HUMAN AGENCY: THE HABITS OF OUR BEING

zyxwvuts zyxwvu zyxwvut zyxwv The Sourhem Journal q/’ Philosophy (1988) Vol. X X V I , No. 2 H U M A N AGENCY: T H E HABITS OF OUR BEING Vincent M. Colapietro Saint Mary’s College zyxw At the conclusion of The Acts of Our Being, Edward Pols touches upon a deeply important but widely neglected aspect of human agency. This aspect is the receptivity of agents qua agents. In Pols’own words, the rational agent “is extraordinarily receptive to the general (ideal, universal, transcendental) feature that informs all particular primary beings whatever,” (1982: 2 12; emphasis added) By “primary being” Pols means “one that has a continuity even though it may be in continuous change; one that, if it is complex, may be analyzed in terms of a n infrastructure in which there will be other primary beings of less complexity; [and] one for which we cannot give a thoroughgoing explanation” (Pols 1982: 196). A primary being so defined is a particular thing. Yet “any particular thing is never just a particular thing. I t always-and it is no less particular for thatexpresses, manifests, is a n instantiation of, what we may loosely call the nature of things”(Po1s 1982: 20 I ; cf. 202). While this expressive capacity is common to all primary beings, it is “so magnified by the refractive power of the rational agent that attends to its own rationality that it becomes the appropriate governor of action” (Pols 1982: 2 12). Implied in this characterization of rational agency is an image with profound implications. For t o speak of the refractive power of the rational agent is to call to mind the image of a prism, a medium through which light passes, only t o be transformed; this image, in turn, suggests the notion of a medium in general (Cf. Peirce 5.283). This paper is a n attempt to explore some of the more important implications of viewing agency as such a power, with special attention being paid to what this view of agency implies about the habits of our being-those dispositions which uniquely characterize the individual as such (Cf.. Colapietro 1986). At the center of this exploration is a view of agency derived from Pols: rational agents constitute one type of primary being, a type of being distinguished by the degree and manner in which it is receptive to the zyxwvut zyxw zyxwvutsr Vincent M . Colapietro, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Saint MaryS College (Winona. MN), haspublished articles on Peirce, James, and Dewey in such journals as the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society andThe Southern Journal of Philosophy. He is the auihor of a forthcoming book on Peirce (SUN Y Press) and is presently writing a book on John William Miller. I53 general, especially the ideal. However, I shall explore this topic from a very different angle than the one from which Pols conducts his inquiry. An important feature of the way in which he conceives the ontological status of rational agents is that, while he explicitly asserts that such agents encompass in their very nature other primary beings, he curiously ignores that they are themselves encompassed by more inclusive spheres of being. This results in Pols highlighting the fact that rational agents rely on a n infrastructure, yet appearing to minimize the equally important fact that such agents are embedded in a n environment or, more generally, in a multiplicity of orders (e.g., a historical period, a cultural setting, an ecological niche, etc.). However, to see rational agency as a refractive power requires us to see such agency embedded in a variety of contexts t o which it is “extraordinarily receptive.” These contexts are not extraneous t o the acquisition and possession of agency, let alone its functioning or operation. It is obviously not so much that Pols denies this facet of agency as it is that, given his conception of primary being, he does not seem able to give this facet its due. John Dewey and, to be sure, other thinkers (e.g., Justus Buchler) have been deeply concerned with putting into proper perspective the embedded character of human agency. I n their view, the unity and autonomy of the human agent is such that they are not only compatible with but actually dependent upon the agent being located in a multiplicity of contexts and enmeshed in a web of interdependencies (e.g., Buchler 1966a: 175). If they are right on this point, then individually identifiable agents are not just thespatially isolatable things our predominantly visual imagination is inclined to take such agents to be (Dewey 1954: 187). In Human Natureand Conduct John Dewey notes that there are good reasons for the usual attribution of acts to the person from whom they immediately proceed (1957: 18). However, this attribution is misunderstood when the proximate source ofactions is taken t o be their exclusive source (cf. Buchler 1966a: 174f; also Buchler 1966b: 7). For acting is no more complete within the human agent than breathing is complete within the human body. Indeed,just as breathing is a n affair of the air as truly as of the lungs (Dewey 1957: 17), so acting is a n affair of the social environment as truly as of the individual actor. While we readily recognize the transactional character of physiological functioning, we generally overlook the transactional character of human conduct. As a consequence, moral dispositions are seen as belonging exclusively t o a n individual self; this self is thereby isolated from both its natural and social surroundings (Dewey 1957: 18). Insofar as the image of a n isolated self, in however implicit a form, is still a part of our intellectual outlook, we are still haunted by the ghost of the Cartesian subject, a thinking thing whose residence in a living body and whose association with other thinking things are incidental to it. To reject this view (i.e., to zyxwvuts zy zyxw 154 zyxwvu zyxwv exorcise the ghost of the cogiro) and t o see the