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Autonomy and Addiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Neil Levy
Neil Levy*
Affiliation:
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3010, Australia
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Extract

Whatever its implications for the other features of human agency at its best — for moral responsibility, reasons-responsiveness, self-realization, flourishing, and so on—addiction is universally recognized as impairing autonomy. But philosophers have frequently misunderstood the nature of addiction, and therefore have not adequately explained the manner in which it impairs autonomy. Once we recognize that addiction is not incompatible with choice or volition, it becomes clear that none of the Standard accounts of autonomy can satisfactorily explain the way in which it undermines fully autonomous agency. In order to understand to what extent and in what ways the addicted are autonomy-impaired, we need to understand autonomy as consisting, essentially, in the exercise of the capacity for extended agency. It is because addiction undermines extended agency, so that addicts are not able to integrate their lives and pursue a Single conception of the good, that it impairs autonomy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 427 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2006

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