Overview

This book employs Heidegger’s work of the 1920s and early 1930s to develop distinctively Heideggerian accounts of agency, freedom, and responsibility, making the case that Heidegger’s thought provides a compelling alternative to the mainstream philosophical accounts of these concepts. Hans Pedersen demonstrates that Heidegger’s thought can be fruitfully used to develop a plausible alternative understanding of agency that then avoids the main problems of the standard free will debate. Part I is dedicated to working out a general Heideggerian conception of agency, specifically focusing on the roles of causality, mental states, and deliberation in human agency. In Part II, based on the account of agency worked out in Part I, Pedersen develops Heideggerian accounts of freedom and responsibility that are not based on the causal efficacy of explicit mental states in human action, thereby avoiding the conflict between free will and determinism that gives rise to the standard philosophical debate over free will.

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9781786612557

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Reviews

Hans Pedersen has made an important and timely contribution to Heidegger studies with his interpretation of human agency in Heidegger's early period. Combining meticulous research with clear and lively prose, Pedersen brings Heidegger's views on free-will and responsibility into conversation with mainstream Anglophone philosophy and illuminates how influential and groundbreaking Heidegger's insights on these matters have been. I envision Agency, Freedom, and Responsibility in the Early Heidegger will be a key text in the philosophy of action for years to come.--Kevin Aho, Professor of Philosophy, Florida Gulf Coast University

A lucid, thorough, and stimulating reconstruction of early Heidegger's understanding of human agency. Pedersen compellingly connects Heidegger with several major debates in the philosophy of action in the analytic tradition and he puts many issues in Heidegger-interpretation in a useful new light, for example, the relation of the biological to the existential in Heidegger's picture of human agency. This refreshing engagement of long-standing debates on agency, free will, and autonomy is an innovative and productive application of Heidegger's thinking to those largely stalled debates that also opens the future of Heidegger scholarship to new inquiries. Hans Pedersen has made an important and timely contribution to Heidegger studies with his interpretation of human agency in Heidegger's early period. Combining meticulous research with clear and lively prose, Pedersen brings Heidegger's views on free will and responsibility into conversation with mainstream Anglophone philosophy and illuminates how influential and groundbreaking Heidegger's insights on these matters have been. I envision Agency, Freedom, and Responsibility in the Early Heidegger will be a key text in the philosophy of action for years to come.

Author Information

Hans Pedersen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

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