Phenomenological Philosophy of Action: Action and the Action-Field

Abstract: 
This essay undertakes a Kantian transcendental deduction of Greimas’s 
narratological “Modèle actantiel,” elevating it into a general principle of action. Action 
is first divided into the phenomenological agentive—the experience of voluntary 
autonomy—and the ontological acted—its unknowable noumenal ground. The 
actantial model is then reconstructed across three axes: the axis of desire 
(Subject/Object), the axis of communication (Sender/Receiver), and, most extensively, 
the unfinished axis of power (Helper/Opponent). The essay identifies a critical omission 
in Greimas’s power-axis: the bystander, an undifferentiated neutral matrix from which 
helpers and opponents emerge. The bystander’s capacity for le regard (the gaze) is 
shown to produce profound power effects—objectification, transparentization of the 
action-field, and an inhibiting effect that suppresses differentiation itself. The second 
part unfolds a typology of the action-field into four irreducible dimensions: the physical 
field (spatio-temporal form), the logical field (cognitive form), the social field 
(intersubjective form, grounded in mutual perception and the gaze), and the cultural 
field (the historical synthesis of the first three dimensions, where cognitive schemas are 
sedimented and transformed). The argument draws on Husserl, Schopenhauer, Sartre, 
Foucault, Fichte, and Berkeley to establish a phenomenology of action in which the 
field and its neutral bystanders are constitutive transcendental conditions. 
Keywords: phenomenology of action; actantial model; agentive and acted; action-field; 
bystander; the gaze (le regard); transcendental deduction; axis of power; 
intersubjectivity; objectification; panopticism; différance; Greimas; Schopenhauer; 
Sartre