As a philosophy teacher at a community college, I have both a theoretical and a practical interest in "autonomy." Many of my students sign up for a section of philosophy because it meets at 10 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with no clue as to what it is. Many of the students want to major in either engineering or business or pre-med or computers, simply because that's where they have heard the money is. "Autonomy" is, in this "field" or context, a relative concept, agreed, but it's an essential concept. To be "autonomous" is to be able to make fundamental choices, not just of "means" but "ends." To do so, students have to HAVE choices; they have to think about the range of human possibilities, at least a bit. It's a necessary (but not sufficient) characteristic of choice that there be more than one object from which to "choose." My sense of what a "liberal" education is, requires that students be presented with choices about the kinds of life they could lead, and the kinds of people they could become. I have seen the practical consequences of students who were only concerned with a choice of "means" to an end that they hadn't even known was also an object of choice; they tend to lead lives that look a lot like Aristotle's idea of "natural slaves;" they can follow what other people want, but cannot really make relatively independent, "autonomous" choices of their own. They tend to get "used" by their employers (or others) more than those students who try to think through for themselves what they really want out of life.
Any theoretical grasp of "autonomy" should take such practical concerns into account.
I agree with Mike that we are "trapped" in social connections, but I disagree with him about the degree to which this happens. Clearly there is some benefit to be gained by trying to examine and reflect on that "web" with an eye to becoming a bit less trapped. This is not a black and white issue; there is a large gray web that's neither completely free nor completely determined by social connections. Far from being "meaningless" it is essential to keep autonomy as an ideal.
Mike Geary wrote:
So, do you believe in the individual -- she who can free her mind from all learned restraints and strike out on her own original course? In other words, do you believe in autonomous human beings? I'll bet you don't. No more so than I do. I'll bet you believe that we're all so goddam trapped in the web of our social connections that it's impossible to think for one's self -- that such an expression is meaningless. I'll bet that you agree that even the most private thinking is an historically-dependent event -- every step of the way having been laid by progenitors. You say that Torture Field is speaking to issues of autonomy beyond being the property of individuals or the property of acts. OK. So what the hell is he speaking about? Some perifery issue? Torture seems more radical to me than that. But I don't know. He's philosophical too, and you know how worrisome they can be. Is autonomy possible? That's what I want to know and I say it isn't though I'd love to be contradicted convincingly.You can counter that I misunderstand the whole tete-a-tete, but I'll just come back with a Cheney jeer.Mike Geary Memphis----- Original Message ----- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 8:52 PMSubject: [lit-ideas] Re: Kinds of autonomy (was Kant: Ethnic Pride, Black Truck Style)On 8/22/07, Mike Geary <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:Torture Field writes:>>Put more simply, it is because _fields_ are relatively autonomous that >>those in dominant positions may impose its necessity on the dominated. >><<What I deny is the very notion of "autonomy". It simply doesn't exist,hasn't ever, will never. That said, "autonomy" is an attractive idea. It'ssuggests an area of expertise."Expertise" is too intellectual, too entangled with the notion that autonomy is a property of individuals. As Torgeir observes, Bourdieu treats autonomy neither as a property of individuals nor as property of acts. Instead he talks about the (always relative) autonomy of social fields. Here "social field" refers to a zone of life in which particular rules, distinct at least partially from those of other social fields, apply. The easiest way to get a handle on this is to use one of Bourdieu's own examples, a soccer field. To be part of the game, players must accept rules specific to the game. The specificity of the rules, in combination with differences in talent, training, and the accidents of play make it possible, for example, for someone who has a brilliant soccer career to be a lousy businessman and of no consequence whatsoever as an artist or air conditioning specialist. It is, however, characteristic of complex societies that narrow fields, like soccer or air conditioning repair, may overlap with or even wholly embedded in other fields, creating opportunities for individuals to exchange the cultural capital (including expertise) acquired in one field into higher status in another, a process in which many other agents besides the individual in question may also be involved. Consider, for example, David Beckham, whose stellar performance as a soccer player in Europe and marriage to one of the Spice Girls made him a global fashion icon used, for example, to advertise cell phones in Japan. Given the relative autonomy of the fields we call art, politics and law, he is, nonetheless, unlikely to have paintings appear beside the Picassos or Rothkos at the Philipps collection, be seen as a viable political candidate, or become a famous trial lawyer or judge. Arguably it is in precisely those cases where the rules are most taken for granted that the individual appears most autonomous. Since neither Jeeves nor Bertie Wooster aspires to be the other and both accept the rules that govern their relative status, each appears free to focus on choices within the spheres available to them. When we foreground their eccentricities, we tacitly accept the rules of their game, leaving them blurred in the background. We may even discover, as Bourdieu does, that the rules only set the stage. They do not determine the performance or, reverting to the sport metaphor, how the game plays out.
-- -------------------------------------------------"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence and ignorance." -------------------------------------------------
John Wager john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Lisle, IL, USA
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
