Abstract
The paper will take up several criteria which are considered necessary by various accounts of personal autonomy. These criteria are authenticity, synchronous consistency, and diachronic continuity. I will examine the theory of “volitional necessities” put forward by Harry Frankfurt and show that this account, despite its intention to meet these criteria, fails to do so in several respects. I then consider two alternative suggestions. The first of these, which still refers closely to Frankfurt’s account, also seems to fail because it ascribes to the involved person a too passive role in the process of defining her fundamental commitments. The second proposal, however, which is based on Charles Taylor’s theory of persons as “self-interpreting animals”, turns out to be more promising, for it seems to be able to avoid the flaws of both radical existentialist accounts, on the one hand, and Frankfurt’s too restrictive theory of “volitional necessities”, on the other hand. According to this proposal, the definition of our most fundamental commitments, which are at the same time the essential features of our selves, come about through a process of both discovering and constituing. This account can therefore be considered as an attempt to show a third way between radical existentialism and equally radical essential nature accounts.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. especially Taylor (1989).
- 2.
The prototype of decisionist approaches is Sartre’s theory of radical choice, cf. Sartre (1946). One famous example of the true-nature-approach will be discussed in the following.
- 3.
- 4.
The notion of “higher-order volitions” is so prominent in the present discussion that it did not seem necessary to me to introduce it in the main text. Higher-order volition is simply the desire that a certain one of the first-order desires of a person become her will, that is, according to Frankfurt, action-guiding. For a detailed account, cf. Frankfurt (1971).
- 5.
- 6.
Frankfurt (1982), 83.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
Frankfurt (2004).
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Frankfurt (1982), 87.
- 14.
- 15.
Frankfurt (1987), 172ff.
- 16.
Frankfurt (1982), 90.
- 17.
Frankfurt (1994), 130.
- 18.
- 19.
Frankfurt (2006b), 45.
- 20.
- 21.
Frankfurt (1987), 163ff.
- 22.
Frankfurt (1982), 86ff.
- 23.
Frankfurt (2006b), 43ff.
- 24.
- 25.
Frankfurt (1993), 112.
- 26.
Vinke (1987), 41.
- 27.
- 28.
Cf. the introduction to this volume.
- 29.
- 30.
This formulation may seem to suggest an objectivist view about worth and values. This is, however, not what I intend to say. In order to be able to ask the following question: “Is the object I care about really worth my caring?”, one does not have to seek refuge in objective criteria. A caring person can always question whether her caring about something is consistent with the values, convictions, and long-term aims she also cares about. She can discover that something she has cared about is not worth her caring, for example, by noticing that the object of her caring has features which she detests on a deeper level, that it does not actually have the features due to which she has cared about it or because she becomes aware that caring about this object is simply inconsistent with her still deeper caring about another object.
- 31.
This claim may also be misleading. As will become clear in the following section of this essay, I do not want to claim that there is an independent truth about a person’s own “true nature” or something like that. There are, however, respects in which there is subject-independent truth and falsity and which matter for authenticity and, therefore, also for personal autonomy. The question, for example, whether the national socialists really established concentration camps in which opponents of the regime were kept without trial and tortured can be answered subject-independently. This question did matter a lot for the Scholl siblings, and, when they found out that the rumors were actually true, this knowledge caused a further great step in the process of their estrangement from national socialism. (Leisner (2004), 122ff.)
- 32.
Taylor (1977b).
- 33.
Taylor (1977b), 75f.
- 34.
Taylor (1977b), 47.
- 35.
Taylor (1977b), 49.
- 36.
I am borrowing the example of being ashamed of one’s shrill voice from Taylor (1977b), 53.
- 37.
Taylor (1977b), 53.
- 38.
Taylor (1977a), 36.
- 39.
Taylor (1977b), 65.
- 40.
Steinfath (2001), p. 192.
- 41.
Taylor (1977b), 73.
- 42.
For this point cf. also Taylor (1977a).
- 43.
He could just as well have come to the conclusion that his ability to deal with other people’s problems and his interest in interpersonal conflicts are not at all worth promoting, because, say, this is nothing a “real man” cares about.
- 44.
- 45.
One may have doubts whether this claim is true if one regards the predicates which Taylor lists exemplarily and which have been ascribed to the desires and motives in the process of strong evaluation. Desires and motives can be judged as “higher and lower, virtuous and vicious, more and less fulfilling, more and less refined, profound and superficial, noble and base.” (Taylor 1977a, 16) While it is still plausible to talk about emotions as higher and lower, virtuous and vicious, or noble and base – compassion for one’s enemy can be seen as higher, virtuous, and noble, whereas thirst for revenge can be considered as lower, vicious, and base – it would be much harder to perceive them as more or less fulfilling. The claim that abilities can also be subject to strong evaluation seems even more problematic, for it is not very common to call them higher and lower, virtuous and vicious, and so on. There are, however, more appropriate predicates like “(not) worth caring about”, “(not) worth promoting”, “(not) worth of admiration” and the like, as in the case of the above example of the future psychotherapist. This is a distinction about worth, as well and therefore falls into an extended category of strong evaluations.
- 46.
Cf. Taylor (1977a), 18.
- 47.
Taylor (1977a), 19ff.
- 48.
Taylor (1977a), 38.
- 49.
Ibid.
- 50.
Vinke (1987), 41 (My translation, N.J.).
- 51.
Cf. Steffahn (1992), 131–144.
- 52.
Here, the desires, motivations, interests, and emotions of a person can be regarded as the given substratum which provides the descriptive component. This,of course, does not mean that desires and emotions as such are phenomena which can be discovered and described independently of any articulation. This claim would be a flagrant contradiction to what was said in the previous section. On the level of the articulation of one’s deep, authenticity-securing attitudes, however, the desires and emotions are regarded as already given. Here, we are on the level of assessing, evaluating, and weighing them – or rather on the level of defining the criteria according to which such processes of assessing, evaluating, and weighing take place.
- 53.
Jens (1984).
- 54.
This is, indeed, one of the flaws in the present article, due to the notorious lack of space when trying to squeeze complex arguments onto a limited amount of pages.
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Jelinek, N. (2013). Dynamics in Autonomy – Articulating One’s Commitments. In: Kühler, M., Jelinek, N. (eds) Autonomy and the Self. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 118. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4789-0_4
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