Afterword
Agency is fundamental to all we are and do, whether its context is thought, feeling, or action. But philosophy has no coherent view of agency because Descartes inverted the idea of it before Kant and Hegel transformed his version of the cogito into the transcendental ego and the Absolute. The idea was further distorted by three issues considered here: Subjectivists reduce agency to the circle of conscious experience while believing that mind thinking itself is its principal or only activity. Behaviorists restrict the evidence for intention to the data available to observers: seeing me cross the street, they tell what they’ve seen and how they construe it. Hard determinists affirm that agency is only a vehicle for energy that flows from an ancient past to a distant future. Nothing, they say, is up to us. These are not the three postulates of anyone’s unified theory, though their convergence deters commentary that would deepen and extend our self-understanding. Where no topic is more fundamental to human reality, we purge these muddles, then emphasize autonomy, control, collaboration, and appraisal. This is agency responsive to others and itself.