Aristotle and Kant on the Problem of Agency

The problem of agency was one of the most difficult topics of the past century, in the context of the methodological debates, in the social sciences especially in the contemporary philosophy of action and social theory. The agency in the discussions of the related literature on practical philosophy such as morality, law and politics have come to the fore within the framework of “the social”. The attempt of this study to see the implications of Aristotle and Kant to solve the problem has resulted in two important outputs. First, it is necessary to rethink common comments about these two philosophers, and the enormous similarity of their philosophy; the second is that, despite this similarity, “the social” has been reduced to a secondary position in the Kant’s agency theory againts Aristotle’s