Autonomy and the paradox of self-creation infinite regresses, finite selves, and the limits of authenticity

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

Volumn , Issue , 2005, Pages 87-108

  Noggle, Robert ^a  

^a CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84928861448     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511614194.004     Document Type: Chapter

References (56)

1. Commonly but not universally. Some philosophers refer to what I am calling “authentic desires” as “internal desires.” Sometimes, the phrase “autonomous desire” is used to mean the same thing (but see Al Mele, “History and Personal Autonomy,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23 [1993]: 271-280, for other uses of this phrase). When discussing other people's theories, I will substitute “authenticity” and“inauthenticity” when it seems clear to me that this does not distort the theory in question. Those who think I have erred in any such judgment are welcome to treat my intended exegesis as the construction of a parallel theory. For a useful recent discussion of authenticity
2. Insoo Hyun, “Authentic Values and Individual Autonomy,” Journal of Value Inquiry 35 (2001): 195-208.
3. Gerald Dworkin, “Acting Freely,” Noûs 4 (1970): 367-383
4. Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 829-839
5. Harry Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 11-25
6. John Christman, ed., The Inner Citadel: Essays on Individual Autonomy (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1989): 63-76 (subsequent page references to this edition).
7. Frankfurt, “Freedom and Concept,” 69.
8. Frankfurt. This theme is amplified in “Identification and Externality,” in Amelie Rorty, ed., The Identities of Persons (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976): 239-251;
9. Frankfurt, The Importance of WhatWe Care About, 58-68.
10. Frankfurt, “Freedom and Concept,” 71;
11. Frankfurt characterizedthis as “wholehearted identification” in “Identification and Wholeheartedness,” in Ferdinand Schoeman, ed., Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987): 27-45;
12. Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About, 159-176.
13. Later work by Frankfurt suggests a more complex understanding of decisive commitment. “Identification and Wholeheartedness” and “The Importance of What We Care About,” in his The Importance of What We Care About, 80-94;
14. “Autonomy, Necessity, andLove,” in his Necessity, Volition, and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 129-141. For an interesting reconstruction of Frankfurt's recent work
15. Stefaan Cuypers, “Autonomy BeyondVoluntarism: In Defense of Hierarchy,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (2000): 225-256.
16. John Christman, “Introduction,” The Inner Citadel, 10.
17. John Christman, “Autonomy: A Defense of the Split-Level Self,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 25 (1987): 281-293;
18. Marilyn Friedman, “Autonomy and the Split-Level Self,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 24 (1986): 19-35.
19. Gary Watson, “Free Agency,” Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 205-220
20. Christman, ed., The Inner Citadel (subsequent page references to latter edition).
21. Gary Watson, “Free Agency,” Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 117.
22. Gary Watson, “Free Agency,” Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 116.
23. Gary Watson, “Free Agency,” Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 117.
24. Robert Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961);
25. Jonathan Bennett, “The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn,” Philosophy 49 (1974): 123-134.
26. Laura Waddell Ekstrom, “A Coherence Theory of Autonomy,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (1993): 599-616, I think that a coherence theory of authenticity faces the same regress. Roughly, such a theory claims that an element (E1) is authentic if it coheres with either the entire psychology of S or a fairly large subset of it. But now S's entire psychology (or a subset of it) simply fills the E2 slot in the structural condition schema. The possibility of global manipulation suggests that E2 couldseem inauthentic even if it is the totality of the agent's psychology. In such scenarios, the defender of a coherence theory of authenticity must posit some other condition to make E2 authentic or make the seemingly counterintuitive claim that mental elements can be rendered authentic in virtue of their coherence with elements that seem inauthentic. (Later, I shall argue that the latter claim is not as implausible as it may at first seem.)
27. Christman, “Introduction,” Inner Citadel, 10
28. Friedman, “Autonomy and the Split-Level Self,” 24, 26.
29. Cuypers, “Autonomy BeyondV oluntarism,” 230.
30. Ekstrom, “A Coherence Account of Autonomy,” 602.
31. Gerald Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 18.
32. John Christman, “Autonomy andPersonal History,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (1990): 1-24, esp. 11.
33. John Christman, “Autonomy andPersonal History,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (1990): 12, 16.
34. James Stacey Taylor has suggested(personal communication) that construing the regress problem as a problem about theories of authenticity might neglect a separate regress problem for theories of autonomy. While I suspect that he might be right about this, I think that if there is a separate regress problem about autonomy, then it is likely to be either parasitic upon, parallel to, or less difficult than the regress problem about authenticity.
35. A substantive theory of autonomy that rejects the self-referential approach to authenticity is developed by Bernard Berofsky in Liberation from the Self: A Theory of Personal Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
36. Susan Wolf also rejects a self-referential approach to autonomy/authenticity in “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility,” in Schoeman, ed., Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions, 46-62
37. Christman, ed., The Inner Citadel, 137-151;
38. Freedom within Reason (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1990). The work of both philosophers suggests substantive conditions for authenticity.
39. Isaiah Berlin offers classic objections to such accounts in Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958). My own worries apply only to theories that make meeting a strong substantive condition the only or main determiner of authenticity. For a defense of a weaker substantive condition
40. Sigurdur Kristinsson, “The Limits of Neutrality: Toward a Weakly Substantive Account of Personal Autonomy,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (2000): 257-286. I argue that, at least for certain purposes, we shouldfavor a thin conception of autonomy in
41. Sigurdur Kristinsson, “The Public Conception of Autonomy andCritical Self-Reflection,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 35 (1997): 495-515.
42. These intuitions resemble those that make libertarian freedom seem like the only kind of freedom worth wanting. My approach to issues discussed in the preceding paragraphs is parallel to and influenced by Daniel Dennett Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984).
43. Ekstrom, “A Coherence Account of Autonomy,”
44. Watson, “Free Agency.”
45. Frankfurt's later work e.g., “Identification and Wholeheartedness,”
46. The Importance of What We Care About,
47. “Autonomy, Necessity, and Love” suggests such a view about the origin and significance of HODs and the decisive commitment discussed above.
48. Cuypers, “Autonomy Beyond Voluntarism,” for more on this matter.
49. This basic picture of the self-which evokes Otto Neurath's famous metaphor of a ship being rebuilt piecemeal as it sails-is quite common among philosophers. A few examples include Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
50. Marya Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996)
51. Henry Richardson, Practical Reasoningabout Final Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)
52. Stanley Benn, “Freedom, Autonomy, and the Concept of a Person,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1976): 109-130;
53. Friedman, “Autonomy and the Split-Level Self ”
54. Richard H. Dees, “Moral Conversions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1996): 531-550;
55. Richard H. Dees, “Kantian Respect andParticular Persons,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (1999): 449-477.
56. “Special Agents: Children's Autonomy andParental Authority,” in David Archardand Colin MacLeod, eds., The Moral and Political Status of Children (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002): 97-117.