- 28 Jul 2010 23:00
#13459674
I think the latter quote by Marx is fairly reasonable, however it doesn't resolve the question of agency. The question of agency concerns whether or not actors, or to what degree agents are originators of their actions. Agency also concerns reflexivity, or the capacity to be both self-consciously purposive in our actions and to be able to give an account of them. So the basic question is: To what extent do actors have agency, and to what extent are actors aware of what they are doing and why they are doing what they do?
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past--Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
I think the latter quote by Marx is fairly reasonable, however it doesn't resolve the question of agency. The question of agency concerns whether or not actors, or to what degree agents are originators of their actions. Agency also concerns reflexivity, or the capacity to be both self-consciously purposive in our actions and to be able to give an account of them. So the basic question is: To what extent do actors have agency, and to what extent are actors aware of what they are doing and why they are doing what they do?
Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs 'pass,' so long as nothing challenges them, just as banknotes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
--William James
--William James