agens

Agens is the Latin present active participle of agere, meaning “to do” or “to act.” As a noun, agens can be translated as “the doer” or “the agent,” and it is used in classical and medieval Latin texts to denote the entity that performs an action. The singular form agens, with the plural agentes, functions as an agentive descriptor or as a nominalized participle. In English-language scholarship, agens is sometimes quoted or discussed in reference to its role as the source of action in a sentence or argument.

In philosophy and logic, agens is used to discuss agency—the capacity of an entity to cause or perform actions. Scholarly discussions may distinguish between the agens (the agent) and the act or event produced (the action or effect), contributing to debates on moral responsibility, free will, and causation. The term also appears in translations of Latin treatises dealing with action theory, natural philosophy, and ethics, where it helps identify the actor behind a course of events.

In linguistics and grammar, Latin participles such as agens can function as adjectives or as parts of participial phrases. They can modify nouns to indicate the agent performing an action or to form relative clauses, depending on syntactic needs. The form agens is masculine nominative singular; the feminine and neuter forms, or other cases and numbers, follow standard Latin participle paradigms, with agentes serving as the plural nominative.

Today, agens is mainly encountered in historical, philological, or philosophical discussions rather than as a living term in modern English. In contemporary usage, the corresponding English term agent is preferred for ordinary reference.

See also: agent, agency, action, causation, moral philosophy.