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Accountability, Integrity, Authenticity, and Self-legislation: Reflections on Ruediger Bittner’s Reflections on Autonomy

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Abstract

In this paper I consider three widespread assumptions: (1) the assumption that we are accountable for our intentional actions only if they are in some special sense ours; (2) the assumption that it is possible for us to be more or less “true to” ourselves, and that we are flawed human beings to the extent that we lack “integrity”; and (3) the assumption that we can sometimes give ourselves reasons by giving ourselves commands. I acknowledge that, as Ruediger Bittner has argued, each of these assumptions is problematic, and that the failure to appreciate the problems has led many philosophers astray. I try to show, however, that it is possible to make sense of each assumption in a way that addresses Bittner’s concerns.

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Notes

  1. I have pressed this point in two recent papers, Buss (2012, 2013).

  2. “There is,” Bittner writes, “no other way for a piece of behavior [e.g., flinging dishes, books, and abusive language] [not to be attributable to someone] than that exemplified by a case in which I rather than [he] fling the dishes, books, and abusive language at my companion. There is no other than the ‘gross literal’ sense in which some piece of behavior is or is not somebody’s.” (p. 222)

  3. For a detailed development of this account of the way in which a person’s own mental states can undermine her autonomy, see Buss (2012).

  4. “I do not have depth,” Bittner proclaims, “but only width… ‘But surely you care about some of the things in your domain more than about others, and some people are closer to your heart than others.’—No doubt, but these differences are not properly understood in terms of a contrast between what engages my core, essence, or true self and what does not… I am not more of myself, more authentic, as a lover than as a colleague, say. I am all there in either case. The lover and the colleague differ not in how much of me is involved, but in what it is I am involved in.” (Bittner 2002, p. 224)

  5. Hamlet, Bloom notes, “seems, throughout Act V, to be carried on a flood tide of disinterestedness or quietism, as though he is willing to accept every permutation in his own self but refuses to will the changes” (413). “Hamlet’s quintessence is never to be wholly committed to any stance or attitude, any mission, or indeed to anything at all.” (p. 406)

  6. The citation is from Nietzsche (1872/2000).

  7. “[W]ith law-giver and law-subject being two, even within me… the law-subject in me obeys a law external to it, not its own law, as promised by autonomy. Externality within myself is still externality and destroys autonomy” (Bittner (2002), pp. 219–220).

  8. See, for example, Raz (1985).

  9. For a discussion of the relation between (1) commands, directives, or orders and (2) advice, see Stephen Darwall’s discussion of authority in Darwall (2009, 2010).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1003, USA

    Sarah Buss

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  1. Sarah Buss
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Correspondence to Sarah Buss.

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Buss, S. Accountability, Integrity, Authenticity, and Self-legislation: Reflections on Ruediger Bittner’s Reflections on Autonomy. Erkenn 79 (Suppl 7), 1351–1364 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9557-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9557-x

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