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Agent Plus and PracticalReasoner: A Comparative

Study of the Ethical PersonUlrich Demmer

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aMunich University, Germany

Published online: 02 Sep 2013.

To cite this article: Ethnos (2013): Agent Plus and Practical Reasoner: A

Comparative Study of the Ethical Person, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, DOI:

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Agent Plus and Practical Reasoner:

A Comparative Study of the Ethical Person

Ulrich Demmer

Munich University, Germany

abstract This paper explores an understanding of the person in terms of practical

reason. Based on my fieldwork among the Jenu Kurumba and on ethnographic data

on four other communities, I analyse how these five communities conceptualise the

ethical person. To understand these concepts, I consult studies of an anthropology of

ethics concerned with practical reason. Additionally I draw on Charles Taylors

concept of the agent plus and Alasdair MacIntyres notion of the practical reasoner.

I argue that both Neo-Aristotelian notions are fundamentally important for under-

standing the concepts of the ethical person among the five cultural formations inves-

tigated in this paper.

keywords Concepts of person, anthropology of ethics, practical reason, ethicalagency, South India

Introduction

An anthropology of ethics is concerned with ideals, values, models, prac-tices, relationships, and institutions, to the degree that people attemptto shape their lives with reference to these ethics (Laidlaw 2002: 327).

In particular, an anthropology of ethics studies how people live up to virtues

and to the most highly valued ideas cultivated in and through their culturalor religious traditions. It also explores practices that Foucault calls techniquesof the self (1997: 223), namely, the practices of making oneself into a certainkind of person (Laidlaw 2002: 322). Last but not least, it is concerned withhow people explicitly imagine and articulate the ways one ought to live andhow they imagine and argue for the best way of living a good and flourishinglife.

In contrast to other branches of anthropology, which assume, usually

implicitly, that culture, society, and community are based on modes of

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traditional reason, of objective cultural and social reason, or even of theoreticalreason, an anthropology of ethics starts with the assumption that actors areethical persons who employ practical reason to answer the questions posedabove. However, while anthropological studies of ethics have recently taken

initial steps to investigate practical reason1 the question of how to appropriatelyconceptualise the ethical person remains almost unexplored. It belongs, in fact,to a set of other concepts key to an anthropology of ethics, such as self, care,breakdown, reason, freedom, or value, whose main outlines, as Robbinsrecently noted, have yet to become wholly clear (2012: 117). The presentessay contributes to overcoming one of these obstacles.

The first part of this article explores an understanding of a person in terms ofethical agency.2 To this end, I draw on the recent anthropological studies of

ethics and their findings concerning practical reason. However, as the compara-tive analysis shows, there are other important features of practical reason, suchas strong evaluation, the dialogic quality of ethical agency, its existential signifi-cance for human identity or its rhetorical and negotiated character that have notyet been sufficiently recognised. These elements are key to the concepts of theethical person developed in a certain strand of Neo-Aristotelian moral philos-ophy,3 namely, the notion of agent plus (Taylor1989) and practical reasoner(MacIntyre 1999). I argue that both notions are fundamentally important for an

understanding of the ethical person, at least among the five communities ana-lysed in this article.4

The second part of this article presents the comparative study. The analysisdraws on my own fieldwork with the Jenu Kurumba5 and on ethnographic datafrom four other cultural communities. Since an anthropology of ethics did notexplicitly study concepts of the ethical person until now the ethnographies ofthese communities provide the best data for my purpose.

Practical Reason and the Ethical Person

A key faculty of the ethical person is practical reason.6 Practical reasonanswers the question, how ought one live? (Bernard Williams quoted inLaidlaw 2002: 311) or how to live in the best way? What exactly does thatfaculty entail?7 Many studies explicitly concerned with an anthropology ofethics draw on virtue ethics and conceive a practical reason in terms of the Aris-totelian notion ofphronesis. Phronesisis employed in processes where actors cul-tivate and hone their virtuous behaviour and the moral character of the personaccording to ideal standards and values. However, this process does not go

without saying but [. . .

] requires judgment of particular circumstances, delib-

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eration over correct means, and intentional initiation of actions (Lambek2000:316). In short, this process requires phronesis as practical wisdom and ethicaldeliberation. Inspired by MacIntyre, fascinating work has been done on therelationship of ethical reasoning and virtue (e.g. Robbins 2004; Mahmood

2005; Hirschkind 2006; Pandian 2009; Widlok2012). Equally important is Fou-caults notion of problematisation or thought. Used most explicitly byLaidlaw (1993, 2002) and Faubion (2001, 2010), the terms are part of what Fou-cault has called technologies of the self.8 These are the ways the subject con-stitutes itself in an active fashion through practices of the self (1997: 291).Understood in this way, thought essentially entails reflection on the relation-ship between self and ethical values. Foucault (1997: 117) writes: Thought

is what allows one to step back from this way of acting or reacting, to present it to

oneself as an object of thought and to question it as to its meaning, its conditions,and its goals. Thought is freedom in relation to what one does, the motion bywhich one detaches oneself from it, establishes it as an object, and reflects on it as

a problem.

Another vital feature of practical reason is poiesis. The term refers to the crea-tive production of meanings and to what Faubion calls the ethical imaginary(2001: 95). It indicates that ethical meanings are often poetically created

through the use of figurative speech and symbolic action. AccordinglyLambek (2000: 311) writes that for an understanding of ethics poiesis, in thesense of the structures, principles, and acts of creative production, is critical.He refers to Fernandez and Tambiah whose work on figures of speech demon-strates the power ofpoiesisand whom one may loosely group together as Aris-totelian in inspiration (Lambek2000. On poiesissee also Demmer & Gaenszle2007).

So far we have outlined what one might call with Lambek (2010b) the

immediate and the prospective character of practical reason. However, as heand Laidlaw (2010a) note, practical reason is also retrospective in the sensethat it entails responsibility and acknowledging what has been done for whatwas and is (Lambek2010b: 43).

