinct senses is necessary to understand subjectivity. I refer to these three senses as “general historicity,” “special historicity,” and “narrativity.” According to general historicity, history is the continuity of powerful transindividual processes that shape or determine present conditions or events. According to special historicity, certain things are constituted by meanings (...) only available through historical appeals; the human abilities to interpret, organize, remember, and forget allow for a continuation of the past into the present and a protention of the future such that diachronic patterns take on significance and constitute the character of things. These two forms of historicity, according to Nietzsche, provoke a “self-contradiction in the form of time” that can be resolved by satisfying three constraints: “active forgetting,” “retroactive force,” and the absence of “revenge against time.” Narrativity, which offers a metahistorical account of the self-relation that emerges in relation to general and special historicity, satisfies these constraints. History in the sense of narrativity comprises the actualizing of historical agency by integrating historical contributions in a way that itself takes the form of stories. Narrativity, that is, is the historical form of the active mediation of historical contributions; it thus clarifies the ways in which human subjectivity is both determined and determining, and how these two elements are inextricable from one another. (shrink)

The corporatization of U.S. health care has directed cost containment efforts toward scrutinizing the clinical decisions of physicians. This stimulated a variety of new utilization management interventions, particularly in hospital and managed care settings. Recent changes in fee-for-service medicine and physicians' traditional agency relationships with patients, purchasers, and insurers are examined here. New information systems monitoring of physician ordering behavior has already begun to impact on physician autonomy and the relationship of physicians to provider organizations in both for-profit and (...) not-for-profit sectors. As managed care practice settings proliferate, serious ethical questions will be raised about agency relationships with patients.This article examines health system dynamics altering the historical agency relationship between the physician and patient and eroding the traditional autonomy of the medical profession in the United States. The corporatization of medicine and the accompanying information systems monitoring of physician productivity is seen to account of such change, now posing serious ethical dilemmas. (shrink)