The Good of Autonomy

It is generally good to permit people to do as they please. This is a relatively modern notion, I think. It can also become a distinctively modern idol to which we sacrifice ourselves and our children. It is, nevertheless, a genuine good. What supports this good?

Autonomy is good because it allows us to exercise our deliberative capacities. It thus enables us to express our moral point of view. Autonomy matters because autonomous decisions matter to others. If my decision has no impact whatsoever on others, then my deciding thus quite literally means nothing. So allowing autonomy is a calculated risk. We allow others to mess up in order to attain a good of self-expression.

Why is self-expression good? It is not an unmitigated good. Indeed, the expression "self-expression" is not perfectly clear. When we express ourselves, we also form ourselves. In writing this post, I do not merely express my thoughts, I also develop my thoughts. My thoughts on this topic are altered by expressing them. Before, my thoughts were a bit of a fuzz, but by writing this the thoughts come into focus or, more accurately, coalesce into an articulated form. The joints of my thoughts become, not visible, but definite and therefore visible. In deciding we define ourselves and thereby clarify for ourselves and others who we are. So self-expression is a part of self-development.

To be a self is, on my account, to be a being who can perceive and act with regard to others as others. The other elements of being a self arise from this interaction with others in culture. We absorb things from others--ideas, phrases, heuristics, rules, ways of acting and modes of thought. These varied things from varied people clash. They require synthesis into a coherent self, a self who can pursue a single life. In this synthesis, dissonances must be resolved between mind and body, body and world, mind and culture, etc., and in doing so one changes.

So to develop oneself through self-expression is to articulate how one has picked up the culture around oneself, and to present what one has picked up to other, thus to contribute to altering culture. So self-expression does two things. First, it develops culture by contributing to a re-synthesizing of its elements and thus providing more for others to pick up on. Second, it develops oneself by nailing down (often partial) resolutions to various tensions we find ourselves in.

We resolve tensions in our culture in our own persons and then hold up our answers, our lives and words, to others for them to accept or reject. If we aim to reach a solid resolution, we must accept this phase as well. Others then pick up what we say as elements of themselves, whether as useful antagonists or as allies. They think with us: by means of what we have contributed. We then pick up their developments and the cycle repeats. We hope that we are coming to a closer and closer approximation, but this can only occur by taking seriously the goods others are responding to, addressing them, and finding a place for them in a renewed culture.

Autonomy is good, then, because it helps us to resolve debates about how to live, how our culture should be understood and what it should and become. Autonomy is good because it permits exploration of ways of being and doing. It is a risk because we may go wrong. The role of autonomy is to answer questions which can be answered by seeing different ways of life, and the point of autonomy can only be preserved where opposing views are given a fair and serious hearing. Autonomy is pointless without disagreement and it is sterile without debate between opposed views. To utilize autonomy is to invite dispute regarding one's choices.