The retrospective aspect thus points to the responsive character of practicalreason. Responsivity is concerned with the past behaviour and it also impliesprocesses of listening. Listening plays a key role in Foucaults technologies ofthe self as a precondition for the acquisition of ethical knowledge. It is impor-tant to recognise though that listening is not simply a process of getting

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informed but an ethical activity that requires the attentive and culturallyinformed responsivity of listeners. Among members of Islamic reform move-ments in Cairo, for example, the practice of listening to tape-recordedsermons is a means to ethical improvement (Hirschkind 2001: 632). Another

related and well-studied element of practical reason is narrativity. It is relevantto all three contexts: immediate, prospective, and retrospective. It is a key modeof moral reasoning and is employed in processes of social memory, argumenta-tion, or narration. Storytelling, for example, motivates the narrator and/or theaudience to remember key virtues (Prasad 2007; Zigon 2011, 2012). Narrativesare also employed in family conversations or in ritual discourses to negotiatethe moral relationships of speakers, argue about their social history, or debatethe nature of a good life and a good community (Demmer 2001, 2007; see

also Lambek 2012). Last but not least narrativity and social memory play animportant role in the transformation of the self through the technologies-of-the-self. Foucault (cf. 1997: 223ff) has analysed this process for ancient Greeceand the early Christianity and the comparative analysis below presentsfurther examples of that aspect.

If practical reason is no formal procedure it is not a purely cognitive-intellec-tual faculty either but entails emotional processes as well. The cassette-sermonsstudied by Hirschkind among an Islamic revival movement in Cairo, Egypt, for

example, are explicitly shaped to evoke in the sensitive listener a particular setof ethical sentiments. Foremost among them are fear (khauf), humility (khusto),regret (nadm), repentance (tauba), and tranquillity (itmi nanorsakina) (Hirsch-kind 2001: 627). Emotions are the affective dispositions that endow a believersheart with the capacities of moral discrimination necessary for proper conduct(Hirschkind 2001). Feelings and experiences like pain and suffering can also con-stitute what Throop (2010) has called moral sentiments. Interpreted with refer-ence to particular cultural schemes they can motivate, for example, among Yap(Micronesia), ethical attitudes like compassion and care. In fact, many cultures(see below) explicitly recognise that ethical reason combines thought andemotions. They conceptualise the ethical faculty, for example, in terms ofwhat Catherine Lutz translates as thought/emotion (1988: 92) or what UniWikan has called feeling-thought (1990: 35ff). These terms denote a moralcapability where emotional and intellectual features are closely geared toeach other (1990: 35ff).

Another aspect of ethical agency is that it cannot be fully understood withthe two major models of action offered by social theory. Social theory usually

distinguishes between fully self-determined and free activities on the one

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hand, and determined, rule- or norm-guided activities on the other. As Faubion(2001: 94) notes the ethical field certainly includes choice, but it also reveals anarray of human activities that are neither deliberative nor driven. In addition,ethical behaviour is an activity in which the peculiar dynamics of thought inter-

pose itself between reaction and action Accordingly, Faubion (2001: 94) rec-ommends extricating ourselves from the dilemmas of decisionism anddeterminism. Lambek (2000: 314) also recognises the theoretical dilemmathat ethical life cannot be understood as simple conformity to a set of rulesnor is it the naive freedom of liberal individualism. Because it rests on judge-ment and phronesis it transcends a divide between freedom and obligation(Lambek 2010a: 28).9 How then shall we conceive of ethical agency action ifthe usual models do not apply? Lambek gives us a hint in noting that we

engage in a continuous fine-tuning of our actions to suit our understandingof the context and circumstances in order to achieve the general aim ofhuman flourishing (2000: 314). However, what that means in terms of actiontheory is left open and I will address this issue below.

The features outlined above constitute central aspects of practical reason.However, these elements do not exhaust the scope of ethical agency nor dothese studies explicitly show how these aspects constitute the ethical person.As the comparative analysis in the present article demonstrates, the ethical

person is often characterised by additional features, such as strong evaluationwhereby people define what is most desirable, dialogicity, the existentialnexus of ethics and identity, the fundamental role of the articulation of valuesthrough language and discourse, and, last but not least, joint action and its nego-tiated or rhetorical character. Taken together these elements account for whatTaylor (1989) has termed the engaged character of practical reason and charac-terise the person as an agent plus or what MacIntyre has called a practical rea-soner. In the following I will briefly outline these concepts.

Agent Plus and Practical Reasoner

In his paper What is human agency?, Taylor (1985a) outlines the basicfeatures of the moral persons agency. In his view, the human being is bestconceived of as what he calls an agent plus. The person is not simply agoal-oriented actor but also someone who evaluates and reflects upon actionsand objectives. Most important, the person evaluates strongly in the sensethat a hierarchy of values is established among the many possible objectivesof conduct. Moreover, ethical orientation based on strong evaluation is

indispensable for personal identity. Without a direction towards the good,

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the person would not know where to go, how to act, or how to lead her/his life.In other words, identity and evaluation are inseparably connected and existen-tially necessary.

The moral person also needs to articulate and acquire these value orien-

tations through a language of values, and always does so in exchange withothers and in narrative or discursive forms (cf. Taylor 1985a, 1985b). This isonly possible if the person draws on a cultural horizon or background provid-ing the moral ontologies that also serve to justify and legitimatise values, virtues,and images of what counts as a good life. Eventually, the person must alsochoose which way to go, how to behave, and what type of life she/he wantsto live. To be a human being means to take a position in ethical space.Ethical agency is thus an engaged activity of not only evaluation or moral delib-

eration but also dialogue and communication with others. Ethical agency is thearticulation of values and substantial notions of the good and of what a good lifeis all about. In short the agent plus is a dialogic self (cf. Taylor 1991).

