Procedural autonomy and liberal legitimacy

Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy

Volumn , Issue , 2005, Pages 277-298

  Christman, John ^a  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84928860028     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511614194.013     Document Type: Chapter

References (73)

1. For a general discussion of political liberalism, John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)
2. Donald Moon, ConstructingCommunity: Moral Pluralism and Tragic Conflicts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)
3. Gerald Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1996). For a perfectionist critique of liberalism
4. Steven Wall, Liberalism, Perfectionism, and Restraint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
5. Writers who have analyzed the concept of autonomy in detail include Gerald Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)
6. Alfred Mele, Autonomous Agents (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)
7. Diana T. Meyers, Self, Society and Personal Choice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989)
8. Bernard Berofsky, Liberation from Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
9. For recent surveys of such literature, Thomas May, “The Concept of Autonomy” American Philosophical Quarterly 31 (1994): 133-144
10. Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar, eds., Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2000)
11. my “Autonomy in Moral andPolitical Philosophy,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html)
12. John Christman, ed., The Inner Citadel: Essays on Individual Autonomy (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1989).
13. Other competence-related conditions can be mentioned: The autonomous person cannot suffer from those neuroses that have the effect of debilitating other autonomy-relatedd ecision-making functions. The severely paranoid person, or the agoraphobic, or the person living with bulimia or anorexia nervosa cannot be thought to be autonomous (at least relative to those areas of her life affected by the conditions). Similarly, various affective deficiencies disrupt autonomy (in ways usually not noted in the literature on this concept). A person who is chronically unable to call forth or suppress certain emotions-to call forth love and care or suppress anger and rage-when they are appropriate to the person's own occurrent projects and d ecisions, may not be acting autonomously.
14. Christman, “Autonomy andPersonal History,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (1991): 1-24
15. “Defending Personal Autonomy: Reply to Professor Mele,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23 (1993): 281-290.
16. The concept of self-alienation is analyzedin a different form in certain areas of psychoanalytic theory: Karen Horney, Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis (New York: Norton, 1945).
17. Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of the Person,” in Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 11-25.
18. Also, the narrowness of seeing autonomy as merely a function of the operation of desires shouldbe noted. A more useful approach wouldsee autonomy as involving judgments about any aspect of the self or character that guides choice or constitutes the personality. Therefore, emotional states, habits, capacities, and even physical states-what I will label “characteristics” or “traits”-shouldbe includedin the purview of self-appraisal that autonomy involves. Richard Double, “Two Types of Autonomy Accounts,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1992): 65-80.
19. A development of an idea similar to this (though not couched in the context of a proceduralist conception of autonomy) can be found in Catriona Mackenzie, “Imagining Oneself Otherwise,” in Stoljar andMackenzie, eds. Relational Autonomy, 124-150. This condition also resembles the requirement of “reasons-responsiveness” that some have arguedis necessary for moral responsibility
20. John Martin Fisher and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
21. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986): 372-377, where he argues that autonomy requires an adequate range of options, as I discuss below. Notice, however, that the requirement I am proposing is importantly different: I am not claiming that an autonomous person must face actual open options, but only that in order to be able to reflect adequately she must be able to imagine alternative choices under (counterfactually) optimal conditions. Moreover, these alternative choices are defined subjectively, on my view, not, as with Raz, from a purely philosophical, external viewpoint
22. For discussion of a similar point, see my “Liberalism, Autonomy, and Self-T ransformation,” Social Theory and Practice 27 (2001): 185-206. (I am grateful to Diana Meyers for discussion of this point.)
23. Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy, 8-9.
24. See Paul Benson, “Autonomy andSelf-Worth,” Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994): 650-668
25. Keith Lehrer, Self-Trust (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1997)
26. Trudy Govier, “Self-Trust, Autonomy andSelf-Esteem,” Hypatia 8 (1993): 99-119.
27. Sigurdur Kristinsson, “The Limits of Neutrality: Toward a Weakly Substantive Account of Autonomy,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (2000): 257-286
28. Marina Oshana, “Personal Autonomy andSociety,” Journal of Social Philosophy 29 (1998): 81-102
29. Natalie Stoljar, “Autonomy and the Feminist Intuition,” in Mackenzie andStoljar, eds., Relational Autonomy, 94-111.
30. Paul Benson, “Taking Ownership: Authority andV oice in Autonomous Agency,” in John Christman and Joel Anderson, eds., Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Benson also includes powerful critiques of purely procedural accounts of autonomy in this paper, ones that motivate his own view. I cannot take up these critiques here