agent as a trans-actor means denying individual agents the exclusive ownership of their particular actions. Even so, it does not imply the unqualified denial of moral agency in its ordinary sense, for to insist that moral agency is a transactional affair permits-in fact, demands-the attribution of actions to the person from whom they manifestly flow. Dewey makes a powerful case for the need t o revise our ordinary conception of moral agency. To modify this concept does not amount to denying there are moral agents; indeed, such denials hardly ever have a rightful place in responsible philosophizing. In the words of Whitehead, “Philosophy destroys its usefulness when it indulges in brilliant feats of explaining away” (1978: 17; cf. Buchler 1979: 81). However, such questioning does deny or at least challenge the adequacy of our understanding of such agents. Even the most general of our concepts tend t o be unduly narrow in ways we seldom, if ever, suspect (cf. Whitehead 1967: 208). How this often happens is that, in framing the concept of some phenomenon or discrirninandum, certain conspicuous features are highlighted t o the neglect of less conspicuous, though no less essential, features (cf. Buchler 1966a: 42; Whitehead 1978: 7-8). The result is that concepts framed in this manner are one-sided. One of the ways in which this one-sidedness might be overcome is, as Whitehead suggests, “by comparing the various schemes of abstraction which are well founded in our various types of experience,” e.g., the schemes of religious abstractions and scientific abstractions ( 1967: 18). “Philosophy frees itself from the taint of ineffectiveness by its close relations with religion and with science, natural and sociological”( 1978: 15). While the dominant schools of contemporary philosophy in western culture, especially in the English speaking world, have generally attempted t o maintain a close relation to science, their relationship to religion has been far more distant and hesitant. However, if (as Whitehead contends) “religion is among the data of experience which philosophy must weave into its own scheme”( 1978: 15-16), the neglect of this range of data amounts to nothing less than an impoverishment of philosophy. As I shall attempt to illustrate later, our ordinary conception of moral agency is a reflection of such impoverishment. In particular, if we totally disregard such religious concepts as witness, grace and reverence and the experiences from which such concepts are derived (cf. Smith 1973: 25ff), we are doomed to offer a pathetic caricature of moral agency. The principal objective of metaphysical inquiry is to articulate a set of categories of ever more adequate generality (Buchler 1979: xi, 81; Buchler 1966b: 187; Whitehead 1978: 3; 8; 17). The articulation of such categories is nothing less than an adventure in ideas; the need for query and, hence, the opportunities for creativity are omnipresent (Gelber and Wallace 1986: 106; I 18). Moreover, the articulation o f a set of categories demands the criticism and revision of concepts whose serviceability is zyx zy 155 undeniable. In the process of such criticism we appear to slight a proven and often practical serviceability for a problematic and purely speculative generality. Moreover, the more radical these revisions are, the greater the opportunity for novel insights but also the greater the threat of stultifying obscurity (cf. Peirce 5.393). Even so, the promise of a more comprehensive and penetrating vision justifies-at least, for some of us-the risks inherent in the attempt to articulate such a vision. I n particular, "it seems better to risk possible obscurity in the promise of invention than to risk the curtailment of invention by the dread of obscurity. For in philosophy the chances of significant invention are much smaller than the chances of eventual clarification" (Buchler 1966b: 191; cf. Gelber and Wallace 1986: 117). Hence, a t the risk of obscurity, I shall present a concept of agency which, in certain fundamental respects, runs counter to the ordinary way in which we conceive human actors. (However, cf. Peirce 1.368; also 8.264) My central challenge to the traditional notion of moral agency focuses on the character of the power which we ordinarily attribute to agents (cf. Loomer 1976). Our overwhelming tendency has been to concentrate on the capacity of agents to move themselves; hence, agency has predominantly been conceived to reside in a reflexive sort of power, the power of the self over itself. When we have considered agents a s beings capable of being moved by others, the main drift of such considerations has been to see in these cases a threat to agency: to be moved by another has ordinarily been seen as a n encroachment upon the capacity to move oneself. Thus, agency as a receptive sort of power, the power of the self to be open to the other, has been largely neglected. Yet in any adequate portrait of human agency both reflexive and receptive power must be given a prominent place. Moreover, it is not that. at one time, a person exerts reflexive power and, at another, receptive power; rather it is that rational agency is a complex capacity.. Accordingly, reflexive power (the power of the self over itselfl a n d receptive power (the power of the self to receive the other) are distinguishable but inseparable aspects of a complex yet integral being (cf. Buchler 1966b: 131;,cf. Buchler 1966a: 174). Precisely because they are distinguishable, they can be conceived and discussed in abstraction from each other. However, to take one of these abstracted'dimensions of human agency in isolation from the other to be the essense of the matter is to commit what Whitehead calls the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (e.g., Whitehead 1978: 7-8). Of course, there are extremely different ways in which we may be moved by something or someone other than ourselves, not all of which appear to encroach