Causality, Agency, and Reality: Plato and Aristotle Meet George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer

Abstract

Abstract Causal theorizing in sociology is often presumed best handled in the domain of multivariate, quantitative variable research. In contrast, we argue that such theorizing may be more authentically accomplished within the theoretical and methodological impetus of symbolic interactionism. Analyzing notions of causality in the work of Plato and Aristotle, we consider their relevance for contemporary accounts of human group life with reference to the work of George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer. Rather than envisioning causality as a concatenation of external forces acting on people to produce outcomes, we focus on how people actively enter into the causal process through individual and joint action. Using the work of Plato and Aristotle, we bolster contemporary accounts of agency by locating the moving process of deliberation within the interplay of purposive activity, emotional states, bodily appetites, and changing character dispositions. Further, we show that agency as a conceptual locus point of social change is found not only in the spontaneity of linguistically enabled individuals but also in the emergent processes of deliberative interchange and collective action in the world.