This paper is an investigation into the possibility of institutional agency and proceeds via the elaboration of two, nested claims. First, if genuine agency is attributable to certain social institutions, it would not be the full-blown, intentional agency that characterizes human activity, but would rather fall under a minimal modality of agency. Moreover, since enactivists aim to articulate minimal conceptions of agency that are applicable across the sphere of the living, this suggests that such accounts of minimal agency might additionally be brought to bear onto some institutions. The second claim concerns which of two ideally typical enactivist accounts of minimal agency can more promisingly be applied to our institutions. Where some enactivists endorse a Jonasian account of minimal agency, which stresses a protentive, forward-looking orientation to a self-persistence goal, other enactivists apply a retentive ideal type of minimal agency, the norms of which are founded on a backward-looking responsiveness to precedent. By way of a critical analysis of structural functionalism, I argue that the retentive approach better explains the kind of agency that would be expressed by some institutions. I also claim that some philosophers, including Christian List, Philip Pettit and Ronald Dworkin, have independently come to the conclusion that institutional agency is retentive agency.

本文是对制度代理可能性的调查，并通过阐述两个嵌套的主张来进行。首先，如果真正的能动性归因于某些社会机构，那么它就不是人类活动特征的成熟的、有意的能动性，而是属于最低限度的能动性模式。此外，由于行动主义者的目标是阐明适用于生活领域的最小能动性概念，这表明这种对最小能动性的描述可能还会对某些机构产生影响。第二个主张涉及最小代理的两种理想典型的行动主义描述中的哪一种更有希望应用于我们的机构。一些行动主义者赞同乔纳斯对最小能动性的解释，强调对自我持久目标的前瞻性、前瞻性导向，而其他行动主义者则采用保留性理想类型的最小能动性，其规范建立在向后看的响应性之上为先例。通过对结构功能主义的批判性分析，我认为保留方法更好地解释了某些机构所表达的代理类型。我还声称，一些哲学家，包括克里斯蒂安·李斯特（Christian List）、菲利普·佩蒂特（Philip Pettit）和罗纳德·德沃金（Ronald Dworkin），都独立得出了这样的结论：制度能动性是保留性能动性。