著者

早川 正祐

出版者

The Philosophical Association of Japan

雑誌

哲学 (ISSN:03873358)

巻号頁・発行日

no.59, pp.261-276,L20, 2008

---

Until now, mainstream philosophers of action have never taken seriously the fundamental fact that human agents are beings who care. Most philosophers have attempted to clarify the features of human agency mainly by analyzing intending, planning, and policy-making. In this paper, however, by introducing and analyzing the concept of care, I have tried to analyze human agency in the light of caring. Recognizing that the meanings of care are manifold, I focus first on one of the most central meanings of caring about/for X; if we care about/for X, we are continuously interested in X, and we consider X as important and significant to ourselves over an extended period of time. I then elucidate the distinctive features of caring by considering what kinds of patterns caring is embedded in, and explaining how these patterns are distinguished from the patterns that characterize future-directed intention, and particularly policy.<br>The common aspect between care and policy is that both involve a commitment to the repetition of various kinds of activities that concern their intentional object. However, there are important differences between care and policy. One of the essential aspects of policy is to fix the understanding of the object of policy, and to control beforehand the activities that concern the object. In contrast, one of the essential aspects of care is to deepen the understanding of the object by trial and error, and to change our activities flexibly, according to our developing understanding of the object. These features of caring enable us to recognize and understand the <i>receptive</i> modes of human agency, which mainstream philosophers of action have disregarded. We will obtain a more well-balanced conception of human agency if we analyze these receptive modes, as well as the regulative modes which most philosophers of action have concentrated on.