MacIntyre (1984, 1999) conceptualises ethical agency in similar terms. Forhim the application of practical reason and the ways of learning of how toapply practical reason constitute the basic conditions of human life. Accord-ingly, the person is what he calls a practical reasoner throughout life. In thisview, using practical reason is the indispensable task of the human being

because agood human life is always experienced as being endangered, vulner-able, and at stake, such that its renewal and the question of how to live welland flourish is unavoidable. The answers to this open question demand afaculty for reflecting on our deeds and most importantly on the appropriatenessand worth of our desires, wishes, and objectives in life. Moreover, appropriateanswers require articulating a language or narrative of goods that outlineswhich goods are regarded as most worthwhile to cultivate and to practise inlife. MacIntyre states that human flourishing is always and unavoidably a ques-tion of evaluating goods for their appropriateness with respect to that objective.In short, we may state that ethical deliberation is what counts as a preconditionand resource for all human life.

Although the person is required to deliberate values for himself/herselfthrough inner dialogue, it cannot answer the ethical question alone and strictlyby itself. Of course, we need to decide, choose, and take a position in ethicalspace for ourselves, but this denotes not only the independence of the personbut also his/her responsibility. Being responsible means that we are requiredto rationally respond when we are questioned about our actions or the motiv-

ation for our actions. In this sense, ethical deliberation is always a dialogic

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process where the person must reach out to others. Moral and ethical knowl-edge is jointly developed and actively achieved in responsive interaction(1999: 14). In other words, finding answers to the ethical question requiresengagement in debates and argumentation. As MacIntyre states (1984: 110),

moral communities therefore constitute public modes of ethical deliberationfor the achievement of common and most valuable goods. In other wordsthey represent traditions of argumentation constituted as an on-goingextended argument about the goods. As MacIntyre (1984), Pandian (2008),Watson-Gegeo et al. (1990), and Demmer and Gaenszle (2007) attest, theseethical questions and the debates that arise constitute major parts of thesocial life of the person in many communities.

Another major issue is how to conceptualise ethical agency when the two

usual models of social action are not appropriate. To my mind the most com-pelling alternative model stems from John Shotter. It starts from the recognitionoutlined above that ethical actors are neither fully determined by external rulesand norms nor fully free and self-determined. Instead, because ethical actors areresponsible beings they must count with others and must also be accountable;their actions are evaluated and judged, and persons must be prepared to justifytheir actions if they are required to do so. If they fail, they are called to accountfor their actions, must answer to criticism, and under the threat of sanctions

must be able to defend themselves.Moreover, all actors can fail in their commitments to moral standards. Theycan forget the standards, stray from them, or neglect them. Thus a good sociallife is always a precarious and open process. This open character gives allmorally oriented social life the character of joint action (Shotter 1980), whereactors who want to live well need to apply an ethical logistics: It is an on-going formative process, where all actors have to interweave their owncourse of actions in with the unpredictable acts of others (Shotter 1993: 111).These processes can take the form of inner dialogue or of public deliberationand debate. Therefore, the ethical reasoner is basically a dialogic, argumentative,and rhetorical person.

Finally, and similar to the anthropological standpoints outlined above, in theview of these authors practical reasoning also includes embodied and emotionalprocesses. Thus Taylor views moral intuition (e.g. the sense of human dignity) asintrinsic to ethical orientation (1989: 18ff); MacIntyre considers practical reason tobe deeply embedded in our feelings and the body such that moral agency issocially embodied (1984: 235). In fact, in his opinion (1999: 78), ethics is intrin-

sically bound to the body and experiences such as suffering and vulnerability; and

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Shotter observes that ethical deliberation even in its most basic from as jointaction is a way of knowing in terms of feeling and feelings (1999: xi). Such feel-ings, says he, are of an ethical nature: they not only indicate what the othersaround us might or might not allow us to do [. . .] but also what it is about

our own position for which we alone can be answerable (1999: xiii). Inother words this process has a developmental nature [that] opens it up to aprocess of testing and checking, of justifying and warranting, of accrediting andlegitimating (1999: xiiixiv). The most obvious circumstance in which such

joint action occurs is in dialogue with others, when one must respond by formu-lating appropriate utterances in reply to theirutterances (1999: 4).

In the following sections I will explore whether these features of agent plusand practical reasoner are relevant for other cultural formations as well.10

Ethnographies of the Ethical Person

Bali

In Bali the person is conceptualised as an ethical agent and a practical reasoner.As Uni Wikan shows, two components of the person are central (1987, 1990).One is that every human being has a life force called vayu. The other element

is the heart, keneh, which is regarded as the site of ethical orientation, socialmemory, social evaluation, and moral decision-making.Vayu represents the forces of life and growth. It carries physical- and life-

energy at large (for example, in the sense of enlivened agility) as well asmental and social attentiveness. It is also a vital energy flowing in the blood,thought to permeate the whole of the body, and on which the physical exist-ence of the person depends. Vayu is not a constant substance, but it canchange, getting weaker or stronger. If it is strong, the person is physicallydurable; its movements are fluid and well coordinated. A person with astrongvayu is observed as less vulnerable to illness and well protected againstattacks of black magic. A strong vayu also impacts the emotional and mentalcondition as well as social conduct. As Wikan shows such a person is in agood mood, experiences life as energetic, is brave, calm, fresh and strong,and has a balanced mind (1990).

A weakvayu, in contrast, makes the person vulnerable to illness as well as toblack magic. Bad feelings and conduct can thus weaken the vayu as much asgood behaviour can strengthen it (1989: 306). Anger, envy, or jealousy

weakens the energy as much as excessive fear and sorrow (1989: 301). Moreover,

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negative emotions also diminish the life force of others (1989: 3013). The lifeforce of the person is thus endangered in multiple ways through socialconduct that is interpreted as bad, but the person is also able to control anddirect its moral orientation and behaviour in a good and nurturing way, in its

own and in others interests.The key organ and site of moral orientation and ethical agency is the heart.