upon our agency. In fact, certain ways of being open to and moved by others (e.g., a sympathetic disposition or a compassionate response) appear to be essential to human agency (cf. Dewey 1960: 127-132, esp. 130). In general, the ways in which agents may be moved by forces or powers outside of themselves can be zyxwvut zyxw I56 classified as cases of either coercion or persuasion (Whitehead; cf. Camus 1974: 73). In cases of coercion, agents are moved in ways which do, in fact, amount to a n encroachment upon their agency; however, in cases of persuasion, they are moved in respects which, in truth, result in a n enhancement of their agency. The paradigm of coercion is t o be forcibly moved against one’s will, while the paradigm of persuasion is to be swayed by a n appeal that respects the will of the person to whom the appeal is being made. On the basis of these paradigms, it is not hard to see why coercion is customarily associated with violence, whereas persuasion is ordinarily linked with gentleness. Moreover, the ability to coerce tends to be equated with power. In contrast, the capacity to persuade in my sense is often seen as a noble but ineffective means of moving people. For my ability to persuade you depends, in some measure, upon your openness to being persuaded; my ability to coerce you rests simply upon a n inequality of strength in my favor (Arendt 1972: 142ff). An adequate concept of human agency requires us to see that a certain manner of openness to others (what might be called the openness to being persuaded) is as essential a feature of such agents as a certain form of control over self; not only are both of these features essential to a proper understanding of moral actors, but also these features are inseparably linked to one another. This point is, in fact, at least implied in the passage from Pols’ book quoted above: What is common t o all primary beings, namely, their receptivity to that which is general (ideal, universal, transcendental), is “so magnified by the refractive power of the rational agent that attends to its own rationality that it becomes the appropriate governor of action.” In other words, it is by virtue of our receptivity that we are autonomous. In this context, receptivity means our capacity to be moved by the other as a result of the persuasive appeal, rather than the brute force, of the other. The difference is as patent as the difference between the way in which Jacob Timmerman, the author of Prisoner Without a Name. Cell Without a Number, was moved by the ideal of truth to bear witness against those in “power” in Argentina and the way in which those in “power” imprisoned the dissidents, including Timmerman himself. The openness characteristic of rational agents is capable of becoming highly nuanced and flexible. It makes possible differential behavior toward different things; moreover, it becomes actual as the direct result of such differential behavior. There are important respects in which we act differently towards stones than towards dogs and differently towards both ofthese than towards people(Dewey 1960: 169;cf. p. 171). One of these respects concerns accountability. While we d o not hold stones in any measure accountable and dogs only to a limited degree, we customarily hold human beings of a certain description (e.g., “normal ”) accountable for their actions. In general, we attempt to respond to things in ways attuned t o what they are. In particular, there must be zyxwvu zyxwvu zyxwvu zyxw zy 157 zyxw zyxwv zyxwvu something about a being which enables us-that is, others-to hold that being socially, legally or morally accountable for what s / he does. Pols calls this “ontic responsibility.” Responsibility in this sense means that a being is so constituted in its very nature as to make accountability appropriate, just, and seemly (1982: 26). T o say that persons have ontic responsibility is to say that they authentically have the status and the efficacy they commonly are granted, namely, the status of rational agents and the efficacy of causal powers (lbid.). If we grant persons this status and efficacy, then we are required to see persons-as-agents as thesources of their own acts and also to see them as permanently (or, at least, deeply) qualified by at least some of their actions (Pols 1982: 29). Agents transform themselves in the very process of acting. While not all action is directly transitive (i.e., an exertion which transforms some aspect of the world other than the agent), all action is immanent (an exertion which affects the dispositions of the agent). Thus, in the formation of habits, we discern one of the most important ways in which agents transform themselves. Even more radically, it may be said that a being constitutes itself as an agent by its very actions and the habits resulting from these actions. Accordingly, Pols asserts: “When we act, something comes into being: in the first place, our act itself; in the second, ourselves, for in some measure we come into being by virtue of ouracts”( 1982: I ) . What comes into being by virtue of our acts is not only a transitory being, a momentary agency (the agent-in-act), but a more or less integrated character. We might recall the words of John Dewey: “our actions not only lead up to other actions which follow as their effects but they also leave a n enduring impress on the one who performs them, strengthening and weakening permanent tendencies to act. This fact is familiar to us in the existence of habit” (1960: 13). Actions d o not live and die in the moment, for they ordinarily generate or strengthen certain habits and occasionally destroy or undermine certain other habits. Specific habits are not only formed; they interpenetrate one another. And character “is the interpenetration of habits”(Dewey 1957: 37). Thus, by our actions we decide not only what we are going to d o but also who we are going t o be (Dewey 1960: 15). In light of this, it would