Complacency : an action theoretical approach via Paul Ricoeur and Anthony Giddens

Abstract

In this work I make sense of complacency through an action theoretical perspective based on the action theories of Paul Ricoeur and Anthony Giddens. Even though complacency is a prevalent phenomenon, there is hardly any philosophical, sociological, and anthropological research on complacency. Through my research on complacency, I thus start to fill this research-lacuna. Moreover, by describing complacency as action, I do not take the conventional approaches of assuming that complacency is a vice or a purely psychological phenomenon. In order to describe complacency as action, I first clarify what complacency is by disambiguating ‘complacency’ through an analytic approach. In doing so, I arrive at a working analytical definition of complacency. I call this a ‘working’ definition, since this definition provides semantic stability while I discuss complacency as action. A working definition further provides analytical guidance as I navigate the action theories of Ricoeur and Giddens, and extract from their action theories the necessary action theoretical elements that are specific to complacent action. Through the above analysis-action theory dialectic, I am able to determine that complacent action – as a continuous flow of action – is characterised by the (conceptual) action-components of (i) awareness and (ii) care about matter x, (iii) in conjunction with acts that contradict the agent’s acts of care about matter x, (iv) where both the acts of care and the acts that contradict these acts of care (about matter x) are wrongly evaluated by the agent as being congruous or in line with the agent’s care about matter x. These incorrect evaluative acts are due to the fault of the agent. The final action-constituent of complacent action is (iv) the act of self-satisfaction, where self-satisfaction ‘causes’ or maintains the other action-components of complacency.