Читать книгу Autonomy - Beate Roessler - Страница 14

Freedom rights enable autonomy; autonomy concretizes a general concept of freedom. Accordingly, autonomy, properly understood, involves both the absence of obstacles and a horizon of options that are meaningful and desirable in a very broad sense. It also involves an autonomous person who, in reflecting on the question of how she wants to live, is capable of grappling and identifying with her own ideas and desires within a given social context. This is the framework within which we can more precisely define what autonomy as a capacity means and what qualities we must attribute to autonomous persons in order to be able to characterize them as autonomous. I want to briefly outline this here, but only the individual chapters will be able to give a more complete picture of the various aspects, problems, and tensions involved in the concept of autonomy.²¹

Persons are autonomous when they can ask themselves how they want to live and how they should live. We saw this above with Mill as well as in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals. Ernst Tugendhat describes the question of how one wants to live, what kind of person one wants to be, as a practical one: “[W]e are free in the sense of self-determination if we act on the basis of an explicit or implicit process of deliberation in which the practical question is posed in its fundamental sense.”²² Autonomy aims at asking, or at least being able to ask, ourselves regularly – even in the course of our daily routines – whether the life we are living is really the life that we want to live, a life that is our own. Although we are only ever autonomous in dealing or engaging with others, in relationships – we are never autonomous in total isolation – the responsibility for our own plans and projects nevertheless lies with us. I use the technical term “projects” here as a catchall for those things that are important to us in our lives: our career plans, family relationships, friendships, political interests, and so on. Projects form the content of our lives and we pursue them as autonomously as possible when we devise them ourselves, when we decide – reasonably independently – to pursue them, and when we determine our own actions in the course of this pursuit. Such plans or projects always exist within a framework of particular values and beliefs, and even if we are not always able to choose them ourselves (as in the case of family relationships), we can still accept them, endorse them, stand behind them as our own. When I use the terms “plans” or “projects” in the ensuing chapters, then, I also mean relationships – family relationships, romantic relationships, and friendships – that we decide to embrace and that are part of our lives.

This is the kind of concept of autonomy that stands at the center of debates around questions of what individual qualities or abilities must be attributed to a person if we want to be able to deem them more or less autonomous, and what social conditions are necessary to make these attributions. First, such debates frequently distinguish between global and local forms of autonomy. The concept is global when it refers to the whole person, to all of her actions; it is local when it refers only to certain actions or to a particular range of activity. The limited concept of local autonomy is often the more apt as it allows that certain motivations, social conditions, character traits, and other aspects of life may not be autonomous, without this necessarily meaning that we must deny the autonomy of the person as a whole. This is precisely how I apply the distinction between local and global autonomy, as I argue that we can be autonomous as persons even if certain actions or aspects of our lives are not autonomous. For attributing autonomy to a person (say, a reluctant smoker or, less trivially, a person with adaptive preferences), even if only in a local sense, is more commensurate with the practical value of autonomy.²³ I do employ both concepts in this book, however – local autonomy and global – depending on context and the specific issue at hand. Moreover, the possible tension between our local inability to exercise autonomy and our general understanding of ourselves as autonomous persons can lead to discrepancies that are particularly illuminating for my approach to the question of autonomy in everyday life and autonomy as a precondition of a life well lived.

We can further understand the theoretical debates of recent decades as arguments about the conditions for the formation of the will of an autonomous person. I want to briefly outline these debates, as it is easier to develop a plausible concept of autonomy against this backdrop. We must tread carefully here, however, as the discourses of action theory and what is called moral psychology, both of which deal with the conditions of autonomy, are often extraordinarily granular and, at first glance, relatively far afield from the matter of autonomy in everyday life. Yet they are interesting insofar as, on second glance, they can in fact be linked back to an explanation of everyday autonomy and the question of a life well lived.

What, then, constitutes autonomy as a capacity? Procedural theories have been among the most influential in recent debates; they are also referred to as content-neutral theories, as they do not admit any content-dependent determinations (e.g. specific moral values, beliefs, or emotional attitudes) in the attribution of autonomy and only postulate formal conditions.²⁴ There are a number of different varieties of procedural theories, the most prominent of which is surely Harry Frankfurt’s hierarchical model; no theory of autonomy, at least none of any analytical interest, can avoid grappling with this approach, which also comes up for discussion repeatedly in this book. Frankfurt’s model is hierarchical because it considers that a person may be called autonomous if she is able to take a second-order position (at the level of what are called volitions) with respect to her immediate, first-order desires, and then decide which of these desires she can identify with, which should affect her actions. Thus, for example, at the level of desire, a person may want to smoke a cigarette, but then reflect on this desire and come to the conclusion that it should not drive her actions – instead, a different desire should have the authority to move her to act. A person has a free will and is autonomous if she can go through this process and actually come to decisions that she acts upon, regardless of the origins of her desires (which she may have because she was manipulated), their content (which may be wicked), or their justifiability. If I have the will I want to have, I am autonomous – and I have such a will if I can, upon reflection, identify with a certain desire in such a way that it drives me to act. Identification (with a desire) and authenticity (it is actually my desire) are thus central to Frankfurt’s conception of autonomy, as is the hierarchical structure of the will, which is constitutive of being a person.²⁵

