Personal Autonomy

Beyond Negative and Positive Liberty

Robert Young

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138702905
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351787734
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

The concept of personal autonomy is central to discussions about democratic rights, personal freedom and individualism in the marketplace. This book, first published in 1986, discusses the concept of personal autonomy in all its facets. It charts historically the discussion of the concept by political thinkers and relates the concept of the autonomy of the individual to the related discussion in political thought about the autonomy of states. It argues that defining personal autonomy as freedom to act without external constraints is too narrow and emphasises instead that personal autonomy implies individual self-determination in accordance with a chosen plan of life. It discusses the nature of personal autonomy and explores the circumstances in which it ought to be restricted. In particular, it argues the need to restrict the economic autonomy of the individual in order to promote the value of community.

1  INTRODUCTION: AUTONOMY AND LIBERTY

There can be no question of the familiarity of the idea of autonomy in the political sphere. We encounter it very frequently. It is, for instance, common currency in political debates in connection with nationalist and liberation movements. The struggles of the Palestinians, the Namibians, the Eritreans and others for autonomous statehood are almost daily reported in the media. The quest for a measure of self-determination in the political process is a basic one for non-white South Africans, Catholics in Northern Ireland, Basques in Spain, the Mujahidin in Afghanistan, for poorly off El Salvadoreans and so on. Because the idea of autonomy is so central to the world of politics it is common, too, in much less momentous matters than national self-determination. The idea has, for instance, frequently been invoked recently in relation to universities where cuts in public spending have threatened the capacity of universities to determine their own priorities.

The place occupied by autonomy in political thought is not new. Though as a term of art it has had something of a revival among political scientists since the French Revolution and, even more since the period of decolonisation this century (Buchheit 1978; Ronen 1979), its use in affairs of state can be traced to the ancient Greeks. But autonomy not only has an established place in thinking about political movements: it is also an idea that bears on how we describe the thoughts and actions of individuals.

It is to this matter of personal autonomy that attention is directed in what follows. Needless to say there are certain common elements between personal autonomy and state autonomy, and it will be useful here to foreshadow some of these common elements. The autonomous person (like the autonomous state) must not be subject to external interference or control but must, rather, freely direct and govern the course of his (or her) own life. The autonomous person’s capacities, beliefs and values will be identifiable as integral to him and be the source from which his actions spring. Since such a conception of human thought and action requires more than just the absence of constraints and instead extends to the charting of a way of life for oneself and thus has a comprehensive dimension, it is more appropriate to frame the discussion in terms of autonomy than of freedom or liberty.

To place this construction on the notion of personal autonomy does not give the term a radically new meaning. The Greeks sometimes applied the term to individual conduct (Liddell and Scott 1897: 253), and autonomy thus conceived has long figured in reflective thought as central to moral agency. Those who determine their own ends (at least to some degree) are recognised as having the dignity that moral agency bestows. Moreover, from the agent’s own point of view, autonomy promotes self-esteem. These are points which have been taken up by writers as diverse as Plato (Republic, IV), Aristotle (Politics, VI:1), Kant (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals), by Kantians like Rawls (1971: 513ff; 1980), existentialists like Sartre (1965: 56) and libertarians like Nozick (1974: 31ff, 48ff).

The concept of autonomy advanced in this book draws on familiar features of the term, but is broader than that of some of the philosophers mentioned — broader, too, than the intention of other writers (like Mill) who use terms like ‘liberty’ to cover some of the same ground (Arneson 1980: 476). Thus Kant’s account, which is probably the most philosophically influential, construes autonomy more narrowly as governing oneself in accordance with universally valid moral principles. A moral being is a law to himself. This is not because he follows his own desires. Kant distinguished the ‘true self’ of practical reason from the ‘natural self’ of sense and desire. The true self is self-determining in virtue of rationally legislating the moral law for itself. Because human beings are able to act on principles they have freely adopted they have the dignity and value that attaches to moral personhood. Insofar, though, as they act heteronomously, in relying on laws not dictated by the rational will, they lack such dignity and value. In stressing self-directed action founded on rational and universal principles, Kant’s account of autonomy is narrower than an account based on action in accordance with a plan devised by the agent.

As well as being a long-standing topic of philosophical concern, the idea of personal autonomy at issue here has also figured prominently in fiction where the often tragic effects of its defeat has been a recurring theme. In, for example, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, Orwell and Huxley have given us glimpses of what it would be like to live in a world where control over the direction of one’s own life has for the most part been systematically eliminated.

Finally, in everyday life we acknowledge the importance of autonomy in that we lament its lack among those who are oppressed or who are severely mentally or physically ill, in wanting our children to develop in ways that permit them to exercise it and in the fact that our own selfimages fluctuate according to the degree to which we can realistically think of ourselves as being autonomous.