According to Wikan, the heart not only enables the person to maintain its vitalphysical existence but also shapes the persons socio-moral orientation (1990:35ff). This capability derives from the fact that in the heart, emotional and intel-lectual features are closely geared to each other. The heart encompasses sensualexperience, the will (e.g. the act of forgetting as an act of will not to remembercertain things), and the self-awareness of the person. All of these elements are

integrated into a functional whole, the so-called ngabe keneh. This term connotesa process Wikan terms feeling-thought (1990) or what she calls managing theheart (1990). This is a type of ethical logistics, to take Shotters term, that isconcerned with the strengthening of ones own life force and that of thesocial community at the same time. Managing the heart thus implies theactive shaping of inner attitudes as well as the outward-oriented social conduct.

Ideally, the heart is shaped in accordance with what Wikan regards as thekey value of the Balinese ethos, the so-called polos (1987: 3456, 1990: 73ff).

Polos literally means smooth, gentle, convivial, and restraint but also being ofone colour, which means even and unadulterated. In the context of everydayinteraction, this amounts to being patient, not resisting openly, taking whatone is offered, and taking negative or bad circumstances as they are. Thisideal, then, demands the work of ethical agency and is an active achievementof ethical orientation executed by the person himself/herself.

In Bali, this agency is taken to the extreme. Given that the good person isexpected to be polos, such an individual must, for instance, forget or disregardacts of injustice. People state that one should not care about or shouldforget the bad (1989: 2968). It also means maintaining emotions of calmnessand even-mindedness even in situations of suffering. This ethical strategy culmi-nates in the maxim to show a bright face (mue cedang), when in reality, theperson is experiencing sorrow or painful distress. Such a person states tohimself/herself, I dont care about it, it doesnt matter, it is all the same(1989) and also cultivates a generous attitude and treats others well, evenwhen others speak ill of or mistreat the person. This person also displays ahabitus of generosity: giving without expecting a return. Additionally he/she

behaves modestly and not arrogantly, does not criticise others, and does not

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ridicule or mock anybody. Because not only anger but also emotions of sorrowor ill temper are regarded as immoral, these emotions weaken others and socialties, and managing the heart requires holding back or hiding such negativelyevaluated, devastating emotions. To manage the heart and show happiness

and a good mood, in contrast, can strengthen not only ones own and butalso others vayu. To manage the heart, then, is a moral responsibility, asWikan states (1989: 294). The concept of the person thus implies that ethicalagency and good virtuous conduct is the outcome of on-going work on onesmoral orientation and attitude. It is constituted, as it were, as an agent plus(Figure 1).

Ifaluk

The Ifaluk are fishermen and peasants in Micronesia. They also conceptualisethe person as an agent plus. Moral agency is located, however, not in theheart but in the Niferash, denoting the inner domain of human beings. Niferashencompasses physical organs, particularly in the heart, the liver, and digesting

Figure 1. The model of the

person in Bali.

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organs, which in turn are related to the head and the brain. Beyond that, twosubtle organs are located in the inner domain. They are conceived as facultiesof socio-moral orientation and called nunuwanand tip.

Nunuwan is associated with interactive/social aspects whilst tip relates to

idiosyncratic processes such as the choice of good or bad attitudes andactions. Nunuwan has a physical, bodily sensual dimension and can be cold,cool, or hot, but it is also the site of emotions of sorrow, anger, fear, orlonging and homesickness, the latter two of which are particularly importantamong Ifaluk. Finally, the nunuwan implies cognitive processes, attitudes, andethical orientation, for instance, to take care of someone or being concernedof someone. As in the Balinese conception of managing the heart, thenunuwan combines emotional and cognitive processes into a faculty of

thought/emotion, as Lutz characterises it (1988: 92). Moreover, nunuwan isclosely tied with the moral dimension of sociality and the person. Accordingly,Lutz, states that the

Ifaluk see mental events as value-laden, ideally moral stances, and they do not, for thisreason, separate evaluative and emotional responses from non-evaluative and cogni-

tive responses to an environmental event. (1988: 92)

The nunuwan is also subject to evaluation about its good or bad quality. If

ones nunuwan is bad, it means that one has bad thoughts or feelings, thatone is unjustifiably angry, seeking dominance, and so forth. People who areimpatient or excessively angry are that way as Ifaluk state because theirnunuwanisnt good (1988: 92). In contrast people who tease others and childrenwho throw rocks at others do so because theirnunuwanis bad, while a morallygood person also has a good nunuwan.

A bad nunuwan has significant negative consequences for the person him/herself as well as for others. A woman, for example, who is angry and quarrel-

some for a long time is regarded to behave hotly and makes her child ill. Exces-sive sorrow, homesickness, and yearning are also interpreted as unsocial andimmoral because they can lead to illness and agony, among other consequences,especially for those who maintain close interaction with such people. Accord-ingly, Lutz writes that the mental state of any mature individual is seen ashaving fundamentally social roots. Others can then be held responsible forthe social conditions that produce the state (1988: 101). Consequently, claimingto be justifiably angry is the first step in a process of negotiating the meaning of

other peoples actions in relation to oneself.

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In summary, what Western thinking regards as inner feelings, emotions, andattitudes always has a social dimension; they are never completely private. Bademotions and attitudes can also devastate the person himself/herself becausethey are thought to lead to illness and weakness, for instance. The concept of

the inner domain as it is conceived in the unity of nunuwan implies a closenexus of emotional, cognitive, and physical conditions. Excessive emotionsare therefore not only regarded as immoral but also as dangerous for theperson him/herself. A person with good attitudes and emotions, in contrast,will have a lot of nunuwanand therefore good health and wellness. In addition,this persons good attitudes affect his/her own nunuwan, as well.

Against this background, it becomes clear how important for the Ifaluk themaintenance of moral orientation is. As in the other cases discussed above, good

ethical orientation is of existential significance for the person. To achieve suchgood orientations, the tip, a more individual-idiosyncratic faculty, supports thenunuwan. Depending on the context, tip can be translated as will, desire,wish, or thought. Similar to the nunuwan, it thus combines emotional andcognitive aspects. In contrast to nunuwan, tipimplies functions pointing to idio-syncratic aspects of the person and to its work of moral orientation withoutopposing, however, the normative social world and its rules.