be helpful to distinguish between ontic responsibility as an original capacity and as a developed capacity. The former is the disposition to acquire certain kinds of dispositions, whereas the latter is the presence of these dispositions as actual traits of the embedded self. That is, as an original capacity, ontic responsibility is nothing other than the capacity to acquire ever more flexible and nuanced modes of response; as a developed capacity, it is the actual network of interpenetrating habits by virtue of which theagent exercises control over behavior. It is important t o stress that agents act by the strength of their habits. Habits are sources of strength, ifthey are good habits. In this connection, the words of Peirce are illuminating: 158 zyxw zyxwvuts Some undisciplined young persons may have come to think of acquired human habits chiefly as constraints; and undoubtedly they all are so in a measure. But good habits [i.e., virtues] are in much higher measure powers than they are limitations; and the greater the number even of acquired habits are good, like most all those that can properly be called natural (MS 930: 31). Ontic responsibility as an original capacity is, thus, the capacity to acquire capacities of ever greater power and scope. In order to illuminate the acquisition of these capacities, it is necessary to recall that we are spontaneously active beings before we are genuinely moral agents. That is, moral agency is an eventualachievement (Dewey 1972: 194). It is obviously something achieved by the individual in community with others. As Dewey wrote, To learn to be human is to develop, through the give-and-take of communication, an effective sense of being an individually distinctive member of a community; one who understands and appreciates its beliefs, desires and methods, and who contributes to a further conversion of organic powers into human resources of values. But this translation is never finished (1954: 154). Let me outline very quickly this ever unfinished process of how the human organism evolves into a moral agent. To begin at the beginning, we must confront what Hannah Arendt calls the fact of natality: we are born into a world which long antedates our birth and far transcends our comprehension (Arendt 1968: 174; cf. Dewey 1957: 78). This fact requires that some adults mediate between the infant and the world; they do so as both protectors of the child and representatives of the world. Their task is simultaneously to protect the child from the world and to interpret the world to the child. The goal ofthis task is to enable children to interpret the world for themselves and, accordingly, no longer require the protection of others. Such mediation is the original form of the educational process; in turn, such a process expresses (at least in its most genuine form) the twofold love of the educator. For this process of mediation begins at the point when educators decide they lovethe world enough to assume responsibility for it and they love their children enough not to thrust these children into the world unprepared. We are born, but become, agents and we do so in an initially strange world mediated by the solicitous interventions of mature agents. Hence, for the infant, the world wears a human face, if not always a humane one. This situation defines the context in which the human ’organism evolves into a moral agent. As Dewey noted, “moral life cannot go on without the support of a moral environment” (1958a: 345). Indeed, moral life cannot even take root without the support of the moral community, since moral agency emerges only in response to the insistent demands of the moral community. Among the most important of these demands is that we own up to our actions-that we accept the consequences of what we do. In other words, we become agents through our interactions with others who assume responsibility for themselves I59 and originally for us, but who require that we eventually take responsibility for ourselves. We are held accountable by others for our actions so that we might come to hold ourselves responsible for our conduct (Dewey 1957: 289; 1960: 169). This defines the most important process by which the child comes to internalize the perspective of the generalized other and, thereby, to attain the status of a moral agent; the internalization of this perspective makes possible deliberate thought and deliberate conduct (Mead 1972: 156). Such a n internalization enables one (among other things) to d o unto others as one would have them d o unto oneself. Our experience of what others have done to us in response to acts we have previously committed generates the disposition to imagine what others woulddo in response to a n action we are presently contemplating. This disposition to imagine is one with our disposition to deliberate, since “[dleliberation is actually an imaginative rehearsal of various courses of conduct” (Dewey 1960: 135; cf. 1957: 288). Hence, not only our awareness of ourselves as agents but also the very dispositions which constitute moral agency, the two most important such dispositions being the capacity to respond to the other as such and the willingness to accept the consequences of one’s actions, gradually emerge out of our encounters with others. It would, in truth, be more accurate t o say that these dispositions emerge because of these encounters, thereby underscoring our indebtedness to others. As Dewey insisted, “It is of grace not of ourselves that we lead civilized lives. There is sound sense in the old pagan notion that gratitude is the root of all virtue”( 1957: 23). If we grasp that the virtues themselves are primarily modes of response and also that these modes have their root in gratitude (i.e., in response to the graciousness of what others have enabled us to be), then we are in the position to appreciate the depth to which the habits of our being are both the result and theenhancement of