Samuel, Jack
(2020)
The Sociality of Agency.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Practical philosophy is dominated by two pictures of human agency: the Kantian image of a rational, empirically unaffected will and the Humean image of instrumental reasoning from desires, aims, values, or interests. Because Kantian and Humean accounts of agency emphasize the individual over the social, they lack explanatory resources important to understanding how others can matter to us as agents in the right way. Insufficiently social conceptions of agency, I argue, risk depicting agents as alienated from one another, leaving mysterious how we can get a normative grip on one another. Taking inspiration from GWF Hegel and Iris Murdoch, I develop a conception of agency on which it constitutively depends on standing in relations of mutual recognition with other agents. I argue that a crucial part of becoming an agent is becoming reflectively self-conscious of our sociality—of the historically conditioned nature of mutually recognitive relations. A significant upshot of the picture of agency that emerges is a new perspective on individual moral progress. It's not the purely personal achievement suggested on the Kantian and Humean accounts of agency. Rather, individual moral progress is a political achievement, bound up in both the inner struggle to achieve moral clarity and the social struggle for an ethical form of life.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
|
| Date: |
8 June 2020 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
6 April 2020 |
| Approval Date: |
8 June 2020 |
| Submission Date: |
9 April 2020 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
112 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Philosophy |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Agency, Alienation, Metaethics, Hegel, Iris Murdoch |
| Date Deposited: |
08 Jun 2020 16:56 |
| Last Modified: |
08 Jun 2020 16:56 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/38608 |
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