ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book portrays the richness of phenomenological accounts of human agency. Clearly, different approaches to the problem of human agency emerge relative to these ideas that have been associated with “phenomenology” as a philosophical method, and it is quite unclear how they relate. Although often taken as self-evident, the relation between the historical and the methodological implications of “phenomenological” philosophy becomes the more controversial the closer one looks. Engaging with more recent discussions and basic questions concerning human agency, the book shows that the history of phenomenology is not a mausoleum of dead ideas and thinkers but occasion for a fruitful dialogue with the past. It focuses on general issues concerning the phenomenology of action, and addresses specific aspects or dimensions of human agency such as freedom, rational action, deliberation, choice, and morality.
