The Intentionality and Positionality of Spontaneous Acts: Adolf Reinach’s Account of Agency

The aim of the present contribution is to discuss Adolf Reinach’s account of agency and his phenomenological approach to agency (Reinach 1911 and 1913). I show that Reinach’s account of agency concerns intentional acts, rather than intentional bodily actions, and explain how it is grounded in a phenomenological account of intentional lived experiences that are characterized by different levels of positionality. I focus on Reinach’s concept of spontaneous acts understood as intentional acts distinct from both intentional states and intentional bodily actions and show in what sense Reinach’s account of spontaneous acts is a phenomenological account of free acts characterized by a sense of agency. In particular, I discuss his claim that, unlike other intentional lived experiences, e.g., passive or active experiences, spontaneous acts are specifically operative experiences characterized by an “inner doing” of the self, where the self appears as the “author” of acts. Accordingly, I argue that the sense of agency captured by Reinach’s account of spontaneous acts is a sense of “authorship” that ought to be sharply distinguished from a sense of ownership. Finally, I dwell on social acts as a peculiar kind of spontaneous act and highlight its distinctive features. Unlike spontaneous acts, social acts are acts in which the “inner doing” of the self is grasped by another self, and, like spontaneous acts, social acts are acts that are not intentional bodily actions. Moreover, I show that the agency of social acts requires the involvement of at least two individuals and that they are position-takings of a second level, as spontaneous acts are, or even of a higher level.