In his later works, Frankfurt seeks to halt the impending regression of first- to second- to nth-order desires through the idea of “wholeheartedness,” acting from one’s whole heart or with an undivided will – the motivational power that a person has when she has decided unconditionally to pursue a certain course of action, without any trace of a desire to even question her decision. This motivation results from a person’s fundamental “cares,” the things that are important to her in life, that she loves and cherishes, which determine how she acts and thus are able to end the regression of desires.²⁶

Yet – to raise an initial objection – it remains unclear how one is supposed to be able to resolve a conflict of desires if this regression can itself only be halted by other, stronger desires. Frankfurt overlooks the fact that even weighing two conflicting desires requires good reasons. There are reasons behind our actions, and reasons always have a normative dimension. This is something Frankfurt cannot refute,²⁷ as becomes even clearer in the case of a second objection to his theory, called the manipulation argument. According to Frankfurt, a person’s autonomy does not depend on how she has come to the desires with which she identifies. Even if they are the result of manipulation, a person can still possess autonomy if her will has the proper structure. This is why such theories are called internalist theories, as they argue that autonomy is determined not by the source of our desires and beliefs but solely by the internal structure of our will.

Even at an intuitive level, however, it seems decidedly implausible to define a person’s autonomy only in terms of the internal formation of her will, without also taking into consideration her social environment and the sources of her desires and beliefs. More appropriate, then, are what are called historical theories, which include the causes of the emergence of desires among the conditions for the attribution of autonomy. John Christman, for example, argues that a person can only be deemed autonomous if she is (in principle) capable of reflecting upon the causes of her desires and beliefs and then either critiquing them with reasons or accepting them regardless.²⁸ A person need not be substantively independent of external influences in order to be called autonomous, but she must be able to demonstrate procedural independence in her ability to reflect on the source of her desires and, as a result of this reflection, potentially reject her desires for good reasons. Thus acting autonomously means acting not simply on the basis of desires – however they may have arisen – but on the basis of reasons.

In order to be autonomous, then, a person must be able to identify with her desires and beliefs in such a way that she acts on the basis of her own reasons. This is the aspect of autonomy that Christman and others rightly call authenticity, a concept that repeatedly plays an important role in discourses of autonomy. If autonomy means being able to live one’s own life in accordance with one’s own ideas, values, and commitments, then the failure of autonomy as a result of manipulation, (self-)deception, or alienation can be described as a lack of authenticity. A person’s beliefs or intentions become her own beliefs or preferences when she can accept and endorse them in light of what is important to her – her other plans, her obligations, and her conception of herself – and when she does not feel alienated, or at least not too alienated, from them.²⁹

With this we have already taken a critical step beyond a theory of autonomy oriented solely toward the structure of the individual will. Consequently, for one thing, we have to look back in order to be able to see whether a person can act autonomously; at the same time, we also have to look into the future. Michael Bratman thus argues that a certain harmony must exist between the deliberations and actions a person intends to perform and her medium- and long-term plans, and that we only act autonomously when we conceive of ourselves as always being connected with these plans – what Bratman calls “temporally extended agency.”³⁰ As I will argue in the coming chapters, the criteria of rationality and coherence, as well as of stability, that the idea of plans introduces into autonomous considerations are not only sound but also intuitively adequate. In everyday life, too, we do not consider a person who fails to sufficiently adhere to her plans and intentions to be truly autonomous.

This brings us to our next problem: Can the question of which desires and attitudes ought to guide our actions and which reasons for acting are our own actually be answered without recourse to the content and quality of the options available to us? Substantive theories of autonomy – as opposed to the procedural theories just discussed – argue for an ethical or moral qualification. Susan Wolf contends that Frankfurt’s subjectivist and internalist conception of autonomy is incapable of accounting for the objectivity of reasons and values. Yet, she argues, we cannot plausibly and consistently conceive of autonomy if we do not establish the content of what we want and strive for with reference to what is actually and justifiably desirable, i.e. what is actually good or bad, right or wrong. From a different perspective, Joseph Raz argues that we are capable of acting autonomously only if we also have the right options available to us in society. Thus for Raz, as for Wolf, a person’s autonomy is tied to the question of what she actually chooses to do. This obviously goes well beyond procedural theories in which the important point is not what a person chooses but only how she chooses.

