Reading :: Agency and the Will

 Agency and the will: Committing to make a difference

By Andy Blunden

I’ve linked directly to the PDF supplied by the author so that you can download this 2026 book. Blunden, who is thoroughly steeped in Hegel, Marx, and Vygotsky, considers a topic that especially fascinated the latter: The will. What is human will, and what is agency? Most importantly, how can we make a difference? This question is vital to Blunden, whose background is in activism.

Blunden argues that “Beginning with the conversion of Augustine of Hippo in 386 CE, the concept of  the ‘Will’ became the vehicle for concerns about whether it was possible to ‘rise above your own nature’ and act contrary to your natural inclination” (p.5). So Part I of his historical inquiry begins here, with Augustine, before wending its way through Spinoza, Hume, Kant, and Fichte. 

In Part II, the question is taken up by Hegel. In four chapters, Blunden examines how Hegel — and Rousseau — took up questions of the Will and adjacent questions about freedom, personal autonomy, ethics, rights, morality, ethical life, responsibility, and conscience. 

This leads us to Part III, focused on the psychology of will. These three chapters focus on Vygotsky’s work with higher psychological functions, the development of will through childhood crises, and then on to adulthood, with the latter chapter explicating Perezhivanie.

Part IV moves on to sociology: in functionalism (Blunden centers Leontiev here), Althusser’s structuralism, and Bordieu’s structuralism. Part V examines pushback from Giddens and from Alasdair MacIntyre.

In Part VI, Making a Difference, Blunden moves on to the practical questions of how will and agency have been (and should be) taken up in activism. 

Personally, I got a lot out of this book. The word “agency” is like the word “solidarity,” with an overly general meaning and at least a few highly specific ones, and it’s not always easy for me to follow which meaning is being used. But here, Blunden does his homework, building from Augustine to the present so we can understand the sense in which he is using the word. I appreciated the clarity and especially how this work built up a historical background for Vygotsky’s project and his focus on self-mastery. 

If you’re interested in the intellectual history of agency and will, and especially the intellectual tradition that influenced Vygotsky, definitely click through and get this PDF.