Tip, then, implies the choice for or against ones moral attitudes, ones

emotion-thought and conduct. It also ascribes the responsibility for attitudesand actions to the actor itself. The active commitment to the ethical standardsof the community is one of the main features of the tip. The person is not actingautomatically nor is his/her behaviour externally determined by rules or norms,but he/she must choose and evaluate how to think and act. An important func-tion of the tipwith respect to these aspects is what is called dividing the head(Gish si gamaku chimwash. 1988: 97). This is an activity whereby a person isactively working upon his/her mind to establish and cultivate good ethicalorientations, attitudes, and behaviour. This requires undoing socially damagingfeelings and thoughts. A range of cultural strategies is known to achieve thatend. One, for instance, is called ridding oneself of unpleasant and disruptivethought/emotions (Lutz 1988: 97). If a person becomes aware of his/her badnunuwan, it feels as if his/her head were separated into two halves. Such aperson should then separate the good and the bad, divide his/her head, andget rid of the bad nunuwan. All these practices should prevent bad nunuwanand tipfrom damaging the self and others.

Analytically speaking, the Ifaluk employ various procedures to achieve a

good personal moral orientation. Of particular relevance is the use of

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socio-moral interpretive schemata. Ifaluk interpret events and social conduct interms of moral evaluations and assessments. Whether actions are successful andwhether goals are achieved is, in contrast, less important. As Lutz observes, theworld is not explained or narrated in value-free terms but primarily in ethical

terms. The evaluations being used are part of the value system, and theyrequire the active application of cultural schemata, concepts, and socio-moralscenarios (cf. Fillmore 77). Such scenarios enable persons to associate certainpatterns of conduct with culturally defined schemes of events and serve toevaluate events appropriately.

The Ifaluk use a number of schemes, including the concept fago, whichenables the orientation and evaluation of love, grief, or pity; the conceptmetagu, used to interpret social respect, modesty, and fear; and the concept

song, used to evaluate when just anger is appropriate or not.Moral schemata, such as song, serve to morally direct or motivate social

actions because the ability to have or express song also implies the ability toanticipate the possible response to ones own conduct. Following thisscheme, it becomes obvious that the anticipation of song is, as Lutz argues,one of the key factors in the maintenance of the ethical order and praxis inthe community. Good conduct among the Ifaluk, therefore, implies the perma-nent application of moral attentiveness, a kind of reflexive self-control, as Lutz

terms it (1988: 161).In other words, the person is always and essentially an agent plus, necess-arily observed as an evaluating actor/thinker using cultural horizons to ethicallydirect and evaluate his/her own and others ways of conducting themselves andliving. Moreover, participation in ethical discourse and the involvement in thenarrative activities that are vital parts of disentangling meetings are essentialfor the ethical person (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The model of the

person among the Ifaluk.

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The Gurung

In Nepal, the Gurung, a peasant community in the eastern part of the country,also conceptualise the person as an agent plus. As portrayed in McHughsstudies (2001, 1989), this community cultivates an ethos of social (kin-based)

solidarity and cooperation. The group provides its individuals security, belong-ing and the promise of well being, McHugh writes, and also in praxis, sharing,hospitality, and cooperation are practised to a considerable extent (1989: 78).Being neatly tied into the community also has a less positive aspect;however, in everyday life expectations and demands for goods, food, or helpare so frequent that even the most generous giver and social person is over-stressed by these tasks. Moreover, the Gurung cannot deny these claimsopenly because this would be regarded as crude and unsocial behaviour.

This, McHugh writes, ultimately leads to the view among the Gurung thatsocial relations are not only prosperous and good but also instable and fragile.

One consequence of the fragility of the social domain is that the Gurungpractice social and moral attentiveness to a high degree. While they are extre-mely suspicious and doubt the reliability of others, they are also permanentlyconcerned with upholding their positive ethical orientation not leastbecause there exists a wide variety of means to magically take revenge on trans-gressors with potentially life-threatening consequences. Social integration is

thus essential in an existential sense: without it one is likely to get weak,sicken, or even die. This tension between social conformity and the limits orneeds of the individual or, in other words, between dependency and auton-omy is clearly reflected in the Gurung concept of the person. To theGurung, a human being consists of essentially two socially relevant com-ponents, the plah and the sae.

Plah denotes the life forces or souls of the person. Every human being hasbetween seven and nine plah, fine substances that invigorate the body. Their

strength and consistency, however, depend upon the quality of the social relat-edness of the person.Sudden fright or psychic shock induced by bad social relations can cause the

life forces to evade the body, leading to illness or even death. Regaining the plahis only possible, in turn, through good social relationships with kin because it issolely the latter that can perform the rites of healing that are necessary to re-establish the plah. However, the plah does not represent an organ of themind or of ethical orientation for behaviour. That faculty is associated with

the so-called sae.

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The saeis located in the centre of the chest and has the function of a socio-moral mind or of ethical reason. It is the organ of social memory, of socialexperience, and of emotions in addition to that of individual decision-making,social evaluation and, therefore, of social self-control and ethical orientation.

Like the plah, the sae is also vulnerable and endangered. In contrast to theplah, however, the individual person itself can directly impact the quality ofits sae. A human being who cultivates good social relationships, who carriesout his/her duties, who is friendly and, at the same time, moderate in judge-ment, has a large and prosperingsae. In addition, such a persons ability to flour-ish is maintained through virtuous behaviour. The saeis endangered, however,through poor social conduct. A human being who is inattentive to the needs ofothers, one who is selfish, or one who is too strict in his/her evaluation of the

conduct of others experiences the diminishment of the sae; the person becomessocially weak, and eventually his/her well-being is under threat. Isolatingoneself socially, such a person provokes magical vengeance and, because ofhis/her weakened sae, is threatened with the loss of the plah, his/her life forces.