I will discuss in greater detail below whether Susan Wolf’s substantive theory goes too far, as one could argue that whether we live a good or bad, meaningful or meaningless life is not necessarily related to the question of the concept of autonomy. In any case, it is difficult to say anything about this from a liberal viewpoint ‒ difficult, but not impossible, as I will show in the ensuing chapters, which are critical of Wolf but do not argue against all forms of perfectionism. I think that, at the least, a meaningful array of potential choices and decisions is necessary in order to be able to attribute autonomy to persons. This would be a weak form of perfectionism, one that I shall try to advocate from a variety of different perspectives.

As a final step, let us now consider the autonomous person in her social relationships, both from the perspective of feminist critique of the concept of autonomy and from that of the general social and political conditions that are necessary for autonomy to succeed. Relational theories contend that the traditional concept of autonomy is overly rationalistic, individualistic (egoistic), relationless and oriented toward a masculine model of life. Hence they seek to defend a position that critically reformulates this concept of autonomy, arguing that subjects are dialogically constituted in their identity and in their autonomy. This is, first, a genealogical argument: we do not spring up out of the earth like mushrooms (as Hobbes claims) but rather are dependent on substantive social relationships if we are to be able to develop an autonomous personality at all. At the same time, it is also a constitutive argument: persons and their autonomy are constituted by social relationships.³¹ A further, systematic argument then makes it clear that social relationships are also necessary and constitutive of individual autonomy because persons consistently pose the practical question to themselves in commitments, in relationships, and in contexts of care. It is often in dialogue with others that we first become clearly aware of how we ourselves want to live. That is, we are always and only autonomous together with others, as I argued at the beginning. This also means, however, that we sometimes have to be able to decide against certain others, against their norms and aims, and that we have the freedom and the right to decide against our own family, against our own origins, and thus for other social contexts, if we think that we can live our life well only by making such a decision.³²

Considering the question of the social conditions of autonomy, however, we can actually go one step further here. To wit, being socially embedded also means being reliant on forms of social recognition. It is not possible to act autonomously without a certain sense of self-respect or self-worth. If what a person believes and considers valuable is not recognized, valued, or considered meaningful at least by certain others or certain groups in her social environment, if she cannot conceive of herself, at least in certain basic respects and vis-à-vis certain significant others, as a person who is capable of determining and explaining her own actions and pursuing her own projects; then she cannot act autonomously, on the basis of her own reasons.

Self-respect is therefore a precondition of autonomy – and developing self-respect in turn depends on forms of life that at least in principle recognize the autonomy of persons. A number of authors have described this connection between autonomy and self-respect and its social preconditions.³³ Joel Anderson and Axel Honneth, for example, develop an understanding of autonomy based on different forms of recognition, without which the self-evaluative attitudes constitutive of autonomous persons are not possible. They further clarify the ways in which specific social conditions are necessary for cultivating and exercising autonomy. Not only do we require social conditions in order to learn autonomy, the social conditions of recognition also remain necessary for developing and carrying out autonomous projects. Relational theories, moreover, advocate for a richer understanding of agents as not only rational but also emotional, bodily, creative, imaginative.³⁴ This relational or social perspective on autonomy also embraces the idea that social contexts are necessarily always defined by substantive value judgments or ideals that shape the available options autonomous persons can choose from. Hence it is also interested in further external factors that determine the success of autonomy.

Such substantive theories of autonomy are more demanding than procedural theories, requiring many more beliefs, capacities, and social conditions before attributing autonomy to someone.³⁵ This is why they also draw an important distinction between autonomy and agency. Nonautonomous persons, they argue, may be capable of rational action without being autonomous; hence rational agency is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for autonomy.

This conceptual distinction is problematic, however. Are we thus meant to distinguish between autonomous actions and persons on the one hand and simple agency on the other? And then only attribute autonomy to persons who are shaped by the right substantive ideals and at the same time unattached from conventions, as Marina Oshana demands? This would mean that certain social conditions make structurally autonomous agency impossible for certain groups of people, that patriarchal power structures, for example, allow most women only rational agency but not autonomous agency. I find this implausible – not least because there are good arguments for tying the possibility of a meaningful life to that of a self-determined life. Were we to follow Oshana, this would mean that most women lead meaningless lives, which seems to me to be a rather unconvincing outcome.

In any case, the social conditions under which subjects endeavor to live autonomously exhibit the Janus-faced character of facilitating autonomy on the one hand and limiting or restricting it on the other. The question of autonomous agency concerns political and social structures that both enable and inhibit autonomy, and precisely because of this Janus-faced character, as I will argue below, it makes sense to attribute autonomy to persons in different respects and to different degrees, rather than draw a categorical distinction between rational and autonomous agency. Incidentally, this is one of the intersections I alluded to above: with respect to the possibility of autonomous agency, analytic and continental approaches make very similar arguments. There are clear agreements between the continental and analytic traditions when it comes to the question of what role social contexts – morals and customs, the ethical life that Hegel calls Sittlichkeit – must play in the constitution of individual autonomy and how to understand the relation between subjects’ autonomy and the necessity of their being socially embedded in successful intersubjective relationships.³⁶