Being Human The Problem of Agency [Paperback]

A revindication of the concept of humanity and the primacy of practice over language.The human subject is under threat from postmodernist thinking which has declared the 'Death of God' and the 'Death of Man'. This book is a revindication of the concept of humanity, rejecting contemporary social theory that seeks to diminish human properties and powers. Archer argues that being human depends on an interaction with the real world in which practice takes primacy over language in the emergence of human self-consciousness, thought, emotionality and personal identity--all of which are prior to, and more basic than, our acquisition of a social identity.The human subject is under threat from postmodernist thinking which has declared the 'Death of God' and the 'Death of Man'. This book is a revindication of the concept of humanity, rejecting contemporary social theory that seeks to diminish human properties and powers. Archer argues that being human depends on an interaction with the real world in which practice takes primacy over language in the emergence of human self-consciousness, thought, emotionality and personal identity--all of which are prior to, and more basic than, our acquisition of a social identity.The human subject is under threat from postmodernist thinking that has declared the Death of God and the Death of Man. This book is a revindication of the concept of humanity, rejecting contemporary social theory that seeks to diminish human properties and powers. Archer argues that being human depends on an interaction with the real world in which practice takes primacy over language in the emergence of human self-consciousness, thought, emotionality and personal identity--all of which are prior to, and more basic than, our acquisition of a social identity.Part I. The Impoverishment of Humanity: 1. Resisting the dissolution of humanity; 2. Modernity's man; 3. Society's Being: humanity as the gift of society; Part II. The Emergence of Self Consciousness: 4. The pl#[