In Agency, psychologist and bestselling author Martin E. P. Seligman offers a sweeping psychological account of what drives human progress. Looking across 2,500 years of history, he argues that material conditions alone cannot explain why some periods produce extraordinary innovation and human flourishing while others stagnate. His proposed missing ingredient is agency, our capacity to envision possibilities, believe our actions can make a difference, and expect those efforts to bear fruit.
At the heart of the book are three interlocking capacities: efficacy, confidence that you can accomplish a particular goal in the present; optimism, the expectation that your efforts will pay off in the future; and imagination, the range of goals and possibilities you are able to envision. Seligman argues that when these three capacities come together, they can propel individuals and societies forward.
Drawing on six decades of his research, Seligman traces the rise and decline of agency across periods ranging from ancient Greece and the Hebrew Torah to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Civil Rights Movement. He then turns toward an AI-transformed future, making the case that strengthening agency could help people create the conditions for a new era of human flourishing.
