[lit-ideas] Re: SOS: Autonomical risk
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 13:19:13 -0500
If autonomy vs community is a question close to your heart -- it is mine --
then you'll get a kick out of reading Rorty's _Contingency, irony, and
solidarity_.
Mike Geary
Memphis
P.S. Fool that I am I ordered this stupid Taylor book which I know I'll never
read more that 10 paragraphs of and I could have had 4 six packs of Guiness
instead. Damn it all, I hate this list.
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 12:34 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] SOS: Autonomical risk
Omar,
Heather-Noel Schwartz describes Sources of the Self as "an examination of the
ethical basis behind a Communitarian society." Schwartz implies that Taylor
values autonomy in that it enables the individual to choose what matters. I
could ask whether he chooses what matters to him or what matters to the
community in which he resides. If there is no difference, if what matters to
the individual is identical to what matters to the community, then I wonder
whether much value can be placed on autonomy. If we remember that pre-modern
man did not want to be autonomous from his community, it is probably safe to
say that a longing to be one with one's community is something many if not most
people feel.
Sinclair Lewis with Babbitt, made conformity a dirty word, and yet people
still desire to be accepted members in good standing of their communities.
Organizations of all sorts want their members to conform to a greater or lesser
extent. So how valuable is autonomy? Or perhaps a better question would be
"what sort of person most values autonomy?"
A member-in-good-standing at a local church is going to be one who conforms
to the beliefs and practices of that church. To call a church member
"autonomous" is almost a contradiction in terms. If someone disagrees with the
doctrine and practices of his church, he will almost certainly not remain a
member. He cannot be utterly autonomous and be a conscientious member at the
same time.
On the other hand a historian writing an original work of history will strive
to be autonomous in the sense that he will seek to avoid being influenced by
previous historians' opinions; otherwise he will be called a disciple. The
same thing would be true in other fields. Russell wanted Wittgenstein to be a
disciple but the latter was autonomous and could not subordinate his thinking
to Russell's.
Can we say that we are happier if we are living in a structure we respect,
one in which we readily choose not to exercise our potential autonomy? Perhaps
we have a family, are a member in good standing of a few organizations
including our job, subscribe to popular opinions, accept what is accepted and
are, therefore, happy. But some of us were confronted by the question in
Philosophy 101, "is it better to be a happy fool or an unhappy Socrates?" We
decided, of course, that it was better to be an unhappy Socrates, and Socrates
was about as autonomous as it is possible to get. Even when he drank the
hemlock he was choosing a course of action almost no one else would have
chosen, or perhaps it is better to say "been able to choose." Though we
answered the question a certain way in Philosophy 101, have we carried that
answer consistently throughout our lives? Or have we opted in most situations
for the soothing happiness of the joiner, the Babbitt, the conformist, the
fool?
Then too there is almost by definition a pathological risk to being
autonomous. It has been implied to us that Socrates was unhappy. Surely it is
pathological to choose to be unhappy. I've read many of the Plato's Dialogues
and don't recall that Socrates was presented as being unhappy, but insofar as
we reject our community in the exercise of our autonomy, we are inviting
unhappiness. Perhaps the historian or the philosopher can be autonomous
without being unhappy, but can a truck driver, a policeman or an engineer? In
speaking for the latter category, I recall that I didn't seek autonomy in all
things but when a managerial decision came athwart my conception of what was
right, I became unhappy, especially when I decided to do what I believed to be
right rather than obey an order. Schwartz portrays Taylor as addressing this
issue. She says Taylor wouldn't have couched the matter as I have but would
ask "what does it mean to be good" when confronted with my engineering
dilemma"? And yet I must slip back into the matter of right and argue that it
would have been more difficult for me to live with having done something wrong
than having disobeyed a manager. I don't recall thinking in terms of choosing
the good.
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: Omar Kusturica
--- Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'm not sure whether Charles Taylor cares about the
> "autonomy" of the modern
> self,
*Apparently he is quite concerned with that. See:
http://members.aol.com/ThryWoman/CTCE.html
The general thrust of Turner's ideas are set against
the narrative of Western intellectual thought,
particularly concerning the ideas of Autonomy and
Morality. Modernist philosophers have placed Reason,
Autonomy and rule-governed/rights-based morality at
the center of what is considered to be a "good life."
What has been taken to issue by many theorists in the
19th and 20th Centuries is the harmful aspects of
these grand ideas. Reason was chipped away at by the
increasing bureaucratization and military
technologies/methods of killing, Autonomy considered
to be not only a bourgeois luxury but a naive
understanding of what the individual is in society,
and moralities based on rights and fundamentally,
rules, had been criticized for being anything but
moral by doing away with morality founded from (and
maintained) within individuals. It is at this
dissolution/disillusion that Taylor enters the scene.
Charles Taylor continues the effort to question the
authority of Reason and Autonomy. By this, I mean to
state that Reason and Autonomy have been given the the
authority to be the only goods in life and thus
ignoring the other facets of what Turner and
contemporaries would consider "the good life."
Fundamental to modernist thinking is the use of
dichotomies that arbitrarily polarizes fragments of
human existence and ways of knowing. Typical examples
can be thrown out easily (for we all know the game)
such as Reason/Intuition, Light/Dark, Male /Female,
Individual/Community, etc,. In the West, the dichotomy
was used as a way to regulate and steer society into a
"morality" and fetishization of laws based on Reason
and Autonomy. As many theorists have pointed out, the
belief in an existent/coherent notion of Reason and
Autonomy (that is privileged in the West) can exist
only against the categories of the Irrational and
Community (society). The standards (Reason, Autonomy,
and rights based on the two) are given the authority
to decide what does and does not matter. "Mattering",
especially for Taylor, is an important aspect of
ethics when considering what is "the good life."1 It
is in this consideration that Taylor begins to
re-evaluate the values that the have been the
foundation of Western thought and society.
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