Abstract
This paper will look at the results of what has been termed “the crisis of modernism” and the related rise of postmodern perspectives in the 19th and 20th centuries. It concentrates on what is arguably the chief casualty of this crisis – human agency – and the social science that has developed out of the crisis. We argue that modern and postmodern social science ultimately obviate human agency in the understanding of what it means to be a human being. Attention is given to the contemporary intellectual world and the way in which it has been deeply informed by neo-Hegelian and other postmodern scholarly trends, particularly in accounting for how agency has come to play little role in social science understanding of human action. The paper also offers an alternative conception of human agency to the commonly endorsed libertarian model of free choice. Finally, the paper argues that this view of agency preserves meaning and purpose in human action and counters the pervasive social science worldview that sacrifices agency and meaning to powerful invisible abstractions.
Highlights
It has frequently been argued that Enlightenment thought, as it matured from the early 16th century and on through the late 19th century, exalted the rational mind as the source of all knowledge worthy to be deemed real knowledge
One of the principle casualties of causal explanations grounded in either material substances or abstract, invisible causes is the possibility of any sort of meaningful human agency
There is, an alternative way of understanding human agency, one that is based on a conceptual foundation sturdy enough to support it, but which, ironically, requires that we essentially give up our understanding based on the hegemony of the autonomous rational self, and its ability to choose for itself and impose its will on the world, as the foundation of our agency and our human nature
Summary
It has frequently been argued (see, e.g., Gay, 1969; Outram, 1995; Beiser, 1996; Gottlieb, 2016; Pinker, 2018; Williams and Gantt, 2018) that Enlightenment thought, as it matured from the early 16th century and on through the late 19th century, exalted the rational mind as the source of all knowledge worthy to be deemed real knowledge. The finished form of this creative rational process was thought to be found in formal logic and scientific discourse that could be shown to embody or pass the test of careful logical analysis in its structure, claims, and conclusions This logic test, in more recent centuries, has assumed the form of empirical demonstration, validation, or falsification. In our contemporary intellectual climate, it seems that such empirical demonstrations take their most impressive form, in the activities of the natural sciences and the technologies they produce (Wooton, 2015) Rational science, as it developed, offered the promise of control over nature in the service of humankind on such a scale that a great host of human needs seemed on the brink of being met. As more human needs were met, the success of such control and technology gave impetus (and perhaps even lent legitimacy) to a sometimes subtle and unnoticed turning of attention away from human needs that had hitherto been largely physical and economic and toward human wants, many of which became mental, psychological, and emotional, or what we might term “mere desires.” With tangible needs largely fulfilled – at least in principle – it seemed conceivable and legitimate to turn attention to the fulfillment of mere desires
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