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How to Distinguish Autonomy from Integrity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Carolyn McLeod
Carolyn McLeod*
Affiliation:
The University of Western Ontario, Talbot College, London, ON, CanadaN6A 3K7
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Extract

  1. 1) ‘“Be true to yourself!” and “Don't cave in!” express the value people place on [_]….’

  2. 2) ‘… an important sense of [_] is being true to oneself.’

  3. 3) ‘[_] encourages and protects people's general capacity to lead their lives out of a distinctive sense of their own character, a sense of what is important to and for them. ’

  4. 4) ‘… to value [_] is to place value on an agent's acting from herreasons, whether they are good ones or not.’

Quiz: fill in the blanks. Here is a hint: two are autonomy and two are integrity. Can you sort out which ones are which? I suspect not, especially since the first two are nearly identical but have different answers. The third seems clearly to be integrity, at least given what philosophers such as Bernard Williams write about integrity: that it involves preserving one's own distinct character. However, the answer to 3) is autonomy. The fourth quotation brings to mind discussions about how autonomous agents can make bad choices, but we respect their autonomy by allowing them to do so. However, the answer to 4) is integrity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , March 2005 , pp. 107 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2005

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References

1 I want to thank Colin MacLeod, David Reidy, Dennis Klimchuk, and two anonymous referees, who were very generous with their comments, which helped me to improve the paper a lot.

2 Meyers, Diana ‘Intersectional Identity and the Authentic Self?: Opposites Attract!’ in Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self, Mackenzie, Catriona and Stoljar, Natalie eds. (New York: Oxford University Press 2000), 151Google Scholar

3 Davion, Victoria ‘Integrity and Rational Change,’ in Feminist Ethics, Card, Claudia ed. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas 1991), 190Google Scholar

4 Dworkin, Ronald Life's Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom (New York: Vintage Books 1993), 224Google Scholar

5 Calhoun, Cheshire ‘Standing for Something,’ Journal of Philosophy 92 (1995), 248CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 ‘Integrity,’ in Utilitarianism: For and Against, Williams, B. and Smart, J.J.C. (New York: Cambridge 1973);Google Scholar and ‘Persons, Character and Morality,’ in Williams's Moral huck: Philosophical Papers 1973-1980 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1981). McFall, Lynne has this view of integrity as well. See her ‘Integrity,’ Ethics 98 (1987) 5–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Meyers, Diana agrees and discusses the issue in ‘Intersectional Identity,’ 151.Google Scholar

8 None has written anything comprehensive about how the two differ from one another.

9 Most philosophers writing on autonomy, especially Frankfurt, say that critical self-ref lection is a key element of autonomy, while philosophers writing on integrity do not say the same thing about it. See Frankfurt's, ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,’ in his The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Many philosophers, including Williams and McFall, explicitly associate having integrity with acting on values that are ‘core,’ or central to one's identity, but philosophers writing on autonomy in the Frankfurtian tradition do not do the same with it, not explicitly.

11 For a discussion of prototypes and how they structure moral concepts, see Johnson's, Mark Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar along with Mind and Marals: Essays on Ethics and Cognitive Science, May, Larry Friedman, Marilyn and Clark, Andy eds. (Cambridge: The MIT Press 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar I refer throughout to a prototypical sense of integrity in Western culture. As with autonomy, I do not pretend to capture all of the ways in which we use ‘integrity,’ including non-prototypical ways (e.g., the ‘integrity’ of objects).

12 Here it is subjective, because I am taking as my starting point the dominant view of autonomy (i.e., Frankfurt's), according to which the content of autonomous reflection is subjective. Elsewhere, I defend a more controversial view, according to which some objective (or Substantive) limits exist on the mental Contents of autonomous agents. Among these limits are justified self-trust, and self-respect. See my Self-Trust and Reproductive Autonomy (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 2002).

