トマス・リードにおける活動力、自己統御、道徳的行為者性

Hobbesian necessitarian compatibilist in general prevails in the eighteenthcentury free-will debate. Necessitarianism typically advocates that the concept of agency can be reduced to a more basic concept of event causation such as belief and desire. Thomas Reid, a defender of incompatibilism agent-causal theory, rejects such a reductionist turn about the agency and argues that all our actions are caused by agents, not by some other things. Necessitarians consider the springs of action as a matter of weighing up motives, while Reid claims that motives may influence action, but they do not act. According to Reid, motives are not causes, and it is the people themselves who are the cause of choice and actions.<br>Reid introduces the two-way powers theory and argues that the power to produce any effect implies that power does not produce it. However, Reid says that if the mind were always in a state of perfect indifference without motives, our active power having no end to pursue, no rule to direct its exertions, would be given in vain. Some commentator points out that Reid presupposes actions are produced by multiple causes, i.e., the agents themselves and their motives. Then, Reidian agents act partially from the exertion of one-way power, which is inconsistent with Reid’s sayings.<br>To avoid this puzzle, this paper examines Reid’s understanding of motives and focuses on his concept of ’self-government’. The competition of contrary motives is in fact between the animal motives and the rational motives. There are different tests of the strength of motives, namely, animal and rational tests. According to the latter, people make the effort of ’self-government’ to resist the strongest animal motive. Rational principles of action play an important role in ’regulating human conduct’. Therefore, this paper aims to clarify and defend the structure of Reid’s concept of moral agency in rational control over the will.