receptivity. Agency in this context means, first and foremost, responsibility; and responsibility here signifies principally two things, our openness to others and the ownership of our actions (Buber 1965: 16). Both aspects of responsibility must be equally emphasized, for the moral agent authentically exists only in a dialectical tension between the self‘s abiding resolves to be answerable for itself and to be responsive to others. However, just for the moment, I shall focus on the reflexive dimension of responsibility (the self as answerable for oneself) rather than the receptive dimension (the self as receptive to others). T o be an agent means to take responsibility not only for what one does but also for who one is. The practical acceptance of such radical responsibility is the chief mark of moral agency, at least as I a m using that expression. In this sense, the moral agent is one who is characteristically disposed to accept responsibility for who s/ he is as well as for what s / he does. If such a disposition is not among the habits of an individual’s being, then it is problematic whether that individual is a moral agent in the full sense. zyxw zyxw 160 Such agents are deeply committed to owning up to their actions. Accordingly, any flight from responsibility is, in effect, a denial of agency. Usually the flight from responsibility is circumstantial, and here most often in reference to a circumstance in which the agent has failed in the eyes of some tribunal, be that tribunal the agent’s own conscience or some other’sjudgment. I n these cases, to deny my own agency is to claim that, in a particular circumstance, I was not so much the source of my own actions as the plaything of external forces. As we have seen, the emergence of my agency is due to the attributions of actions to me by others; these attributions lead to the recognition that, by and large, the actions which flow from me are mine. The denial of my agency consists in my claim that while certain acts flowed from me they were not of me, i.e., they were not truly mine. William James has suggested that: “Philosophy has always turned on grammatical particles. [For example] With, near, next, like, from, toward, against, because, for, through, my . . .” (1971: 26). This suggestion has relevance to ourconcern. For in the most customary way of conceiving these matters, the agent o r actor is that from which an action flows, whereas a recipient is that to which a n action is done. If we sever agency from passivity and thus, by implication, from receptivity, and if we make agents the absolute sources of their own deeds, then we yield what might be called the traditional portrait of moral agency (see, e.g., Taylor 1964: 57). “In” and “from” are conjoined to yield this depiction. In some versions, the agent is portrayed as a center in the person from which actions flow, while in other versions agents themselves are depicted as these very centers of control (cf. Locke 1959: 1, 324; also Kenny 1971: 65-74). Often the center from which the actions flow, the “inside”of the agent, is characterized as a region which is inaccessible to everyone except the agent. Thus, Jacques Maritain speaks of the “innermost heart” as “that inaccessible center where the person day after day weaves his own fate and ties the bonds binding him t o God”(Maritain 1965: 36). O r William James asserts: “The deepest thing in our nature is this Binnenleben . . . this dumb region of the heart in which we dwell alone with our willingness and unwillingnesses, our faiths and fears” (1974: 30-31; cf. James 1950: I, 226). We discover “in these crepuscular depths of personality the sources” from which all our outer deeds and decisions flow (James 1974: 31). Thus, the ascription of actions t o a n agent customarily entails envisioning the agent as a being in whom there is an inaccessible center which is the absolute source of all outward behavior (cf. Buchler on inner and outer 1966: 1960. In contrast t o this portrait of the agent, there is the picture suggested by such thinkers as Peirce and Buchler. For them, the human agent is not defined in terms of a n inaccessible center but rather in terms of a n “outreaching identity” (Peirce) or “communicative essence” (Buchler). zyxw zyx zyxwvu zyxw zyxw 161 zyx zyxwvu Peirce challenges the view of the self which insists upon the Binnenleben being, in principle, inaccessible by asking: “But are we shut up in a box of flesh and blood? When I communicate my thoughts and sentiments to a friend with whom I a m in full sympathy, so that my feelings pass into him and 1 a m conscious of what he feels, d o I not live in his brain as well as my own-most literally?”(7.591). For him, persons have a n identity which far transcends the mere animal; in truth, they cannot fully comprehend their own significance; of the eye it is the eyebeam (Ibid.). While persons cannot fully grasp their own “outreaching identity,”they deeply feel the reality of this identity, especially in moments of communion with others; indeed, it is in such moments of communion that individual persons come to feel their absolute worth (Ibid.). Buchler, no less than Peirce, sees n o difficulty in asserting that “an individual can be ‘present in’other individua1s”without. thereby, losing its individuality (1966b: 106). “Man is born in a state of natural debt, being antecedently committed to theexecution or the furtherance of acts that will determine his individual existence”( Buchler 1966b: 3). T h e fact that humans are characterized by such a state of being ineradicably indebted and, thus, by the fate of being perpetually incomplete, “does not cast doubt on the existence of individuals but only emphasizes the extended character of individuality, its communicative essence, and the indefinite boundaries of its relatedness” (Buchler 1966b: 106). Thus, for Maritain and James, privacy in the strongest possible sense marks the essence of agency, while for