‘Agent Plus’ and ‘Practical Reasoner’: A Comparative Study of the Ethical Person

ABSTRACT

This paper explores an understanding of the person in terms of practical reason. Based on my fieldwork among the Jenu Kurumba and on ethnographic data on four other communities, I analyse how these five communities conceptualise the ethical person. To understand these concepts, I consult studies of an anthropology of ethics concerned with practical reason. Additionally I draw on Charles Taylor's concept of the ‘agent plus’ and Alasdair MacIntyre's notion of the ‘practical reasoner’. I argue that both Neo-Aristotelian notions are fundamentally important for understanding the concepts of the ethical person among the five cultural formations investigated in this paper.

KEYWORDS:

• Concepts of person
• anthropology of ethics
• practical reason
• ethical agency
• South India

Acknowledegments

I am deeply indebted to the research foundations and institutions which made my long-term field research and academic work possible over the years. The German Research Foundation, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, the Government of India (Ministry of Education), the German Academic Exchange Service and the University of Munich provided indispensable financial and/or administrative support. I thank my colleague Frank Heidemann, the anonymous reviewers for Ethnos, as well as the editors, for comments that led to important revisions.

Notes

1. We still have no explicit anthropological studies on how practical reason is conceived in anthropology. I investigate this issue and the other above-mentioned forms of reason in Demmer (2013).

2. There is no shortage of studies on the person in anthropology. Yet, explicit explorations of the ethical person and its agency have so far been neglected. For example, Harris (1989) summarises the discussion by distinguishing among three different ideas of the person, namely, (1) the person as representative of a specific class or species, i.e. as a human being distinct from the classes of ‘animals’ or ‘gods’, (2) the person as the site of experience and self-identity or what is often called the ‘self’, and (3) the person as social actor in society and community. The notion of the ethical person transcends these divisions. The studies in Carrithers et al. (1985) focus on the categories of the individual and the social person as inhabitants of social roles and on the probable differences between these two categories. Only the chapters by Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre deal with the ethical person. Other work focuses on certain aspects of the person as ‘social self’, for example, as the site of experience, emotions, and social status. Miller et al. (1990) and Mageo (1995), for example, represent studies concerning the narrative and discursive construction of the social self.

3. See Mattingly (2012) for a discussion of Neo-Aristotelian (and Foucauldian) approaches to ethics.

4. This paper concerns the general features of ethical agency. This does not mean that questions of social positioning, gender, and power play no role; however, appropriately addressing these issues is beyond the scope of this work.

5. I conducted almost 10 years of fieldwork among the Jenu Kurumba between the years 1987 and 2011.

6. Practical reason as it is understood in the present paper is not a strictly cognitive faculty like abstract or theoretical reason but a complex process of ethical orientation. Another important thrust of research is therefore concerned with that complexity in terms of processes, such as embodiment, habitual orientation, affect, or moral sentiment (cf. Throop 2010, 2012; Zigon 2011; Mattingly 2012). It is important to recognise, however, that these features of ethical experience and conduct are not per se opposed to the specific engaged type of practical reason we are concerned with in the present article. As will be demonstrated throughout this article the 'engaged' type of reason does include emotional and existential experiences, for instance. However, showing how the orchestration of embodiment, habitus, and discourse-based practical reason is achieved in all its dimensions is beyond the scope of the present paper. It remains an important task for anthropological research. I thank one anonymous reviewer for pointing those issues out.

7. I must confine myself to the central features described in the literature. A comprehensive treatment of this topic exceeds the scope of this article and is presented elsewhere (Demmer 2013).

8. Zigon (2007), Hirschkind (2006), and Mahmood (2005) refer to ‘problematisation’ as well.

9. Zigon (2007, 2009) and, as Fassin (2012: 8) points out, Robbins (e.g. 2007, 2012) also struggle with that polarity without, however, overcoming it. They hold that both types of action are relevant though at different times (Zigon) or in particular contexts (Robbins).

10. I have selected only some ‘cultures’ for analysis. Data on the Yupno (Keck 2005), for example, could have been included in addition to the findings of Myers (1990), White (1990), and Rosaldo (1984).

11. Lambek also observes that rituals not only represent but also realise ethics and the idea of a good life, at least temporarily (Lambek 2000: 314). Fernandez confirms that idea as well when he states that metaphors or allegories of morality are taken ‘literally’ and become real experience (Fernandez 1986: 42).

12. The Kallar in South India also engage in ethical discourses on ‘the good and bad’ (cf. Pandian 2009). Moreover, it seems that they conceptualise the person in terms of an ‘agent plus’. The Kallar man who Pandian interviewed for his article (2010) uses terms the Jēnu Kurumba also employ (e.g. manasu or buddhi). The interviews also demonstrate that the man deliberates morally, endows ethical values with a poetic quality, derives his judgements through engagement with cultural resources, and evaluates strongly. However, Pandian does not detail how the person is conceptualised; therefore, we cannot discern whether the concept as a whole corresponds to the ‘agent plus’. It should also be noted that despite Pandian's reasonable critique of Taylor's approach to the ‘interior self’, there is an ‘ontological’ element to Taylor's work. My arguments in this article build on this ‘ontological’ dimension of Taylor's work. Mattingly (2012) provides a very useful reading on this issue. The term ‘realist’ stems from Taylor (1989) who, for these reasons, calls his approach ‘ethical realism’.