AGENCY AND FREEDOM

Abstract

This paper takes up the problem of agency in relation to freedom. The account is based on the notion that action and perception develop in parallel out of instinctual drive, with thought and imagery pointing to accentuations at pre-perceptual phases, and feeling referring to preliminary segments in action. Objects develop out of drive categories; actions out of drive energy. The inseparability of feeling and concept gives intent and emotion, which innervate concepts. Intent is feeling that gives impetus to decision. The self is deposited early in the process, ideas and feelings midway, acts and objects at the endpoint. The sequence from drive to object constitutes a mental state. The passage from self to act or object is an act of self-realization. Succession in a mental state is simultaneous until actualizing, at which point, though still epochal, the succession takes on temporal order in the present. The precedence of the self in the succession and the affective impulse that action imparts to concepts, gives the feeling of agency, purpose and self-determination.