Personal Autonomy and Individual Moral Growth
The term 'autonomy', from the Greek roots 'autos' and 'nomos' [self + law] refers to the right or capacity of individuals to govern themselves. Agents may be said to be autonomous if their actions are truly their own, if they may be said to possess moral liberty. The necessity of this moral liberty is made clear in the work of many philosophers, in that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, in whose Social Contract are discussed what Rousseau sees as the centrally important relationships between what he terms the general will, liberty, equality and fraternity. From this work also comes that most famous of all revolutionary rallying-cries, Rousseau's memorable and epigrammatic, "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains".
The term is also a cornerstone of Kant's ethical theory, in which the possession of autonomy of the will is a necessary condition of moral agency. For Kant, autonomy functions as the ability to know what morality requires of us, rather than as the freedom to pursue our ends. The possession of autonomy permits an agent to act on objective and universally valid rules of conduct certified by reason alone. In Kantian terminology, this idea is quite separate from 'heteronomy', the term Kant uses to refer to the condition of acting on desires which are not legislated by reason. In Chapter 2 of his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics [Abbott: p. 46] Kant argues that we should repudiate all maxims that do not accord with the will's own enactment of universal law and "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law". For Kant, any account grounded on the view that moral law is commanded from ...
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...owledge and with its attendant moral dilemmas, there is a clear need for realism and, since individuals must both act and assume responsibility for their actions, little of value to be gained from, as McNaughton [p.57] puts it, "asserting that where there are many conflicting views there can be no correct answer". For the individual concerned to relate his sense of personal autonomy to a genuine quest for moral truth, the confident belief that, whilst truth may be difficult to discover, it nevertheless exists, remains a vital necessity.
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Kant, Immanuel, and Mary J. Gregor. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.
Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. 1951. New York: Back Bay Books, 2001. Print.
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Salinger, J. D.. The Catcher in the Rye. [1st ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 19511945. Print.
Rousseau, however, believed, “the general will by definition is always right and always works to the community’s advantage. True freedom consists of obedience to laws that coincide with the general will.”(72) So in this aspect Rousseau almost goes to the far extreme dictatorship as the way to make a happy society which he shows in saying he, “..rejects entirely the Lockean principle that citizens possess rights independently of and against the state.”(72)
...eing mandated for protection. Rousseau’s conception of liberty is more dynamic. Starting from all humans being free, Rousseau conceives of the transition to civil society as the thorough enslavement of humans, with society acting as a corrupting force on Rousseau’s strong and independent natural man. Subsequently, Rousseau tries to reacquaint the individual with its lost freedom. The trajectory of Rousseau’s freedom is more compelling in that it challenges the static notion of freedom as a fixed concept. It perceives that inadvertently freedom can be transformed from perfectly available to largely unnoticeably deprived, and as something that changes and requires active attention to preserve. In this, Rousseau’s conception of liberty emerges as more compelling and interesting than Locke’s despite the Lockean interpretation dominating contemporary civil society.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1991. Print.
It is easier to describe what is not freedom, in the eyes of Rousseau and Marx, than it would be to say what it is. For Rousseau, his concept of freedom cannot exist so long as a human being holds power over others, for this is counter to nature. People lack freedom because they are constantly under the power of others, whether that be the tyrannical rule of a single king or the seething majority which can stifle liberty just as effectively. To be truly free, says Rousseau, there has to be a synchronization of perfect in...
First, I outlined my arguments about why being forced to be free is necessary. My arguments supporting Rousseau’s ideas included; generally accepted ideas, government responsibility, and responsibility to the government. Second, I entertained the strongest possible counterargument against forced freedom, which is the idea that the general will contradicts itself by forcing freedom upon those who gain no freedom from the general will. Lastly, I rebutted the counterargument by providing evidence that the general will is always in favor of the common good. In this paper I argued in agreement Rousseau that we can force people to be
Firstly, each individual should give themselves up unconditionally to the general cause of the state. Secondly, by doing so, all individuals and their possessions are protected, to the greatest extent possible by the republic or body politic. Lastly, all individuals should then act freely and of their own free will. Rousseau thinks th...
What is the respiratory system? Why do we need to breathe? Can the process be changed or altered? The information in this paper will help you find out how the respiratory system works, what the components are that make the system work, and the many diseases that can change or alter the process.
O'Neill, O. (1986). A Simplified Account of Kantian Ethics. Matters of life and death (pp. 44-50). n.a.: McGraw-Hill.
Kant, Immanuel. "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: Immanuel Kant." Fifty Readings Plus: An Introduction to Philosophy. Ed. Donald C. Abel. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2004. 404-16. Print.
Immanuel Kant's deonotological ethical theory assesses if actions are moral based on the person's will or intention of acting. Kant's theory can be categorized as a deonotological because "actions are not assessed to be morally permissible on the basis of consequences they produce, but rather on the form of the agent's will in acting," (Dodds, Lecture 7) therefore his actions are based on duty and not consequential. Kantianism is based on three principles: maxims, willing, and the categorical imperative. Kant states that a maxim is a "general rule or principle which will explain what a person takes himself to be doing and the circumstances in which he takes himself to be doing it" (Feldman, 1999, 201). It is important that this principle be universalisable and that the maxim can be applied consistently to everyone that encounters similar situations, therefore willed as a universal law. The second aspect of Kant's theory is willing. This involves the agent consistently committing oneself to make an action occur. He states that, "In general, we can say that a person wills inconsistently if he wills that p be the case and he wills that q be the case and its impossible for p and q to be the case together" (Feldman, 1999, 203). T...
Furrow, Dwight. Ethics- Key Concepts In Philosophy. New York, NY: Continuum, 2005. Print. 20 Oct. 2011