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4 - Autonomy and Self-Identity
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- By Marina A. L. Oshana, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Florida
- Edited by John Christman, Pennsylvania State University, Joel Anderson, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
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- Book:
- Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism
- Published online:
- 02 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 07 February 2005, pp 77-98
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
In discussions of autonomous agency, much attention is paid to the psychological, social, and historical conditions the autonomous person must satisfy, and to the various epistemic and metaphysical phenomena that might jeopardize these conditions. Discussants assume, in ascribing autonomy to individuals, a “self” that is capable of acting, that this self has a coherent and sustained identity over time, and that the actor is “truly” or “deeply” herself in acting. A capacity for unimpaired critical self-reflection is included in standard accounts of autonomy as well. The task of self-reflection is to appraise aspects of a person's self, such as cognitive, affective, valuational, and dispositional states, as well as personal commitments, social roles, and ideals, to determine if these are components of the person's life with which the person “wholeheartedly identifies” or embraces without reservation so as to render them “authentic” to her.
Accounts of autonomous agency vary in the details. For example, defenders of a liberal conception of autonomy might disagree about the nature of authenticity. Other philosophers repudiate all such depictions of the autonomous self on the grounds that they falsify the nature of the self, and the conditions of its identity and authenticity. Among postmodernists, for example, the charge arises that the assumption of a coherent self misrepresents persons in presupposing a permanency of identity, where in fact the identity of persons is pliant.
8 - Autonomy and Free Agency
- Edited by James Stacey Taylor, Louisiana State University
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- Book:
- Personal Autonomy
- Published online:
- 03 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 10 January 2005, pp 183-204
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, I want to explore questions about the kind of freedom personal or agential autonomy is said to require. In particular, I want to address: (1) our ordinary pretheoretical intuitions about autonomy; (2) whether autonomy demands freedom to do otherwise, an issue of concern to philosophers who regard autonomous agency as central to responsible agency; (3) whether autonomy is guaranteed by the satisfaction of positive and negative freedom; and (4) the sense in which autonomy requires the freedom to “create oneself.” I will begin by offering a brief examination of the concept of autonomy at issue. In Section II, I will explore the question of whether personal autonomy is a phenomenon that depends upon the resolution of our metaphysical status relative to the truth or falsity of determinism. Section III will take up the question of positive and negative freedom, while the issue of self-creation will be the subject matter of Section IV.
THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMY
Autonomy literally means “self-law” or “self-rule,” and an autonomous person is one who directs or determines the course of her own life. Having a right to autonomy, or de jure autonomy, will not suffice for actual self-rule. Although a person's behavior and motivations can be traced to a variety of factors, to describe a person as autonomous is to claim that the person exercises de facto control over the choices and actions relevant to the direction of her life. This calls for agential power and authority in the form of psychological freedom – mastery of one's will – as well as power and authority within central social roles and arrangements. One component of agential power and authority is self-control.