13 Autonomy can do the first task because it is not simply a condition but also a capacity. See Feinberg's, Joel ‘Autonomy,’ in The Inner eltadel: Essays on Individual Autonomy, Christman, John ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989).Google Scholar One's capacity for autonomy allows one to shape an identity for oneself, but one is not fully autonomous until one has an identity that informs one's choices (i.e., that makes them one's own).

14 See Calhoun, ‘Standing for Something.’

15 The important respect has to do with the content of what a person with integrity Stands for: it concerns how everyone should act, not just how the agent himself should act, which is the case for personal autonomy. I do not deny, and in fact argue in Self-Trust and Reproductive Autonomy that autonomy is a social phenomenon in the sense that it is exercised and developed only in certain kinds of social environments. See also Mackenzie's and Stoljar's Relational Autonomy volume (2000), and Cuypers's, Stefaan Self-Identity and Personal Autonomy (Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2001),Google Scholar eh. 6. Integrity, I would argue, is similarly ‘relational’ (i.e., socially constituted).

16 See note 9.

17 See note 10.

18 Philosophers who strongly associate resistance and struggle with integrity include Calhoun (see above), and Amelie Rorty. See the latter's ‘Integrity: Political, not Psychological,’ in Integrity in the Public and Private Domain, Montefiore, Alan and Vines, David eds. (New York: Routledge 1999).Google Scholar

19 For brevity's sake, I will not always include the adjective ‘critical’ when referring to critical self-reflection. I claim that the kind of self-reflection both autonomy and integrity demand is critical in the sense that it establishes whether the agent's values are truly her own. Such critical analysis can occur at different levels of intensity, as I suggest below.

20 Double, Richard ‘Two Types of Autonomy Accounts,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 70. See as well Noggle's, Robert ‘The Public Conception of Autonomy and Critical Self-Reflection,’ The Southern Journal of Philosophy 35 (1997) 495–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Double, ‘Two Types,’ 70Google Scholar

22 Frankfurt, ‘Identification and Wholeheartedness,’ in The Importance of What We Care About, 170 & 171.

23 Noggle, ‘The Public Conception of Autonomy,’ 506Google Scholar

24 Frankfurt, ‘Identification and Wholeheartedness,’ 170Google Scholar

25 See Frye's, Marilyn ‘Oppression,’ in The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press 1983).Google Scholar

26 As Frankfurt puts it, one ‘constitutes’ oneself by reflecting upon and deciding what one wants (and presumably, the more one reflects and decides, the more one constitutes oneself): see ‘Identification and Wholeheartedness,’ 170 & 172.

27 Double assumes that reflection of this sort is necessary according to the dominant view of autonomy: see ‘Two Types,’ 70.

28 Frankfurt says as much in ‘The Faintest Passion,’ in his Necessity, Volition, and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999), 99, 100, 106. He discusses the need to be self-reflective so that one can replace ‘unsatisfying’ (i.e., inconsistent or ambivalent) truths about oneself, and ultimately be a whole, autonomous seif.

29 See Frankfurt's, ‘On the Necessity of Ideals,’ in Necessity, Volition, 115.Google Scholar

30 It is also a threshold concept: that is, only beyond a certain threshold could one be said to be autonomous, and different degrees of autonomy exist beyond that threshold. As I suggest above (see especially n. 26), the concept of seif is similar.

31 Those who are worried that unreflective people would face such treatment also seem to have a narrow view of paternalism. They refer to unreflective people being coerced or marginalized. However, paternalism does not have to involve such acts. Trying to persuade someone of one's point of view is a form of paternalism, one that we often engage in when people appear to us to be flippant about important life decisions. That my view of autonomy sanctions paternalism in circumstances in which people have reflected little and the decision they face is important does not make that view counter-intuitive.

32 See Christman's introduction to The Inner Citadel, 8.

33 Calhoun, ‘Standing for Something,’ 243Google Scholar

34 That is not to say that they discover it on their own necessarily. Self-reflection may only be useful if it involves feedback from others.

