It is both an ideal and an assumption of traditional conceptions of justice for liberal democracies that citizens are autonomous, self-governing persons. Yet standard accounts of the self and of self-government at work in such theories are hotly disputed and often roundly criticized in most of their guises. John Christman offers a sustained critical analysis of both the idea of the 'self' and of autonomy as these ideas function in political theory, offering interpretations of these ideas which avoid such (...) disputes and withstand such criticisms. Christman's model of individual autonomy takes into account the socially constructed nature of persons and their complex cultural and social identities, and he shows how this model can provide a foundation for principles of justice for complex democracies marked by radical difference among citizens. His book will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy, politics, and the social sciences. (shrink)

It is both an ideal and an assumption of traditional conceptions of justice for liberal democracies that citizens are autonomous, self-governing persons. Yet standard accounts of the self and of self-government at work in such theories are hotly disputed and often roundly criticized in most of their guises. John Christman offers a sustained critical analysis of both the idea of the 'self' and of autonomy as these ideas function in political theory, offering interpretations of these ideas which avoid such (...) disputes and withstand such criticisms. Christman's model of individual autonomy takes into account the socially constructed nature of persons and their complex cultural and social identities, and he shows how this model can provide a foundation for principles of justice for complex democracies marked by radical difference among citizens. His book will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy, politics, and the social sciences. (shrink)

This study questions the common premise that individualism was lacking in premodern China and contends that not only was the concept of the individual important in traditional China, but that it existed in interesting ways that are different from modes of individualism in the West. Key terms such as xing ("human nature"), xin ("heart-mind"), and ji ("self") are used to analyze various texts. In addition to weaving together ideas from history, philosophy, art, and literature, especially the literary dimensions of (...) late imperial history (both classical and vernacular), this study also incorporates Western intellectual tradition, including the ideas of thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and the Romantics. This inquiry into the moral philosophy and ethics of the self-seen in both its public and private dimensions in late imperial China is an important resource for scholars and students in many subfields of Chinese studies, such as history, intellectual history, art history, history of literature, and history of religion. (shrink)

I argue that individual autonomy and rights can be defended but only in African or qualified version of communitarianism. I posit that there are two possible versions of communitarianism: the qualified or the African and the unqualified or the version discussed mostly by Western scholars. I show that Ifeanyi Menkiti, Kwame Gyekye, Michael Eze and Bernard Matolino have formulated communitarian theories of right in African philosophy. I explain that while Menkiti and Gyekye erroneously employed the unqualified version in (...) their proposals, Eze and Matolino who employed the qualified version failed to ground it in a non-Western or African logic. I argue that while the Western or Aristotelian logic grounds the unqualified version making it difficult to defend autonomy and rights within it, an African logic can be used to ground a qualified version of communitarianism in order to bring out an important African cultural value such as complementarity which affirms the identity of the individual first, so as to justify other communal values such as solidarity and common good, etc. I therefore contend that the qualified version is the correct specimen for analysing the individual-community relationship in African philosophy in which autonomy and rights can be defended. Keywords: individual autonomy, rights, African philosophy, Afro-communitarianism, Menkiti, Gyekye, Eze, Matolino. (shrink)

There is a gap in the clinical bioethics literature concerning the approach to assessment of medical decision-making capacity of adolescents or young adults who demonstrate diminished maturity due to longstanding reliance on caregiver support, despite having reached the age of majority. This paper attempts to address this question via the examination of a particular case involving assessment of the decision-making capacity of a young adult pregnant patient who also had a physically disabling neurological condition. Drawing on concepts from adolescent bioethics (...) and feminist critiques of bioethical theory, we argue that limited life experience, secondary to a disabling neurological condition, can result in a lack of adult-like capacity even in a patient who is legally an adult. In such cases, it may be that autonomy, to the extent that it is to be relevant and meaningful, must be viewed through a relational lens. Furthermore, clinicians may avoid unjustifiably paternalistic practices by working with the patient help her gain a better appreciation of the consequences of her decision, thereby calling forward her capacity rather than resorting to being directive in counseling. We conclude that lessons from this case can be used to approach ethically complex instances of medical decision-making in adult patients with normal cognition but diminished experiential maturity. (shrink)

