Current Issues in Autonomy – Liberal, Kantian, Individual, Collective

Abstract

This panel critically examines and responds to some characteristic preconceptions of this current ‘age of technology’. The preconceptions responded to are in relation to conceptions of autonomy. They are first that individual autonomy is a Western parochial value (Yujin Choi’s paper); that transport-related autonomy opportunities should be restricted to achieve the necessary reduction in climate emissions from transport (Bettina Lange’s paper); that Kant’s legitimation of unequal relations between men and women now invalidates his conceptualisation of autonomy; and that national sovereignty is or should be grounded in the nation as a pre-political entity. Yujin Choi’s paper engages with Confucian communitarian arguments that liberal democracy and human rights, when grounded in individual autonomy, conflict with the collective self-determination of East Asian societies. It argues that while some substantive conceptions of individual autonomy are vulnerable to Confusian critiques, dialogical conceptions are not, as illustrated by examples from recent South Korean feminist movements. Bettina Lange’s paper first points out that technological innovation will not achieve the necessary reductions in climate emissions form transport and concludes that a transition away from the current car-centred travel patterns is needed. It acknowledges the close cultural and practical connection between individual autonomy and driving and explains that one way of trying to achieve the transition is to prioritise a reduction of driving above autonomy considerations. The paper rejects this prioritisation and instead makes the case for a sufficientarian threshold for transport-related autonomy opportunities and links this to the Kantian idea of equitable freedom. In her paper Sylvie Loriaux highlights a tension in Kant’s practical philosophy between his legitimation of the subordination of women in the marriage relation on the one hand and his advocacy of every human being’s duty to protect their autonomy. The paper argues that while Kant’s view of the sexes is now justly discredited, his appeal to duties to self, far from blaming women who are victims of oppression, offers a valuable tool for emancipation. Alon Helled’s paper critically examines and rejects the assumption that national sovereignty is or should be grounded in an essentialist concept of the nation as a pre-political (cultural, historical etc) entity. Drawing on Kant and Spinoza the paper instead reconstructs autonomy as the condition of legitimate political authority and concludes that the resilient nation is defined not by fixed identity or sovereign power, but by its ongoing capacity for autonomous self-governance.

Title	Details
Conversational Heteronomy and Moral Autonomy in the Age of Large Language Models	View Paper Details
Kantian Autonomy and the Resilient Nation: Collective Identity, Statehood, and the Moral Foundations of Sovereignty	View Paper Details
Transport, Climate And Autonomy : Why Technology Will Not Solve the Problems – And What May	View Paper Details
Consenting to Inequality: Kantian Reflections on Autonomy, Subordination and Servility Within Marriage	View Paper Details
Individual Autonomy: A Western Parochial Value?	View Paper Details