ABSTRACT

Phenomenology has primarily been concerned with questions about knowledge and ontology. However, in recent years the rise of interest and research in phenomenology and embodiment, the emotions and cognitive science has seen the concept of agency move to a central place in the study of phenomenology generally.

The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency is an outstanding reference source to this topic and the first volume of its kind. It comprises twenty-seven chapters written by leading international contributors. Organised into two parts, the following key topics are covered:

• major figures
• the metaphysics of agency
• rationality
• voluntary and involuntary action
• moral experience
• deliberation and choice
• phenomenology of agency and the cognitive sciences
• phenomenology of freedom
• embodied agency

Essential reading for students and researchers in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and philosophy of cognitive science The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency will also be of interest to those in closely related subjects such as sociology and psychology.

chapter |3 pages

Introduction

part I|255 pages

Important Figures

chapter 5|14 pages

The intentionality and positionality of spontaneous acts

Adolf Reinach’s account of agency

chapter 7|17 pages

The varieties of activity

Hans Reiner’s contribution

chapter 8|14 pages

Martin Heidegger

From fluid action to Gelassenheit

chapter 9|11 pages

Edith Stein

Psyche and action

chapter 11|13 pages

Determined to act

On the structural place of acting in Sartre’s ontology of subjectivity

chapter 12|11 pages

Emmanuel Levinas

Freedom and agency

chapter 13|16 pages

Hannah Arendt

Plural agency, political power, and spontaneity

chapter 14|14 pages

Merleau-Ponty and agency

chapter 15|19 pages

Paul Ricœur

A phenomenological hermeneutics of meaningful action

chapter 16|11 pages

Operari Sequitur Esse

Hermann Schmitz’s attitudinal theory of agency, freedom, and responsibility

chapter 17|16 pages

Hubert Dreyfus

Skillful coping and the nature of everyday expertise

chapter 18|25 pages

Life is an adventure

László Tengelyi’s phenomenology of action

part II|153 pages

Systematic Perspectives

part |88 pages

Phenomenology of Agency 1: General Issues

chapter 20|14 pages

Ambulo!

Structures of phenomenology and ontology in action

chapter 21|22 pages

Will-power

Essentially embodied agentive phenomenology, by way of O’Shaughnessy

part |63 pages

Phenomenology of Agency 2: Aspects of Agency

chapter 23|10 pages

The phenomenology of free agency

chapter 26|10 pages

Involuntariness

Actions and their context

chapter 27|16 pages

Moral experience

Its existence, describability, and significance