ABSTRACT
The descriptions of human being these two Enlightenment thinkers invented, as well as variations introduced by others, pervade the social and natural sciences. Post-war French thought identified the "growing instability of the subject in the writings of Koyve, Hyppolite and Sartre" until proclamations declared the death of that human being who no longer seemed either self-evident or desirable. Subjectivity implies the ongoing construction of human being, human being in flux, in processat every moment being disciplined, regulated, normalized, produced, and, at the same time, resisting, shifting, changing, and producing. Social justice agendas popular in qualitative inquiry are also mostly grounded in an essentialist liberal humanist individual, but in this research the focus is on the intentionality, innate agency, and free will of participants. In this work, an emancipatory model of agency claims that individuals can lift themselves out of oppression and alienation once their consciousness is raised no matter the circumstances, though it is debatable.
