ONLINE FIRST
published on March 19, 2024
Travis Pickell
The Phenomenon of Burdened Agency
This essay introduces a concept I call “burdened agency.” Burdened agency names a two-fold phenomenon in end-of-life ethics (with relevance beyond). First, the availability of control over the dying process may become an imperative to make choices about when and how death will occur. This is the burden of agency. Second, moral agency is increasingly burdened by “reflexivity.” No longer guided by norms that are taken-for-granted, individuals are, more or less, left to self-consciously negotiate the experience of dying on their own. Increasingly we labor under the existential “weight” of ambiguity, instability, and uncertainty that accompanies highly reflexive moral action.