The pedigree of the idea of personal autonomy is not in doubt. But pedigree alone cannot account for the currency of the idea in contemporary social and political thought. What does account for it is, no doubt, complicated. But the attractions of the idea are most clearly expressed by religious reformers, like Luther and Calvin, by a variety of Renaissance humanists (G. Dworkin 1981:207), as well as by liberals, namely that the capacity for rational self-rule is not the property of a very few (as Plato and Aristotle, for instance, seem to have thought). Thus it has come to be widely acknowledged that nearly every adult has the minimal capacity to decide on his or her system of ends and hence that there is no justification for any but an even-handed approach to the differing visions of the good life embodied in such decisions. This one development in the history of ideas goes a long way toward explaining the prominent place given to individual self-determination in contemporary social life.

There is at least one further point worth mentioning. Just as state autonomy continues to be accorded a high profile when it is under threat and needs protecting, so the contemporary prominence given to personal autonomy largely flows from the threats to which it is, or is thought to be, increasingly subjected. Those who seek to defend personal autonomy warn against the dangers associated with the development of public bureaucracies, private corporations, growing technological means of moulding opinion, and sophisticated surveillance techniques. I shall not in the main concern myself with the legitimacy of these fears. I mention them only because they, too, help to explain some of the current play being made with the idea of personal autonomy.

For the purposes of this book it will be important to recognise the inadequacies of the political model (of state sovereignty) for understanding the idea of personal autonomy. The traditional picture of the autonomous political unit is that it is marked by independence from the laws and governance of others. To be autonomous in this sense is to be sovereign or to have unfettered authority within a specific (political) domain. Under the influence of this idea some think of individual or personal autonomy analogously as independence from the authority of others (the state, significant institutions, other individuals). Autonomy thus conceived has obvious affinities with the ‘negative’ conception of liberty (Berlin 1969: 122), namely that to be at liberty is to be unobstructed by others, and with accounts of human rights as spheres of activity in which interference by others would be illegitimate (cf. Richards 1981). Since several writers (e.g. MacCallum 1967; Feinberg 1973) have called into question the distinction between negative and positive notions of liberty, on the ground that they cannot be analysed independently of each other, it may be as well to point out that I use these terms here only as marking a particular emphasis. Advocates of the negative notion take a less generous view of what constitutes an interference with a person’s options, for according to them only the part played by other human beings in bringing into existence arrangements which interfere with those options is to be seen as restrictive of liberty. (cp. Berlin 1969: 122 with Frankfurt 1973: 83-84, Crocker 1980 and Norman 1982: 95.)

A central concern of this book is to argue that any view of autonomy that relies on the negative notion of liberty is too narrow. Some discussions of autonomy focus almost exclusively on external constraints and accordingly neglect those constraints which are internal to the individual agent (such as psychological barriers). While giving consideration to external constraints, it is necessary to correct this narrow focus. It is in pursuit of this objective that, in Chapter 5, internal constraints are taken into account in the process of investigating whether it is normally open to people to exercise autonomy. The blame for undue concentration on external obstacles to the exercise of autonomy is largely to be attributed to the negative model of liberty. Similarly, this negative model has had the major effect of tying thought about autonomy much too closely to an individualist outlook, particularly the so-called ‘rugged individualist’ outlook (cp. especially Chapters 2 and 8).

This individualist outlook is common in the West — as is evident from television serials, popular novels and neo-libertarian writing generally. Now it has long been held that there have to be restrictions on the exercise of autonomy where harm is threatened, or occasioned, to others. All supporters of the dignity and value of the individual share this conviction. But just how broadly the notion of ‘harm’ should be taken is less generally agreed. Those who keenly support the removal of restrictions on individual economic enterprise fail to take seriously the harmful impact this has on the autonomy of others (where autonomy is understood in positive terms as the securing of a large measure of control by these latter over the way they live their lives). This argument is further developed in Chapter 8.

The individual conception of autonomy has never sat comfortably with arguments for paternalism, where ‘paternalism’ is conceived as coercive or forcible interference with a person’s freedom motivated by a concern to protect that person’s welfare interests (or other important interests). It is sometimes claimed, for instance, that the autonomous individual has a ‘right’ to make his (or her) own choices, or should be free from interference with his own choices, no matter how foolish or self-defeating such choices may be (McDermott 1975; Stroll 1967). Such a position is confused in so far as it fails to keep distinct the occurrent sense of autonomy, autonomy of the moment, from the more important dispositional sense of autonomy, where the focus is on the autonomous person’s life as a whole. Matters are not greatly improved if we restrict ‘autonomy’ to the dispositional sense and ‘freedom’ to the occurrent sense (as by G. Dworkin 1981: 211)—this for the reason that freedom is necessary for autonomy. Foolish or self-defeating choices can wreak havoc with a person’s long-term, dispositional autonomy. It is very common in the individualist tradition to hold that it is only through the process of making decisions, making and correcting mistakes, and so on, that individuals learn to make wise and judicious choices—that maturity, rationality and such like are the results of autonomous choosing and doing. Now while it is largely true that maturity and rationality are the results of making choices (including mistaken ones), it is equally true that on occasion the protection of long-term autonomy may require placing restrictions on the making of foolish choices. The two positions cannot, accordingly, be incompatible. The libertarian and liberal traditions have, of course, generally been prepared to countenance paternalistic interventions where it can be established that an individual’s choices have been rendered foolish because his or her decision-making capacities have been impaired. But this does not go far enough. (Closer consideration is given to paternalism in Chapter 6.)