31. For a partial response, my “Relational Autonomy, Liberal Individualism, and the Social Constitution of Selves,” Philosophical Studies 117 (2004): 143-164
32. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, chaps. 14-15.
33. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, chaps. 369-378.
34. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, 370-375
35. andOshana, “Personal Autonomy and Society,” 86-93.
36. Oshana, “Personal Autonomy and Society.”
37. Christman, “Liberalism, Autonomy, and Self-T ransformation,” 185-206.
38. For a similar point, see Charles Taylor, “What Is Wrong with Negative Liberty?” in Philosophy and the Human Sciences, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985): 211-229
39. and The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991): 31-41.
40. See Gerald Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1996).
41. For discussion, see my Social and Political Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction (London: Routledge, 2002): chap. 4.
42. See Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989): 9-20.
43. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)
44. Charles Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
45. John Gray, Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought (New York: Routledge, 1993)
46. Jeremy Waldron, Law and Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 24.
47. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 217.
48. Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” in The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001): 129-180.
49. Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994).
50. Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), although she is not here defending a proceduralist liberal view.
51. E.g., on Rawls's view, substantive conceptions of the goodmust be postulated as part of the “model conceptions” that build principles of justice. The social primary goods, e.g., are postulated as indices of social standing necessary to formulate principles of distributive justice (not as metaphysically grounded values objectively applicable to all). Rawls, Political Liberalism, 180.
52. For general discussion of this issue, see my Social and Political Philosophy, 98-103.
53. See Wall, Liberalism, Perfectionism and Restraint, 22.
54. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, 218
55. Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1991).
56. For discussion of this point, see, e.g., Bert vanden Brink, “Liberalism Without Agreement: Political Autonomy andAgonistic Citizenship,” in Christman and Anderson, eds., Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism
57. Marilyn Friedman, “John Rawls and the Political Conception of Unreasonable People,” in Virginia Davion andClark Wolf, eds., The Idea of Political Liberalism: Essays on Rawls (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000): 16-33
58. Jeremy Waldron, Liberal Rights: Collected Papers, 1981-91 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 35-62.
59. This is similar to Thomas Scanlon's view that something is morally wrong/unjust if it cannot be justifiedto others on grounds they cannot reasonably reject. his “Contractualism andUtilitarianism,” in Amartya Sen andBernardWilliams, eds., Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982): 103-128
60. and WhatWe Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
61. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 59-70.
62. Friedman, “John Rawls and the Political Conception of Unreasonable People.”
63. For an argument along such lines, see GeraldGaus, “Liberal Neutrality: A Compelling Radical Principle,” in Steven Wall and George Klosko, eds., Perfectionism and Neutrality: Essays in Liberal Theory (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003): 137-165.
64. Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism.
65. For an interesting discussion of Kant's views relating to this point, see Jeremy Waldron, The Dignity of Legislation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 36-62.
66. For this reason, we shouldresist the characterization of liberalism as resting fundamentally on a principle of noncoercion. See, e.g., Gerald Gaus, “Liberalism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html).
67. First, “coercion” is a concept whose meaning cannot be given without an already settled understanding of the validity and applicability of principles of justice. A single physical interaction may be described as either “theft” or “recovering one's property from someone who just stole it,” depending on how the applicable property rights are defined. (For a similar argument, see Ronald Dworkin, “What Is Equality? Part III: The Place of Liberty,” Iowa Law Review 73 (1987): 1-54.) Additionally, as I note in the text, social interaction should not simply be modeled as dyadic physical interactions.
68. This is an important line of argument that Rousseau develops in various works. “Of the Social Contract,” in Victor Gourevitch, ed., The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, Bk. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 141-153.
69. This is parallel to the distinction Habermas makes between strategic and communicative interaction. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991): 58.
70. Note that this does not amount to a claim that autonomy has metaphysically grounded objective value, but rather that it must be presupposed in the process of legitimation demanded by justice.
71. For further discussion, see my Social and Political Philosophy, chap. 4
72. “Autonomy in Moral andPolitical Philosophy,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html).
73. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 58.