Philosophy of action in Hegel and Rorty

This study aims to examine how the concept of action is treated in Hegel's and Rorty's philosophies within the framework of the debates on the philosophy of action in the analytic tradition. The philosophy of action, which emerged as a separate field of discussion at the beginning of the 20th century, deals with the question underlying all disciplines related to human behavior: Is there a qualitative distinction between human actions and ordinary events? Possible answers to this question provide us with different views of the concepts of individuality, society and the world. These responses are centered around two opposing approaches, one of which is causalism, and the other is non-causalism. Whereas causalism argues that action is nothing more than an event in the chain of causes, non-causalism emphasizes that man is an intentional being and places his/her actions in a different position from the movements of ordinary objects. Our claim in this thesis is that Hegel has a non-causalist point of view and Rorty a causalist point of view. In order to justify this claim, the relationship between reason and action in Hegel and the relationship between knowledge and action in Rorty are discussed.