Autonomy

The real memorial that Mill erected to Harriet was the dedication of the rest of his life to writings that embodied the ideal that he had realized through her. “I feel how little I have yet done as the interpreter of the wisdom of one whose intellect is as much profounder than mine as her heart is nobler. If I ever recover my health, this shall be amended.” What was this ideal? As we have already indicated, the ideal was autonomy. Let us explain what this means.

The word “autonomy” comes from the Greek and means self-rule. The further explication of this concept requires that we make a distinction that is often obscured in the English language, namely, a distinction between freedom and liberty. By “liberty” we understand an external condition, the absence of arbitrary external constraints. “Liberty” refers to external conditions over which individuals do not always have control. By “freedom” we understand an internal condition, one in which we always have the power to control ourselves or to control our responses, an internal condition for which individuals are responsible. Individuals may be ignorant of their freedom, they may choose to abdicate their freedom, but freedom as an internal state is something that they always have, should they choose to exercise it. Freedom is not something that can be controlled from the outside.