A `Show' of Agency is Enough

Abstract

Descartes and Cartesians such as Harwood Fisher (1995) claim that human agency is only known to us as such intellectually, through supposed linguistically indifferent concepts or ideas of agency centering it unproblematically in isolated individuals. In claiming, as I do, that our different ways of being an agent are socially constructed, I do not deny that individuals may have a unique sense of the relation of their own activity to their own circumstances, or that they initially react in unique ways to shows of agency in others. But what I do deny is that when formulating claims as to the meaning of their own activities, individuals should be treated as the sole authorities as to the appropriate voicing of any such claims. Fisher fails to notice the ineradicably linguistic and normative nature of our everyday social relations to each other.