Baumann
Fakultäten » Philosophische Fakultät » Philosophisches Seminar » Arbeits- und Forschungsstelle für Ethik » Prof. Dr. Anton Leist » Baumann
Completed research project
| Title / Titel | The Social and Temporal Dynamics of Personal Autonomy | ||
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| Abstract (PDF, 14 KB) | |||
| Summary / Zusammenfassung | “Personal autonomy” is without doubt one of the key concepts in practical philosophy. Recent discussions have suffered, in my view, from not making the practical interest in this concept explicit. By asking the question of (the conditions of) personal autonomy, we are, I will contend, always guided by different practical interests. One way of putting this point is to draw the following distinction: We can be interested in personal autonomy as a concept that is designed to regulate our relationships with/to others, or as a concept that is important with regard to our relation to ourselves. The former, third-personal interest is important to discussions of autonomy in contexts of moral responsibility, bioethics, and political liberalism, while the latter, first-personal interest becomes especially relevant in contexts of personhood and the good life. In this project, I will be mostly concerned with autonomy as a concept that is relevant to our self-understanding as persons. I will examine different accounts of personal autonomy on the basis of questions such as “How can we lead a life of our own?” or “How can we be co-authors of our lives?” My main thesis is that, from this perspective, the temporal and social scope of autonomy needs to be opened up and be understood more dynamically than common accounts do. Both defenders of “internal”, so-called standard theories of autonomy –– which view autonomy as a function of psychological properties of persons –– and defenders of “external” accounts –– which advocate additional, external conditions of autonomy (historical, social and value conditions) –– draw a picture of autonomous agents that is too static. These accounts cannot adequately explain, e.g., how people can and do autonomously change over time and within a social context. This can be traced back, on the one hand, to a common preoccupation with instances of autonomy (of single decisions or desires) at some time which is partly due to the third-personal interest in autonomy mentioned above; on the other hand, almost all accounts implicitly assume that psychological states of persons and external social states can always be separated selectively. Making explicit and avoiding these problematic assumptions, I will argue, is essential to arriving at a theory of personal autonomy that accounts for the social and temporal dynamics of autonomy in an adequate way. |
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| Publications / Publikationen | Reconsidering Relational Autonomy. Personal Autonomy for Socially Embedded and Temporally Extended Selves, in: Analyse & Kritik 30/2008, 445-468. http://www.analyse-und-kritik.net/2008-2/AK_Baumann_2008.pdf |
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| Keywords / Suchbegriffe | autonomy, diachronic autonomy, social autonomy, personhood, internal and external conditions of autonomy, value of autonomy | ||
| Project leadership and contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte |
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| Funding source(s) / Unterstützt durch |
Others no funds, doctoral dissertation |
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| Duration of Project / Projektdauer | Apr 2005 to Jun 2011 |