35 See my ‘Integrity and Self-Protection,’ Journal of Social Philosophy 35 (2004), 221 & 222.

36 It is Calhoun's (‘Standing for Something’). She refers to the evaluative communities in Mill and Kant (256). Both the unrestricted flow of ideas in Mill and the Community of co-legislators in Kant require that people stand for what they believe to be true or for principles that they think should legislate everyone, respectively. In other words, they must have integrity. For otherwise the communities would not function in the way Mill and Kant intended.

37 For example, a reason for acting courageously could simply be ‘it's worth the risk’; see Hursthouse's, Rosalind On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999), 128.Google Scholar

38 See Mill, John Stuart On Liberty, Himmelfarb, G. ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1982), eh. 2.Google Scholar

39 See Cuypers, Self-ldentity, 143-6.

40 See his ‘Identification and Wholeheartedness.’

41 Many feminists oppose the idea that an autonomous seif must be completely unified, or wholehearted in its deliberations. The reason why is that many women's selves are made up of ‘intersectional identities’ (e.g., mother/professional; Hispanic’ lesbian) that do not admit of wholehearted integration, but may be autonomous nonetheless. See Meyers, ‘Intersectional Identity,’ 168-72. Feminists writing on integrity make a similar claim about wholehearted integration and intersectional identities. See, for example, Davion's ‘Integrity and Radical Change,’ and Margaret Walker's ‘Picking Up Pieces: Lives, Stories, and Integrity,’ in her Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics (New York: Routledge 1998). Still, I do not think most feminists would deny that some integration is essential for both autonomy and integrity; without being somewhat integrated, one would have nothing either to govern one's seif with or to stand for.

42 Calhoun, ‘Standing for Something,’ 260Google Scholar

43 See Williams, ‘Integrity.’

44 Frankfurt, ‘Autonomy, Necessity, and Love,’ in Necessity, Volition, 132Google Scholar

45 McFall, ‘Integrity,’ 9-10

46 The judgment is more specifically that people in general, not just the agent herseif, should be willing to die for fine wine.

47 This example is a Variation on one I use in ‘Integrity and Self-Protection,’ 227.

48 One might object that acting such that one furthers one's own conception of the good may not improve one's autonomy because one's good, subjectively defined, could lie in ‘abnegating one's autonomy’ (as one referee for this Journal suggested to me). What if one's good, subjectively defined, is to be the slave of another? I think we would, or at least should, question whether such a conception of the good is subjectively defined. More than likely, it is the product of oppression or some other alien, negative force.

49 One might ask whether aside from my theory, we have any reason to deny that she would exercise personal autonomy if she went against public opinion. After all, she might do so after having made an informed and voluntary decision. However, ‘personal autonomy’ does not refer simply to making informed and voluntary decisions. If it did, it would be indistinguishable from other forms of autonomy, including moral autonomy (i.e., integrity). The ‘personal’ in personal autonomy refers to individual goals or preferences that one thinks should motivate the seif, but not others inevitably (hence the term ‘personal’). ‘Personal autonomy’ involves satisfying personal preferences. ‘Moral autonomy,’ by contrast, involves adhering to one's own moral ‘preferences,’ if you will.

50 Assuming that what we perceive to be good for ourselves and what we perceive to be right together exhaust the sorts of values that could be the product of autonomous self-reflection, my view does not place Substantive restrictions on what an agent who is autonomous (personally or morally) can endorse. Thus my view is faithful to its Frankfurtian starting point, which is a non-substantive, or purely procedural view of autonomy.

51 However, if we cannot simply prioritize the right over the good in our current Situation, we may feel uncertain about our decision and hence not as integrated as an autonomous person perhaps should be.