The Gurung model of the person accordingly combines two aspects socialconformity and individual agency to shape, or at least modify, its behaviourand social relationships. The person is not a machine that acts automatically oris determined by rules, nor is he/she fully free and self-determined. Rather, both

features social dependency and personal autonomy with respect to behaviourand value orientation are related in cultural as well as in tense and even dilem-matic ways. The dilemma is found in the fact that actors cannot avoid bothaspects and must decide how to act; they must be aware of the social and exis-tential consequences of their actions to stay healthy and prosper. This under-scores the existential need to use ones ethical faculty for practical reasoning,to be attentive to cultural interpretations, and to negotiate for oneself how toappropriately act ethically in social space. Ethical agency, one might say, isindispensable in a very existentially way, required for survival, so to speak(Figure 3).

Lohurung

The Lohurung Rai of Nepal articulate a similar concept. As Hardman (1981)shows, they conceptualise the same two aspects of ethical agency, namely soci-ality or social orientation, on the one hand, and individual evaluation and self-direction of social conduct, on the other hand. The Lohurung Rai distinguish

three organs or substances of the person: lawa, saya, and niwa. Lawa is the

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life force or life essence permeating the whole human body. As a vital life force,it is not constant, but depending on the ethical conduct and attitude of theperson, it can become stronger or weaker and eventually might even leave

the body and lead to death. Its quality depends on the interplay of the othertwo organs, sayaand niwa.The sayais located in the head and is regarded as a substance closely tied to

the social legacy of the person. Its quality stems from the ancestors, the personsclan and kin or family. Accordingly, a person is born equipped with a certainsaya, with respective dignity, pride, and organic vitality. It needs to be strength-ened periodically, however, through specific rituals; if these are not performed,the sayaweakens, the person loses his/her dignity, disregarding his/her socialstatus through his/her behaviour, and gradually the saya becomes unable tohold or bind properly to the lawa within the body; the person becomes ill oreven dies.

The sayadoes not work alone but is closely tied to the niwa, an organ usuallylocated in the stomach or in the centre of the body. Its functions combine social,collective, and individual aspects. In contrast, it is similar to the Gurung sae, akind of ethical mind or moral consciousness. It enables the person to distinguishwhat is good and what is bad and how to choose the appropriate mode ofconduct. According to Hardman, the niwa enables the person to control his/

her thinking and appropriate behaviour.

Figure 3. The Gurung

model of the person.

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In addition, the Lohurung conceptualise the so-called Tangpam Niwa, trans-lated by Hardman as a personal or individual type of niwa.

This, she says, enables actors to individually shape deviations from ideal ornormative conduct, which is not regarded as wrong, bad, or unsocial, but as

being within the acceptable range of individual behaviour. In addition, theTangpam Niwais associated with non-conformist expressions of personal view-points, with personal wishes, inclinations, and feelings (Hardman 1981: 177).Yet, as Hardman writes, the individual niwa is relevant mainly in the privaterealm of the person. Niwa is therefore significant in contexts of more informalsocial circumstances where behaviour is not as strictly controlled as it is inpublic interaction. As her ethnography shows, behaviour in public space isalso occasionally justified with reference to niwa; for example, in the case of

two unmarried sisters who, against all social conventions, ploughed their fieldthemselves, a task considered to be mens work. Because the sisters weredriven by necessity and had no choice, however, their conduct was interpretedas being motivated by niwaand thus not observed as wrong, although it did notconform to the rules. In summary, the Lohurung also conceptualise both socialconformity and individual agency as aspects of the moral person. Their conceptentails the value orientation and self-direction of behaviour as well as the cultu-rally specific interpretations they rest upon, while underscoring the existential

necessity of both processes as essential to the well-being of the person(Figure 4).

Jenu Kurumba

Among the Jenu Kurumba of South India the person has also many features of apractical reasoner. First of all, the Jenu Kurumba model of the person concep-

Figure 4. The Lohurung

model of the person.

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tualises the dilemmatic nature of the human being recognising, on the one hand,his/her dependency on the social-cultural environment and, on the other hand,his/her autonomy as a moral actor. It also acknowledges the interpretative, eva-luative, dialogic, and existential features of the person as outlined above. On the

most general level, the person is constituted in a twofold manner: as a physicalbeing and as a fine-graded mental being (cf. Demmer2007, 2008). The physicalbeing consists of the physical body and endures over a lifetime, deteriorates afterdeath, and is affected by illness and bad health. However, the person is also amental being, who endures after death with all his/her faculties, such asspeech, memory, feelings, and consciousness or mind. The mental being iscalled nelalu, which literally means shade. It is understood to be a kind of invis-ible cloak enfolding the body and continuing to exist after death. It actually rep-

resents what, in Western terms, we would call the key features of the person,namely, mind, intellect, consciousness, moral orientation, feelings, attitudes,social memory, and forgetting, among others.

These features are associated with three organs. The head, orbuddi, is the siteof the intellect and instrumental rationality. The mansu, located roughly wherewe situate the physical heart, is said to be the site of the faculties of will, ethicaldeliberation, moral orientation, ethical decisions to act, social attentiveness, andsocial memory. The third organ is termed otte, or what we would call the

stomach and is the site of emotions and feelings. The heat of illness, pain, oranger, along with the coolness of peaceful sociality, happiness, or comfort aresaid to be in the otte. It is also the seat of ones life force (sakti) as well as of phys-ical/mental vitality and strength (bala).

Mansu and otte are closely interdependent or interacting. If a personexpresses many bad social memories, for example, he/she will feel bad in theotte, or if one is angry for an inappropriately long time, the otte will becomehot. Those bad feelings and emotions will also affect the mansu (onesmind). The mansu, people say, will become bad like a rotting fruit and willmake the ottebecome bad in turn. Finally, both organs are also closely relatedto the social environment and practised social relationships. If one is overlyangry with others, these people may become ill, ones own mind maybecome bad, and ones otte(stomach) will start to burn or feel pain.