Peirce and Buchler it is communion in the widest possible sense. For the latter two, then, it is not so much inwardness as response to the other as such that is constitutive ofagency(cf., ironically. James 1950: I, 8; I I). However, if we take into account that our responses emanate from the depths of our being, depths which are frequently inaccessible to others and not even necessarily accessible t o us, then there is some ground for rapprochement between the apparently contradictory views of human agency. Even so, the crucial point is that the inner life is not self-contained but Other-directed: it is the inner life of a n essentially communicative agent. The exercise of such agency both reveals and shapes the individuality of the agent (Dewey 1960: 149). However, for me to speak of “individuality” will strike at least some of my readers a s problematic, since 1 appear to stress the embedded character or relational nature of the moral agent to such a n extent that the individuality of the agent seems t o be dissolved into a network of relations. “Because an individual can be dissociated from this, that, and the other grouping [or association] . . . there grows u p in the mind a n image of a residual individual who is not a member of any association at all”(Dewey 1954: 191). However, this residual individual is a groundless fiction, because it conceives the individual as being severed from all relations to other beings. And there is simply n o warrant for postulating such a being. zyxwvut 162 zy Rather than implying the denial of individuality, the conception of agency defended in this paper provides a way of illuminating the nature of individuality. As Dewey noted, “individuality is inexpugnable and it is of its nature t o assert itself” (1962: 166; cf. Buchler 1979: 40). Accordingly, it is imperative to recognize the fact of individuality; but the recognition of this fact poses, rather than removes, the challenge of understanding the nature of individuality. Conceiving individuality in terms of either indivisibility or independence amounts to misconceiving it. It is not indivisibility (i.e., the absence of internal complexity) or independence (the absence of complex relations) which defines the individual as such; rather it is the distinctive and unique ways in which a being responds to whatever it encounters whichconstitutes its individuality. “Individuality is,” as Dewey noted, “inexpugnable because it is a manner of distinctive sensitivity, selection, choice, response and utilization of conditions” (Dewey 1962: 167). The individuality of a being resides, first and foremost, in its mode of responsiveness; in beings as complex as humans, reflexivity as well as flexibility characterize the patterns of responsiveness which individuate these beings. T o speak here of reflexivity means that beings such as ourselves are capable of responding to not only their own specific response in a situation but also to their general patterns of sensitivity. T o speak here of flexibility means that neither our particular responses in given situations nor our general patterns of susceptibility are fixed or determined in any thoroughgoing way; both the acts and the habits of our being manifest a n element of contingency. Agency has traditionally, and rightfully, been associated with the notion of power. However, the association has been principally with power over. Just as with the connection between agency and individuality, we must not merely acknowledge the fact that agency and power are related; we must grasp the significance of this connection and we must d o so by first illuminating the distinctive sort(s) of power manifested in the exercise of moral agency. As a hint about the nature of this power, we might call to mind a distinction drawn by Charles Peirce between force and power, between “the shame power of brute force, which, even in its own specialty of spoiling things, secures such slight results. . . [and] the creative power of reasonableness, which subdues all other powers, and rules over them with its sceptre, knowledge, and its globe, love”(5.520; cf. Buber 1965: 188). One of the principal differences between force and power is that the former is indifferent to the nature of that which it acts upon, whereas the latter is respectful of this nature. Thus, force tends to degenerate into violence, while power tends to preserve and often to enhance the being with which it operates. In other words, force is essentially a movement against and power primarily is a n action with. As I suggested above, “persuasion” is an apt term to designate the power by which a thing is moved in accord with its own nature. zyxwvuts zyxwvut 163 Intrinsically attractive ideals move us by persuasion; in contrast, brutally forceful actualities move us by coercion. However, our relationship to our own ideals, however intrinsically attractive these ideals may be, is not necessarily the result of persuasion. Moreover, the basis of my relationship to my ideals will profoundly affect thecharacter of my relationship to other beings who are open to the sway of ideals. For example, how 1 stand t o the truth will condition, if not determine, how I stand to those I try topersuadeof“my”truth. (To speak oftruth in terms which imply its possession by some individual o r group is almost always dangerous, since it reverses the proper perspective in which a person o r community are seen as servants, rather than owners, of the truth.) In general how we have become “persuaded” by our ideals will profoundly influence how we endeavor to persuade others of these ideals. Our actions must be seen as moments in a continuum of persuasionor a continuum of imposition. How we are moved and, in turn, how we move ourselves and others are distinguishable but inseparable moments in a single process, a process which Dewey ca1ls“experience”and one for which Buchler coins the term “proception.” Daniel Berrigan suggests that