52 ‘Standing for Something,’ 252. One might think it is odd to say that integrity involves ‘being in a proper relation to others.’ Does it not sometimes require that we stand apart from society, even alienate ourselves from it, in order to remain true to what we think is right? Yes, but that is consistent with saying that we should be in the sort of relation to others that integrity demands on Calhoun's theory. The proper relation is not physical but moral. The agent must resist pressure to conform not simply for his own sake, but for others’ sakes. Authentic moral concern for others should be evident from the content of his beliefs.

53 Note that there are four categories here: 1) standing for something, 2) the social nature Calhoun describes, 3) honoring one's own principles of right, and 4) having integrity. My aim is to establish connections between 1) and 2), 2) and 3), and finally, 3) and 4). Along with Calhoun, I simply assume that 1) and 4) are linked: integrity involves standing for something. I also assume that the converse could be false: Standing for something may not always involve maintaining integrity. Further, it may not always involve honouring authentic principles of right.

54 I use a very similar example in my paper, ‘Integrity and Self-Protection’ (forthcoming). I quote from it below.

55 It is true that in this example, the person could be Standing up for what is right primarily for his own sake. Alternatively, people can do what is right primarily for others’ sake, or for their own sake and others’ sake. If my theory of integrity is accurate, people can act with integrity in each of these ways. A similar claim can be made about personal autonomy. People can do what is good for themselves, for people close to them, or for themselves and those people, and act with personal autonomy, though not necessarily with integrity, in each case. When a person promotes someone eise's good or his own good while violating his own principles of right, he acts autonomously but without integrity.

56 Singer, Peter Practical Ethics, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press 1993)Google Scholar

57 See Rosalind Hursthouse's On Virtue Ethics, and McDowell's, John ‘Virtue and Reason,’ Monist 62 (1979) 331–50,CrossRefGoogle Scholar as well as his ‘Two Sorts of Naturalism,’ in Virtues and Reasons, Hursthouse, G. Lawrence and Quinn, W. eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995).Google Scholar

58 Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 165Google Scholar

59 Nagel, Thomas The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press 1986)Google Scholar

60 Quine, W.V.O. ‘Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis,’ in From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper & Row 1963), 78;Google Scholar quoted in Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics, 165

61 Note that for me, this restriction about importance is ultimately procedural. I have said that when someone's principles of right concern trivial matters, they are ‘barely believable as anyone's best judgment’ about what is right (16). The implication here is that the person has not adequately reflected on what is right.

62 Calhoun, 257

63 But most contemporary philosophers assume, unlike Kant, that one can be morally autonomous even if one's moral views are objectively wrong. I think that the same is true about integrity.

64 See Christman's introduction to The Inner Citadel, 14-15.

65 See Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Mords, Paton, HJ. trans. (New York: Harper and Row 1964), 114;Google Scholar quoted in Hill's, Thomas ‘The Kantian Conception of Autonomy,’ in Christman, The Inner Citadel, 97.Google Scholar

66 Kant, Groundwork, 108;Google Scholar quoted in Hill, ‘The Kantian Conception,’ 98

67 For the ancients as well as for medieval Christian philosophers, the good life was one of virtue. Today, we are seeing a resurgence of such theories of the good (i.e., objectivist theories) in ethics with the current revival of virtue ethics. See, for example, Hursthouse's Virtues and Reasons volume, and a similar volume, Virtue Ethics, Crisp, Roger and Slote, Michael eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997).Google Scholar

68 Note that it is not a Kantian notion: while happiness may be defined subjectively, in terms of individual preferences in Kant, the good is not. For Kant, ‘[it] is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will’ (his emphasis, Groundwork, 61).

69 One might argue that the opposite is true with respect to autonomy and emancipation: some emancipation, in the form of freedom from restrictions or from external coercion, is necessary before one can exercise of autonomy. I agree. However, freedom of that form is not complete emancipation; one might still lack the capacity to form and act upon one's own desires. Hence, autonomy, or the development of it, allows for complete emancipation.

70 See Wiwa, Ken In the Shadow of a Saint (Toronto: Random House 2000).Google Scholar