In contrast, a good mind is said to be calm or shady if one is thinking well ofothersor if one is sharing food and other thingsfreely. A persons otteisthensaidtobe cool or fresh (green, acce),asisthe otteof the beneficiaries as well. If overdone,however, others might becomejealous,andtheirottewillbecomehotorburn,their

mind and moral orientation will become bad or even rot, and so on. To live the

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ideal life one that isgoodand pleasant, peaceful and calm, shady and cool, and soon one must maintain a good mansu (cf. Demmer 2007). This is achievedthrough constantly reminding oneself of the benefits of a good mind and its culti-vation that is, thinking well of others, sharing with others, and helping those inneed, such as ones elderly parents, grandparents, close kin, etc. To live virtuously

as much as possible is thus one key to staying healthy.The precondition for both of these objectives is the participation in the most

important ritual performances of the community. The rituals involve extensivedebates concerned with critical moments in life, particularly with illness anddeath. They consist to a large extent of what is called the talks, the conversa-tions or words of what is good and bad (lol

ledu ke

_t_tadu mattu), which serve as

contexts where the ethical mind and the moral person are constituted throughdynamic processes of narration, social memory, and ethical discourse.

Engaged participation and active involvement in these debates do two thingssimultaneously. First, they enable actors to achieve their identity as ethicalbeings, without which they could not survive, either suffering illness or evendeath, through the performance of good ways of living together. Second,such good living is poetically imagined and worked out through dialogueand debate (cf. Demmer 2007). It is in the context of ritual discourse thatcorrect good orientation (a good mansu) is acquired, maintained, andrenewed in the course of conversation and dialogue with shamans. In otherwords, personal crises, such as illness and death, require the social reconstruc-

Figure 5. The JenuKurumba model of the

person.

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tion of the moral person through participation in debate, dialogue, and conver-sation. In the course of these activities, the life history of the individual and itsmoral biography are disputed and discussed. The narrative reconstruction ofthe person that results entails the discussion of the clients responsibilities, com-

mitments to ethical values, recognition of the moral order, and vision of a goodlife. In short, the moral person is socially constructed.

What is achieved here is nothing less than the competence of ethical agencyitself through engaged realisation.11 We encounter the main rituals of the JenuKurumba as arenas where actors are engaged in ethical deliberation and argu-mentation. This procedure not only requires good arguments and the will tofollow an ethical mode of life but also emotional, narrational, and reflexiveengagement. It also demands that the cultural background and the meaningful

resources available to speakers and actors at that time be drawn upon. To poe-tically imagine and rhetorically defend or argue for what is observed as thereally good and bad requires all faculties that we associate with a practical rea-soner. The person thus learns and realises what it means to be an agent plus(Figure 5).

Conclusion

All cultural formations explored in this paper conceptualise the person as an

agent plus or practical reasoner. They postulate a close relationship betweenpersonal well-being, ethical orientation, the quality of relationships within thecommunity, and personal identity. All of these aspects are observed as indivisi-bly interwoven in that the person must cultivate its ethical orientation in a veryexistential sense: without this ethical engagement, people suffer or even becomesick, and the community, to use Jenu Kurumba words here, rots.

This engagement implies that the person is, to a certain extent, independentand free: he/she is not acting automatically but must choose how to conducthimself/herself and select which values to follow. Yet, the subject is also depen-dent on ethical resources as well as on others. Moreover, the individual isresponsible for his/her deeds, is held responsible, and must participate in dis-courses about the ethics of the community. The person, therefore, must con-tinuously employ an ethical logistics, as it were, to attain a proper ethicalorientation and his/her appropriate position in ethical space. All concepts ofethical personhood presented in this paper also assume that individuals areinterpreting social events and behaviours and that they are able to reflexivelyevaluate stronglyhuman desires, objectives, and ways of life as to their desirable-

ness. These processes entail the use of narrativity, imagination, social memory,

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and emotional schemes. Thought and feeling are therefore integral to theethical mind.

Furthermore, the above activities unfold in dialogic engagement. The ethicalperson has to deliberate and argue out through inner dialogue or through

public debate which stance he/she wants to take vis-a`-vis others andwithin the value sphere or the moral space as such. Thus, in every respect,the person is observed as a dialogic self, permanently and necessarily involvedin a kind of responsive engagement with, as the Jenu Kurumba state, what isgood or bad.12 All of these concepts also underscore that actors actively useand relate to the cultural resources, ethical horizons, and moral ontologiesavailable to them. Drawing on them in dialogic engagement enables theperson to strongly evaluate how to live and what is bad and good. Finally,

the person is also regarded as fallible so that his/her moral orientation andethical identity are always at stake.

Accordingly, the agency of the ethical person appears as a complex processthat should not simply be confined to, as Sykes holds (2012: 182), the navigationof commonplace contradictions of daily life without resolving or eliminatingthe paradox between self-interest and altruism, worth and wealth, or sentimentand reason, to cite the examples of Sykes (2012: 178). Furthermore, ethicalagency is not restricted to the extraordinary moments Zigon calls break-

down (2007). It is true that such moments demand the intensified reflectionand explicit articulation of values and moral positions so that ethical agencyis peculiarly visible, to use Faubions (2010: 20) words. However, we use prac-tical reason also when we lead our lives ethically in the course of our daily activi-ties. It is always at hand, so to say.