it is perhaps easy for us to treat our enemies as godless because we view our god as our enemy. If we acquiese in our ideals as the result of fearing the vengeful reprisals of a tyrannical parent, we shall impart these ideals in the manner we have received them (cf. Whitehead 1978: 342). In addition, if we encounter others who d o not-at least, evidently-share our ideals, then it is tempting to conceive our task as requiring us to bring them to a n acceptance of o u r ideals in the manner in which we have come to accept them, namely, in violation of our integrity as rational beings. If we espouse our ideals as just that-an espousal-then again we are more likely to impart our ideals in the manner we have accepted them. It is especially in reference t o ideals and t o other beings which manifest the capacity to be swayed by ideals that the distinctive receptivity of moral agent is most clearly seen. T h e innermost center of moral agency is the capacity to be moved by ideals and, as a result of this, t o bear witness to these ideals in a manner commensurate with their character. In the words of William James, “[t]heceaseless whisper of the more permanent ideals, the steady tug of truth and justice, give them but time, must warp the world in their direction”(l971: 22). However, to hear this whisper a n d to provide this time require a degree of stillness and patience which can only result from a long and painstaking discipline of the soul. In light of this consideration, it would be difficult to agree with David Hume’s wholesale rejection of the so-called “monkish virtues.” Recall that in A n Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals he wrote: zy zyxwvuts zyxw zy And as every quality which is useful o r agreeable to ourselves or others is, in common life. allowed to be part of personal merit; so no other will ever be received, where menjudge of 164 things by their natural, unprejudiced reason, without the delusive glosses of superstition and false religion. Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve no manner of purpose; neither advance of man’s fortune in the world, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper (Hume 1972: 270). zyxwv Alasdair MacIntyre speaks of “Hume’s inability to transcend the eighteenth century’s egoistic presuppositions”( MacIntyre 1981: 213). In support of MacIntyre’s claim, one might point out that Hume’s inability to transcend egoism is manifest in his rationale for rejecting certain traits of character as virtues-namely, they “neither advance man’s fortune in the world, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment.” Yet what if, contra egoism, there is more to life than amassing a worldly fortune and securing personal enjoyment? However, given Hume’s explicit rejection of “the selfish system of morals” articulated and defended by, for example, Hobbes and Locke (e.g., 1972: 296), it seems unjust to maintain that Hume was unable to transcend the egoistic presuppositions of the eighteenth century. Nonetheless, reflection upon the catalogue of “virtues” which Hume rejected reveals that something is deeply amiss. Among the qualities which Hume derisively labels “the whole train of monkish virtues,” there are at least three-humility, solitude, and silence-that ought to be seen as essential to those habits of our being which are worthy of cultivation. In the case of humility in its genuine sense, we have a virtue whose presence persuades us to cultivate other virtues. Thus, Iris Murdoch’s deep appreciation of humility strikes a much truer note than David Hume’s cavalier dismissal of this quality. “Humility is,” in her words, “not a peculiar habit of self-effacement, rather like having an inaudible voice, it is selfless respect for reality and one of the most difficult and central of all virtues”( 1971: 95). In the case of silence and solitude, we have the indispensable conditions for the acquisition of the radical receptivity which constitutes one of the most fundamental aspects of moral agency (Buber 1965). It is not so much that Hume’s treatment of the virtues and vices is controlled by the egoistic assumptions of the enlightenment period as it is that this treatment is informed by the simplistic equation, characteristic of that period, of religion with superstition. That is, Hume’s approach to the habits of our being is marked not by a rejection of the possibility of truly benevolent concern for others; rather it is characterized by the impossiblity of an acceptance of a genuinely religious orientation toward life. What, in essence, defines such an orientation toward life? For some, religion is faith in an unseen order (e.g., James 1974: 20-21). Yet it is not so much the characteristic of being unseen or invisible as it is that of being encompassing and sustaining which distinguishes the religious 165 dimension of human existence (cf. Dewey 1957: 301). Even more fully, religion is a vision of the encompassing and sustaining context of human life which contributes to the deepest unification of both individual selves and human associations (Whitehead 1967: 191-2; Dewey 1971: 19; Peirce 6.429). Whatever introduces a genuine and generous perspective into the piecemeal and shifting episodes of our lives fulfills, to that extent, the essential function of a religious orientation (Dewey 1971: 24). “The essentially unreligious attitude is that which attributes human achievement and purpose to man in isolation from the world of physical nature and his fellows”(Dewey 1971: 25). In contrast, the distinctively religious attitude is that which locates human attainment and endeavor in an infinitely gracious context. Such an attitude entails a deep “sense of human nature as a cooperating part of a larger whole”(Dewey 1971: 25). “We who now live are parts of a humanity which extends into the remote past, a humanity that has interacted with nature. The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by