Introduction

Chapter one, “Introduction,” provides a summary of the primary arguments and themes found throughout the book. It lays out a philosophical approach to the nature of human being, and introduces the overarching framework of dialectical critical realist philosophy and social theory, on which this book draws. The chapter also introduces central themes of the agent-structure problem and social ontology. The chapter concludes by discussing the problem of abstraction and specialized terminology, contrasting “experience-distant” with “experience-near concepts” used by philosophers and social scientists to think about the world revolving around human existence.