Initiative requires a bodily agent possessing specific capabilities and vulnerabilities who inhabits some concrete worldly situation. This situation, the counterpart of the agent's bodiliness, is made up of things, events, and other persons. It provides a context of opportunities for and obstacles to the agent's exercise of his or her power to initiate. Through action a person can not only change his or her material situation but can also establish new lasting relationships with other people.

"If I had to lay out my vision of the world ... I would say: given the place where I was born, the culture I received, what I read, what I learned (and) what I thought about, there exists for me a result that constitutes, here and now, the best thing to do"

Paul Ricoeur dies. bbc | guardian | nzz | fr | taz