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The Vulnerability of Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Robert Ellis
Robert Ellis
Affiliation:
Bletchley, Milton Keynes, England
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Extract

Human agents, unless they be crazed by some impediment of mind, are usually all too painfully aware of the risks inherent in their task of exercising agency. We are vulnerable as we act to forces not fully within our control, to unsound judgements which we ourselves make, and to the limits of our own reach which we sometimes miss or ignore. However, it is common enough in orthodox Christian circles, when transposing the concepts of action and agency to the divine, to remove the element of risk which so closely accompanies our own experience of action. God, it is claimed, is the perfect agent – who never fails – who accomplishes all and everything he sets out to do.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 1989, pp. 225 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

page 225 note 1 Barbour, Ian G., Myths, Models and Paradigms (SCM, London, 1974), p. 161.Google Scholar

page 225 note 2 The Self as Agent (1953 Gifford Lectures, vol I) (Faber, London, 1957).

page 226 note 1 Ibid. p. 137.

page 226 note 2 Ibid. p. 139.

page 226 note 3 Ibid. p. 142.

page 226 note 4 Ibid. p. 129.

page 226 note 5 Ibid. p. 144.

page 227 note 1 Ibid. p. 140.

page 227 note 2 Ibid. p. 145.

page 228 note 1 Hornsby, Jennifer, Actions (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1980), ch I.Google Scholar

page 228 note 2 Ibid. p. 33.

page 228 note 3 Ibid. p. 34.

page 228 note 4 Hampshire, Stuart, Thought and Action (Chatto & Windus, London, 1959), pp. 170 fo, 182f.Google Scholar

page 229 note 1 Hornsby, , op. cit. p. 38.Google Scholar

page 229 note 2 Action (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1968).

page 229 note 3 Hampshire, , op. cit. pp. 163ff.Google Scholar

page 229 note 4 Hornsby, , op. cit. p. 42.Google Scholar

page 230 note 1 Danto, Arthur C., ‘Basic Actions’, in The Philosophy of Action (O.U.P., Oxford, 1968), ed. White, Alan R..Google Scholar

page 231 note 1 Anscombe, G. E. M., Intention (Blackwell, Oxford, 1957), pp. 34ff. et al.Google Scholar

page 231 note 2 Macmurray, , The Self as Agent, p. 89.Google Scholar See also Kaufman, Gordon D., God the Problem (Harvard U.P., Cambridge, Mass., 1972), ch 6.Google Scholar By ‘complex act’ we mean an act which is not ‘basic’ but has component parts – one of which may be basic. Thus ‘renegotiating EEC terms’ is a complex act because it is a series of actions (with a variety of agents) – issuing from the more basic act of ‘briefing’ by Mrs Thatcher. Normally this label ‘complex’ will apply to these teleological (whether preparatory or compositional or both) categories of act, though it may be used of the ‘causal’ too. A complex act, of either type, is capable of a variety of descriptions. A ‘simple’ act is perhaps the proper opposite of ‘complex’. The terms may not be strictly used and are relative. Mrs Thatcher's basic act is her initial one; an official's simple act is, perhaps, his compiling a document for the case; the complex act is Mrs Thatcher's whole renegotiation. Simple acts are sometimes ‘sub-acts’ when related to the complex whole, but they are always discrete.

page 232 note 1 Feinberg, Joel, ‘Action and Responsibility’, in ed. White, Alan R., op. cit.Google Scholar