thegrace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link”(Dewey 1971: 87; cf. Dewey 1957: 23). Such a sense of nature as the whole of which we are parts deserves the name of “piety” (cf. Santayana 1982: 223). This piety enables us to recognize that: “Within the flickering inconsequential acts of separate selves dwells a sense of the whole which claims and dignifies them. In its presence we put off mortality and live in the universal. The life of the community in which we live and have our being is the fit symbol of this relationship” (Dewey 1957: 302; cf. Dewey 1971: 85; 87). If this is so, then what the life of virtue requires above all else is that the boundless and encompassing community which sustains this life be brought to consciousness and also be incorporated in the habits of individuals. Peirce argued that human consciousness is a refractive power. According to him, “everything which is present to us is a phenomenal manifestation of ourselves. This does not prevent its being a phenomenon of something without us, just as a rainbow is at once a manifestation both of the sun and the rain” (5.283). My contention throughout this paper has been that not only human consciousness but also human agency is essentially a refractive power, a view stated but undeveloped by Pols at the conclusion of The Acts of Our Being. If this view of agency is correct, then the habits most central to our being are those which render us ever more widely and deeply responsive to the ideal aspects of the actual world (cf. Dewey 1958b: 281; also Whitehead 1978: 338). What I have somewhat clumsily expressed in this paper has been compellingly articulated by Shelley in “A Defense of Poetry.” Let me conclude by recalling his words. zyxwvu zyxwvu zyxw zyxwv Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alterations of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre, which move it by their motion to an ever-changing melody. But there is a principle within the human being, and perhaps within all sentient beings, which acts otherwise than in the lyre, and produces not I66 melody alone. but harmony. by an internal adjustment of the sounds or motions thus excited to the impressions which excite them. I t is as if the lyre could accomodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them. in a determined proportion of sound; even as the musician can accomodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. (Shelley 1951: 494-495: cf.. ironically. Hume 1972: 22) REFERENCES This article is a revised version of a paper presented in 19117 at the annual meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America (New York City). ARENDT. Hannah 19611 Between Past and Future. New York: Viking Press. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1973 BERNSTEIN. Richard Praxis and Action. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania press. 1971 BUBER, Martin Between Man and Man. New York: Macmillan Publishing. 1965 BUCHLER. Justus 1966a Metaphysics qf Natural Complexes. New York: Columbia University Press. 1966b Nature and Judgment. New York: Grossett and Dunlap. Torcwrda General TheoryqfHuman Judgment. New York: Dover Publications. 1979 CAMUS. Albert Resistance, Rebellion. and Death. New York: Random House. 1974 COLAPIETRO. Vincent 1986 '* Peirce's Semeiotic Conception of Human Agency"Talk to the annual meeting of the Charles S. Peirce Society. Boston, December 28. 1986. DEWEY. John The Public and Its Prohlems. Chicago: Swallow Press. 1954 Human Nature and Conduct. New York: Modern Library. 1957 1958a Art as Experience. New York: Capricorn Books. 19511b Experience and Nature. New York: Dover. Theory qfrhe Moral Life. New York: Holt. Rinehart. and Winston. 1960 Individualism Oldand Neu*. New York: Capricorn Books. 1962 A Common Faith. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1971 Reconsrruction in Philosophy. Boston: Beacon Press. I972 GELBER. Sidney. and WALLACE, Kathleen 1986 "Justus Buchler: Nature. Power.and Prospect"in ProcessStudies, Volume 15. Number 2 (Summer). HANSON. Karen The Imagined Se/K New York: Metheun Books. 1986 H IJ M E. David 1972 Enquiries. Oxford: Clarendon Press. JAMES. William The Principles qf P.vychology.New York: Dover. 1950 1971 Essays in Radical Empiricism. New York: Dutton & Co. Essaj$sin Fairh and Morals. New York: New American Library. 1974 K E N N Y . Anthony "The Homonculus Fallacy" in lnrerprerations qf Life and Mind. edited by 1971 Marjorie Grene. New York: Humanities Press. LOOMER. Bernard 1976 "Two Conceptions of Power" in Process Studies. Spring Issue. pp. 5-32. MACINTYRE. Alasdair 1981 A,fter Virtue. Notre Dame. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. MAR ITA IN. Jacques 1965 On the Use uf Pbilosupfts. New York: Atheneum. zyxwvuts zyx zyxwvuts zyxwvutsrq zyxwvutsr 167 zyxwvutsr zyxwvut zyxwvu zyxwvut zyxwvutsrq zyxwvuts MURDOCH, Iris 1971 The Sovereignty of Good. New York: Schocken Books. PEIRCE. Charles Sanders Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge, Massachusetts: 193I 35; Harvard University Press. I958 POLS. Edward The Acrs ofour Being. Amherst. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts 1982 Press. . SANTAY ANA, George 1982 Reason in Art. New York: Dover. SHELLEY. Percey Bysshe The Selected Poetry and Prose. New York: Modern Library. 1951 SINGER. Beth J. 1983 Ordinal Naturalism. East Brunswick, New Jersey: Bucknell University Press. SMITH. John E. Experience and God. London: Oxford University Press. 1968 The Analogy of Experience. New York: Harper & Row. 1973 TAYLOR. Charles The Explanation of Behavior. New York: Humanities Press. 1967 WEISS. Paul 1974 “Common Sense and Beyond”in DererminismandFreedom, edited by Sidney Hook. New York: Macmillan. WHITEHEAD, Alfred North 1967 The Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press. 1967 Science and the Modern World. New York: Free Press. Process and Reality (Corrected Edition). New York: Macmillan. 1978 I68