It is necessary to argue, not only against the rugged individualist conception of autonomy, but also for a more positive alternative outlook. Those who support such a positive understanding of autonomy stress the importance of a person’s controlling his (or her) life and projects. It is commonly countered that supporters of (positive) autonomy—who defend paternalism, the vigorous regulation of economic activity and so forth—are just adopting a totalitarian or authoritarian stance (Berlin 1969: 131). As well, it is sometimes said that this more positive view of autonomy carries with it a commitment to a ‘real’ or ‘higher’ self. This is because it is supposedly impossible to distinguish such a self from its phenomenal or surface level expressions. Talk of a ‘real’ or ‘higher’ self, despite its Platonic and Kantian pedigree, is thus alleged to introduce shoddy metaphysics. I intend to show that such views are without foundation.

The two chief concerns of this book are thus to elaborate an adequate positive conception of autonomy and then to uphold it against alternative conceptions. Only a positive conception of autonomy can do justice to its importance in our scheme of values and give point to its invocation by those who recognise the threats and obstacles to their selfdetermination.

Chapter 2 sets out the aspects of personal autonomy which have to be incorporated into any adequate understanding of it. Chapter 3 shows why personal autonomy occupies such a central place in our scheme of values. In Chapters 4 and 5, it is argued that the various alleged obstacles to the exercise of personal autonomy do not rob us of all personal autonomy. Given that we do exercise a degree of autonomy, the next three chapters proceed to consider the limitations that may justifiably be imposed on its exercise. Chapter 6 argues that personal autonomy may sometimes justifiably be limited for paternalistic reasons. Chapter 7 advances the position that harm and, under specified circumstances, offence constitute grounds for restricting the exercise of autonomy. Chapter 8 argues the need to restrict the economic autonomy of the individual in order to promote the value of community. The argument of these last chapters (especially Chapters 6 and 8) runs counter to prevailing opinion about the best means of promoting personal autonomy. The reader must judge whether I am right that prevailing opinion in these matters seriously misrepresents the nature and place of personal autonomy.

2 PERSONAL AUTONOMY: A CHARACTER IDEAL

I

The traditional view of the autonomous political unit is that it is marked by independence from the laws and governance of others. To be autonomous in this sense is to be sovereign or to have unfettered authority within a specific political domain. But it is not defensible to think of personal autonomy as simply reducible to independence, whether from the state, from significant institutions, or from other individuals.

One reason why it is not defensible to reduce personal autonomy to simple independence derives from the social nature of our existence. There are those who argue that any sort of individual autonomy is rendered unattainable by the socially structured nature of our existence, a claim scrutinised in Chapter 4. But putting this argument to one side, no promising account of autonomy can be usefully restricted to dictators (who are usually sovereign only over a restricted group of people) or to rebels (whether Hell’s Angels or revolutionary terrorists) or to Robinson Crusoe. We require an account of autonomy in a social context, where individuals relate to one another via common laws, beliefs, moral standards, educative processes and so on.

Quite apart from considerations of the social nature of our existence, neither the individual nor the state can be conceived as autonomous along the lines of the traditional model of political sovereignty. According to that model, a political state remains sovereign, just because it is not subject to the direct governance or laws of others, even though it is economically poor. This is implausible. On the individual level, poverty severely restricts the options open to a person and thus restricts that person’s liberty (Feinberg 1978: 27ff). Similarly, on the state level, economic underdevelopment frequently makes it impossible for states to control their own destinies even though they continue to make and administer their own laws. A truly autonomous state is one which is free from internal constraints, like a backward economy or lack of resources, and from external constraints, like foreign occupation or an economic blockade or imperialistic control of its economy. An insufficiency of resources (poverty), whether or not it is occasioned by the intervention of others, may restrict the options, and thus the autonomy, of both individuals and states (Frankfurt 1973: 83ff). Given that insufficient resources may diminish autonomy, and that such insufficiency is not always attributable to human agency, it must follow that autonomy, whether on the state or individual level, is not simply to be equated with independence from the authority of others.

Instead of thinking of individual autonomy as ‘freedom from’ the governance of others, it is more appropriate to understand it in a positive way as self-government or self-determination (these, of course, being matters of degree). According to this conception, the more one is able to direct one’s own life, the greater the degree of one’s autonomy. Those who themselves determine what they will decide and do, rather than have the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction: Autonomy and Liberty
• 2. Personal Autonomy: A Character Ideal
• 3. Personal Autonomy: Intrinsic Value
• 4. Personal Autonomy: External Obstacles
• 5. Personal Autonomy: Internal Obstacles,
• 6. Limiting Autonomy: Harm to Self
• 7. Limiting Autonomy: Harm or Offence to Others
• 8. Limiting Autonomy: Economic Relations
• 9. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index