Moreover, it is important to note that engaged practical reasoning does notposit a highly reflective and overly rational evaluator as the model for an ethicalperson. Once we recognise that we are not concerned with abstract or theoreti-cal reason we can realise that engaged practical reason is quite ordinary andpart of our everyday conduct and ethical engagement. In this realist under-standing of ethics everybody is able to not only articulate but also to defendor reject ideas of how to live good. On the other hand, according to the com-munities studied in this article, ethical reasoning is certainly more complex thanFoucaults concepts of thought and problematisation. Ethical agency entailsstrong evaluation and its existential bearing on personal identity; however,neither of these aspects plays a role in Foucaults understanding of ethics. Fou-cault explicitly states (1997: 291) that the ethical subject merely reproduces the

ethical models imposed upon him by his culture and thus does not need to

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make strong personal evaluations. Furthermore, considering Foucaults well-known concept of the subject, moral orientation is not essential for theperson; thus, personal identity in this ethical sense is not a relevant conceptfor the poststructuralist tradition.

For the above-mentioned (and additional) reasons, Mattingly writes thatalthough a Foucauldian approach to ethics affords many insights, it comeswith serious costs. In particular, the complexities of motive, moral deliberation,and moral creativity, especially as elements of ordinary life, are difficult todiscern or are even dismissed altogether (Mattingly 2012: 177). By contrast,the concepts studied in this article postulate the existence of this complexityand the close relationship between all of the elements outlined above. As theanalysis shows the person achieves moral orientation through orchestrating

processes of imagination, thinking, classifying, feeling, and even sensation.Finally, all of the communities assume an existential urge to engage dialogicallyin moral deliberation and to articulate a moral horizon as an indispensableaspect of the human condition. It follows that in order to pursue a good life,ethical engagement appears as an existential task without which human lifewould hardly be possible.

Acknowledegments

I am deeply indebted to the research foundations and institutions which made mylong-term field research and academic work possible over the years. The GermanResearch Foundation, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, the Government ofIndia (Ministry of Education), the German Academic Exchange Service and the Uni-versity of Munich provided indispensable financial and/or administrative support. Ithank my colleague Frank Heidemann, the anonymous reviewers for Ethnos, as wellas the editors, for comments that led to important revisions.

Notes

1. We still have no explicit anthropological studies on how practical reason is con-

ceived in anthropology. I investigate this issue and the other above-mentionedforms of reason in Demmer (2013).2. There is no shortage of studies on the person in anthropology. Yet, explicit explora-

tions of the ethical person and its agency have so far been neglected. For example,Harris (1989) summarises the discussion by distinguishing among three differentideas of the person, namely, (1) the person as representative of a specific class orspecies, i.e. as a human being distinct from the classes of animals or gods, (2)the person as the site of experience and self-identity or what is often called theself, and (3) the person as social actor in society and community. The notion ofthe ethical person transcends these divisions. The studies in Carrithers et al.(1985) focus on the categories of the individual and the social person as inhabitantsof social roles and on the probable differences between these two categories. Only

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the chapters by Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre deal with the ethical person.Other work focuses on certain aspects of the person as social self, for example, asthe site of experience, emotions, and social status. Miller et al. (1990) and Mageo(1995), for example, represent studies concerning the narrative and discursive con-struction of the social self.

3. See Mattingly (2012) for a discussion of Neo-Aristotelian (and Foucauldian)approaches to ethics.

4. This paper concerns the general features of ethical agency. This does not mean thatquestions of social positioning, gender, and power play no role; however, appropri-ately addressing these issues is beyond the scope of this work.

5. I conducted almost 10 years of fieldwork among the Jenu Kurumba between theyears 1987and 2011.

6. Practical reason as it is understood in the present paper is not a strictly cognitivefaculty like abstract or theoretical reason but a complex process of ethical orien-tation. Another important thrust of research is therefore concerned with that com-

plexity in terms of processes, such as embodiment, habitual orientation, affect, ormoral sentiment (cf. Throop 2010, 2012; Zigon 2011; Mattingly 2012). It is importantto recognise, however, that these features of ethical experience and conduct are notper se opposed to the specific engaged type of practical reason we are concernedwith in the present article. As will be demonstrated throughout this article theengaged type of reason does include emotional and existential experiences, forinstance. However, showing how the orchestration of embodiment, habitus, anddiscourse-based practical reason is achieved in all its dimensions is beyond thescope of the present paper. It remains an important task for anthropologicalresearch. I thank one anonymous reviewer for pointing those issues out.

7. I must confine myself to the central features described in the literature. A compre-hensive treatment of this topic exceeds the scope of this article and is presented else-where (Demmer2013).

8. Zigon (2007), Hirschkind (2006), and Mahmood (2005) refer to problematisationas well.

9. Zigon (2007, 2009) and, as Fassin (2012: 8) points out, Robbins (e.g. 2007, 2012) alsostruggle with that polarity without, however, overcoming it. They hold that bothtypes of action are relevant though at different times (Zigon) or in particular con-texts (Robbins).

10. I have selected only some cultures for analysis. Data on the Yupno (Keck2005), for

example, could have been included in addition to the findings of Myers (1990),White (1990), and Rosaldo (1984).11. Lambek also observes that rituals not only represent but also realiseethics and the

idea of a good life, at least temporarily (Lambek 2000: 314). Fernandez confirmsthat idea as well when he states that metaphors or allegories of morality are takenliterally and become real experience (Fernandez 1986: 42).

12. The Kallar in South India also engage in ethical discourses on the good and bad (cf.Pandian 2009). Moreover, it seems that they conceptualise the person in terms of anagent plus. The Kallar man who Pandian interviewed for his article (2010) usesterms the Jenu Kurumba also employ (e.g. manasuorbuddhi). The interviews also

demonstrate that the man deliberates morally, endows ethical values with a

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poetic quality, derives his judgements through engagement with cultural resources,and evaluates strongly. However, Pandian does not detail how the person is concep-tualised; therefore, we cannot discern whether the concept as a whole correspondsto the agent plus. It should also be noted that despite Pandians reasonable critiqueof Taylors approach to the interior self, there is an ontological element to Taylors

work. My arguments in this article build on this ontological dimension of Taylorswork. Mattingly (2012) provides a very useful reading on this issue. The term realiststems from Taylor (1989) who, for these reasons, calls his approach ethical realism.

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