Four senses of autonomy: self-choice, self-legislation, authenticity, and self-decision
In this module, rights have been explained as capacities of action that are necessary to the exercise of human autonomy. In this section, autonomy will be characterized as self-choice, self-legislation, authenticity, and self-decision following
Ética Para Ingenieros , 2a Edición, by Galo Bilbao, Javier Fuertes, and José Ma Guilbert, Universidad Jesuistas, 160-164. Bilbao, Fuertes, and Guilbert draw from the writings of Diego Gracia, in
Fundamentos de Bioética , Eudema, Madrid. What follows draws upon but also takes some liberties with the accounts by Diego Gracia as well as Bilbao, Fuertes, and Guilbert.
1. the literal meaning of autonomy comes from the greek words, auto (=self) and nomos (=law).
Thus, autonomy is literally the ability to give the law to oneself, to legislate for oneself. This presupposes that one can adopt a rational and universal standpoint and design rules or maxims that apply equally to oneself and to all others. I develop rules and guidelines for myself that, at the same time, I can consistently will for all others.
2. autonomy as self-legislation ties in closely with kant’s categorical imperative and formula of the end.
The Categorical Imperative holds that
I can act only on that maxim (=personal or subjective rule) that can be converted into a universal law (=rule that applies to all) . Cheating for example, fails the CI because its maxim (I can copy from another when I need to) is self-defeating when universalized. (Why?) The Formula of the End states that
I must treat humanity (myself included) always as an end and never merely as a means . Whenever I lie, deceive, force, manipulate or impose fraud on another to achieve my ends, I seek to circumvent that person's autonomy; I bring her into the scope of certain projects without getting her explicit and full rational consent. (I ask an acquaintance out for a date, not because I value her as a person, but because I want to make my ex-girlfriend jealous.)
3. many say that the ability to exercise autonomy as self-legislation rests upon the ability to take the moral point of view.
Here one takes up the position of the other through a skill moral psychologists call “role-taking.” I project into the standpoint of another and view the action I am considering from her perspective. If this action is as acceptable from her perspective as it is from mine, then it is reversible, and thereby recommended.
4. autonomy can also be characterized as the synthesis of freedom from and freedom to.
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Freedom from is liberty, the absence of obstacles that stand in the way of what an agent wants to do. Because of this, freedom from is the negative sense of autonomy; it clarifies what opposes autonomy and must be removed to facilitate it. But freedom from does not provide a positive account of what one does after all obstacles to action have been removed.
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Freedom to is the positive characterization of autonomy. It spells out what I do when I have achieved freedom from. It requires a conception of the good as well as identity-conferring projects that I work to bring about. It also sets forth side constraints such as Kant's Categorical Imperative and Formula of the End. Thus, I develop life plans whose realization requires access to the means to carry them out. But these plans are pursued within the constraints that Kant sets forth in the Categorical Imperative and Formula of the end; I can solicit the help of others in pursuit of my projects but only if I do so without circumventing their autonomy through deception, force, manipulation, or fraud.
- Isaiah Berlin provides an especially clear and persuasive account of freedom to and freedom from in his article “Two Concepts of Liberty.”
