Collective agency and intentionality

a critical theory perspective

Barbara Fultner

pp. 523-545

in: The Palgrave handbook of critical theory, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

In recent years, analytic philosophers have begun to pay increased attention to shared or "collective intentionality," a term referring broadly to our human capacity to act in concert. From the deeply rooted individualistic perspective of contemporary cognitive science, this ability represents a real problem. However, from the perspective of critical theory, and of Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action in particular, the social has always been integral to how we think of agency and the self. Furthermore, there is a long tradition in critical theory of using empirical research in psychology and sociology to inform conceptions of self and agency. In this chapter, the author shows how subjectivity and intersubjectivity are inextricably intertwined in the Habermasian theoretical framework, and traces the ways in which Habermasian account parallels feminist conceptions of the self as relational.

Cited authors

Habermas Jürgen