[...]... agency, on the one hand, and the factors that make a meaningful life possible, on the other hand Projects of regenerating agency engage the religious imagination to synthesize the aims and aspirations of the political, the existential, and the moral, as well as the yearning for ‘ the next self.’’8 Let me offer two examples of the contemporary discourse on agency to underscore these points The first example... to fight for freedom Consequently, the corollary of the thesis of agency as melancholic freedom is the banality of freedom: a condition in which the achievements of freedom, such as liberation, emancipatory movements, and autonomy, have become ordinary, even banal, in the sense that they are being taken for granted The banality of freedom is akin to the banality of evil the desensitization of our moral... sensibilities—that has taken hold in the political and moral landscape of the late and postmodern west.35 I am mel ancholic freedom 21 attempting to bring to light some of the religious dimensions of projects of regenerating agency, on the one hand, by framing the contemporary discourse on agency as melancholic freedom, and, on the other hand, by uncovering the presence and persistence of Romantic ideas such as... the one hand, an abandonment of the object of one’s passionate attachment or love and, on the other hand, letting go of the idea of one’s love for this object.32 As such, the melancholy of modernity marks the way that the symbolic loss of objects of attachment—such as religion or the spiritedness found in the emancipation movements that arose around the fights for racial justice in America—remains and. .. with agency as a persistent and necessary concern Lacanians persist with their own contemplations about the possibility of realizing agency, despite what they see as the unpredictable influence of the subconscious, on the one hand, and the regulation of thought and action of the self, on the other hand, through the retrievals from ‘ the Symbolic Order.’’ In both cases—that is, in poststructuralism and. .. agency and the sources for motivating and inspiring action in light of this picture of modernity I have just sketched It is a question I raised earlier about the price paid for freedom and agency The narrative about modernity as secular and as increasingly prone to the demands of rationality is one that attempts to show how the legitimation of freedom and agency is mediated through the demands of and. .. uncover these features and qualities of religiosity is a critical and comparative examination of the work of two figures who have been enormously influential in shaping the contemporary discourse and debates on agency and the self/subjectivity: namely, Charles Taylor and Judith Butler.1 I draw on the work of Taylor and Butler in order to analyze the problem of agency, on the one hand, as a mode of action and. .. legitimation and mediation of authority through the will of the individual There is no agency without the individual will This is the reason theorists such as Taylor and Butler see the relationship between agency and identity as fundamental For example, the necessity of the mediation of authority through human wills holds, on the one hand, for Kant and the formal conditions he establishes for freedom as... in the desiring part of the soul; the ‘‘auxiliary’’ class is responsible for the care of the polis, likening it to spiritedness; the guardian classes are akin to utilitarian and calculating reasoning In the city and the soul, the spirited parts maintain order and unity by checking against the divisive effects of unjust desires, that is, the threat of tyranny in the city/soul as well as the threat of. .. Agency, and Melancholy, 14 Thinking the Religious, the Moral, and the Political Together, 17 2 Love of the Good among the Ruins, 23 Introduction, 23 Agency, Articulation, and the Good, 24 Modern Moral Identity and the Melancholy of Agency, 33 Love of the Good among the Ruins and the Logic of Epiphany, 45 3 Through a Self Darkly, 55 Amazing Grace? 55 Rekindling a Love of the Good, or Being Good in a Heartless . analyze the problem of agency, on the one hand, as a mode of action and freedom and, on the other hand, as constitutive of moral, cultural, political, and spiritual identities. The critical trajectory. who took the various versions of my courses ‘ Freedom and the Discontents of Modernity’’ and ‘ The Spirit of Poli- tics’’ were exacting in their intellectual demands and challenges. Their enthu- siasm. Ricoeur and the Poetics of Moral Life John Wall Melancholic Freedom Agency and the Spirit of Politics david kyuman kim 1 2007 3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford