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Two Types of Autonomy Accounts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Richard Double*
Affiliation:
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Edinboro, PA, 16444, USA

Extract

Philosophers’ intuitions about what constitutes autonomy are largely driven by the exemplars or paradigms that we recognize. There are indefinitely many exemplars, inasmuch as there are relatively private personae that serve as autonomy exemplars such as our parents, third grade teacher, or, for the megalomaniac, oneself. But among Western philosophers there are doubtless some exemplars that are widely shared and broadly influential. Philosophical exemplars include Socrates, Aristotle’s magnanimous man, Kant’s noumenal self that is perfectly attuned to the moral law, Mill’s anti-authoritarian non-conformist, Marx’s manin-society (after the higher form of communism is achieved), Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, and Sartre’s authentic youth who must decide whether to join the French resistance or stay at home for the sake of his mother. Exemplars from outside of philosophy include Antigone, Christ, Faust, Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, Winston Churchill, and even figures from popular culture such as the baseball player Ted Williams, the free spirited flower children of the 1960s, and practically any character that John Wayne ever played.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1992

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References

1 See Feinberg, JoelAutonomy,’ in Christman, John ed., The Inner Citadel (New York: Oxford University Press 1989).Google Scholar

2 ‘Autonomy and Personal History,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Forthcoming)

3 The Theory and Practice of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), 20

4 See Christman, ‘Autonomy and Personal History’; Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy; and Lawrence Haworth, Autonomy (New Haven: Yale University Press 1986).

5 See Scanlon, ThomasA Theory of Free Expression,’ in Dworkin, R.M. ed., The Philosophy of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1972).Google Scholar

6 ‘Autonomy, Toleration, and the Harm Principle,’ in S. Mendus, ed., Justifying Toleration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988)

7 See Gary Watson, ‘Free Agency,’ in Christman, The Inner Citadel.

8 This is Irving Thalberg’s term; see his ‘Hierarchical Analyses of Unfree Action,’ in Christman, The Inner Citadel, 128.

9 Two Concepts of Liberty {Oxford: Oxford University Press 1958)

10 ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,’ in Christman, The Inner Citadel

11 ‘Freedom and Desire,’ Philosophical Review 83 (1974) 32-54

12 Elbow Room (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1985)

13 The Theory and Practice of Autonomy, ch. 1 & 4; The Inner Citadel and ‘Autonomy and Personal History’

14 ‘Autonomy and the Inner Self,’ in Christman, The Inner Citadel

15 ‘Paternalism: Second Thoughts,’ in Rolf Sartorius, ed., Paternalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1983), 111

16 This is Dworkin’s worry in The Theory and Practice of Autonomy, 17.

17 See, e.g., Haworth; Christman, ‘Autonomy and Personal History’; Gerald Dworkin, ‘Paternalism,’ in Sartorius.

18 See my ‘How Rational Must Free Will Be?’ (Metaphilosophy, Forthcoming).

19 Nisbett, Richard and Ross, Lee Human Inference (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall 1980)Google Scholar

20 See my The Non-Reality of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press 1991), ch. 3.

21 Dworkin, GeraldThe Concept of Autonomy,’ in The Inner Citadel, 62Google Scholar

22 I am grateful to Gerald Dworkin and to the National Endowment for the Humanities for sponsoring the Summer Seminar for College Teachers (University of Illinois/ Chicago in 1990) that allowed me to attend Dworkin’s seminar. I also thank an anonymous referee of this journal for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.