[lit-ideas] Re: SOS: Autonomical risk
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 14:27:14 -0700
Lawrence Helm wrote:
I’m seeing “autonomy” as being an act rather than a potentiality. One
is autonomous because one is functioning independently of the
community. I’m not seeing /autonomy /as being synonymous with /free
will, /or as someone considering functioning independently and then
choosing not to.
Then you have, I think, a rather thin notion of autonomy, one which
seems indistinguishable from what I earlier called being a rebel or an
iconoclast; that is, you want to place a stronger restriction on
autonomy: the autonomous person must not only act freely for reasons and
from values he's adopted as his own, but must 'function independently of
the community.' I doubt that you really mean this, for only recluses,
hermits, and seriously disturbed people can function entirely
idependently of a 'community,' and even they are often found wearing
shoes and socks.
The examples you give of your acting independently during your career,
are just that—examples of you acting (or trying as best you could) to
act independently, by which you seem to mean that you thought that
things should be done in a certain way, even though others disagreed.
(And not only did you believe this, you often acted on this belief.) Yet
you seem to have been no more nor no less autonomous than the MBAs with
whom you disagreed. They thought that x could be achieved by y, you
thought (I'm reading this into what you said) that it could better be
achieved by z, or possibly not attempted at all. Where they got their
beliefs we're not told but that you often got your way (while prudently
stopping short of getting fired) doesn't make you autonomous and them not.
Autonomy is a notion we have by inheritance largely from Kant and the
Enlightenment. But Kant (e.g.) would have been dismayed to learn that by
adopting values for oneself, so that in acting one is acting from
reasons one had made one's own, could now be thought to entail that
one's own reasons not only might but must lead one to 'function' outside
a community of other rational agents. You seem, Lawrence, to see your
innovative approaches to problem solving as evidence of autonomy. I'd
say that autonomy was a necessary condition for them (this is part of
what innovation means) but your innovations (solutions, shortcuts, etc.)
all took place within a community of shared ends and goals. You didn't
propose that Lockheed Martin sell its assets, declare dividends, and
become a community devoted to making goat cheese. (Did you?)
Robert Paul
Reed College
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