Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Stoic Autonomy
- Autonomous Autonomy: Spinoza on Autonomy, Perfectionism, and Politics
- Kant on the Theory and Practice of Autonomy
- How Much Should We Value Autonomy?
- Autonomy, Duress, and Coercion
- Autonomy and Hierarchy
- Reason and Autonomy
- Identification, the Self, and Autonomy
- Some Tensions between Autonomy and Self-Governance
- Autonomy from the Viewpoint of Teleological Behaviorism
- The Paradox of Group Autonomy
- Abortion, Autonomy, and Control over One's Body
- Freedom as a Political Ideal
- Index
Autonomy, Duress, and Coercion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Stoic Autonomy
- Autonomous Autonomy: Spinoza on Autonomy, Perfectionism, and Politics
- Kant on the Theory and Practice of Autonomy
- How Much Should We Value Autonomy?
- Autonomy, Duress, and Coercion
- Autonomy and Hierarchy
- Reason and Autonomy
- Identification, the Self, and Autonomy
- Some Tensions between Autonomy and Self-Governance
- Autonomy from the Viewpoint of Teleological Behaviorism
- The Paradox of Group Autonomy
- Abortion, Autonomy, and Control over One's Body
- Freedom as a Political Ideal
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
For the past three decades philosophical discussions of both personal autonomy and what it is for a person to “identify” with her desires have been dominated by the “hierarchical” analyses of these concepts developed by Gerald Dworkin and Harry Frankfurt. The longevity of these analyses is owed, in part, to the intuitive appeal of their shared claim that the concepts of autonomy and identification are to be analyzed in terms of hierarchies of desires, such that it is a necessary condition for a person to be autonomous with respect to (to identify with) a desire that moves her to act, that she desires that this desire so move her. (Conversely, on these analyses, a person will not be autonomous with respect to a desire that she is moved by, she will not identify with it, if she does not want to be so moved.) Despite the intuitive appeal of these analyses, however, Irving Thalberg has argued that they should be rejected. This is because, he argues, a person who is forced to perform an action by being subjected to duress of a certain degree of harshness will desire to be moved by her desire to submit. Thus, he continues, the proponents of hierarchical analyses of autonomy and identification will be forced to hold that such a person acted willingly, and did not suffer from any impairment in her autonomy.
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- Autonomy , pp. 127 - 155Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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