Abstract

In this paper I contend that Hegel has an "expressive" conception of action, that pretends to unite systematically both the psychological and the social or public aspects of it. On the one hand, Hegel seems to assume that we cannot identify an event as an action unless we are able to connect it with the "will and knowledge" of the agent that caused it. On the other, however, Hegel contends that the agent (1) knows what he intended to do first as he has already done it and (2) that the action must not be conceived as a causal consequence of certain mental states, but as an "expression" of who the agent is. Both intuitions could be brought together if we abandon mentalist and causalist conceptions of action and agency.