Concept

Agency (philosophy)

Overview

Agency is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment. In some contexts, the exercise of agency is linked to questions of moral responsibility, and may pertain to questions of moral agency.

Agency may either be classified as unconscious, involuntary behavior, or purposeful, goal directed activity (intentional action). An agent typically has some sort of immediate awareness of their physical activity and the goals that the activity is aimed at realizing. In 'goal directed action' an agent implements a kind of direct control or guidance over their own behavior.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Philosophers who discussed Agency (philosophy)

• Pierre Bourdieu
• Judith Butler
• Claude Lévi-Strauss
• Shaun Gallagher

Related ideas

• Moral agency
• Self-reflection
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Idealism
• Karl Marx
• Geist
• Sociology
• Marxism
• Materialism
• Cybernetics
• Psychology
• Moral responsibility
• Causality
• Determinism
• Social structure
• Structure and agency
• David Hume
• Sense of agency

Opposing perspectives

• Action (philosophy)
• Free will
• Neuroscience of free will
• Agent causation

Place in the tradition

Part of Consequentialism.

Explore Agency (philosophy) in the interactive graph →