This paper problematizes the concept of individual autonomy in the on-going project of attempting to understand and construct global principles of bioethics. We argue that autonomy as it is commonly defined and interpreted, and the emphasis that is placed on it, presupposes an individualistic concept of the self, family, and community that arises out of a Euro-Western liberal tradition and that is often in tension with various non-Western perspectives. We conclude that a more globally dialogical approach to (...) bioethics is required. (shrink)

This essay explores some concerns about the quality of informed consent in patients whose autonomy is diminished by fatal illness. It argues that patients with diminished autonomy cannot give free and voluntary consent, and that recruitment of such patients as subjects in human experimentation exploits their vulnerability in a morally objectionable way. Two options are given to overcome this objection: (i) recruit only those patients who desire to contribute to medical knowledge, rather than gain access to experimental treatment, (...) or (ii) provide prospective subjects the choice to participate in standard doubleblind study or receive the experimental treatment. Either option would guarantee that patients in desperate conditions are given a more meaningful choice and a richer freedom, and thus a higher quality of informed consent, than under standard randomized trials. (shrink)

This article examines the ethical basis for government involvement in health care. It first provides the case for individual autonomy, focusing on the justifications–particularly ethical ones–for allowing individuals to make their own choices in health care, and to control more of their own resources in doing so. Next, it provides the opposite case–for abridging individual autonomy, and in particular, for redistributing resources from those who are well off to those who are not. The overriding reason for (...) favouring the latter case, which trumps the notion of individual autonomy, is to ensure that individuals who are at a disadvantage have an equal probability of attaining good health. (shrink)

Because of the emphasis on individualism and self-governance, medical interventions and medical research in Western nations are preceded by attempts to obtain informed consent from the individual patient or potential research subject. Individual autonomy expresses our belief that persons are ends in themselves and not merely instrumentalities to achieve the goals of others. By respecting the patient or potential research subject in the context of medical decisionmaking, we acknowledge that these individuals are moral agents. Thus, individual (...) autonomy is an important feature of morality as it is practiced in the West. However, there are at least two circumstances in which individual autonomy appears to be threatened. One is embodied in nonwestern societies that favor collective decisionmaking over that of the individual. The other is related to the need for family histories and family testing to determine the susceptibility of family members to some genetically based disease. In both cases, individual judgment appears to be made subordinate to collective judgment. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Introduction Types of Gene Selection Issues Relating to Gene Selection and Personal Autonomy Individual Autonomy in a Liberal Society Parental Choice Procreative Autonomy versus Children's Autonomy Conclusion Acknowledgments Note.

How one thinks about the relationship between individual autonomy (sometimes referred to as individual willpower or human agency) and technology can influence the way legal thinkers develop policy at the intersection of law and technology. Perspectives that fall toward the `machines control us' end of the spectrum may support more interventionist legal policies while those who identify more closely with the `we are in charge of machines' position may refuse to interfere with technological developments. The concept of (...) soft determinism charts a middle-ground between these two positions and could assist in the formulation of a general theory of the relationship between law and technology. Soft determinism maintains that technological developments are embedded in social, political, economic and other processes, and serve to guide and, potentially, configure future actions and relationships with these technologies, their users, and their subjects: while past technology develops shape the present, individuals and groups can still exert control over these technological developments. (shrink)

Autonomy, self-determination, self-affirmation, emancipation: all these words refer to an ideal that orients the way in which our contemporary culture speaks about many moral and political problems. The importance of this ideal for us can be seen in the way we accept as obvious a number of ideas that follow from it. Most of us would certainly tend to accept that no universally valid answer can be given to the question of what kind of human life is truly meaningful (...) or valuable and that, because of this, people should be granted as much freedom as possible to pursue a life that best corresponds with their own personal tastes and preferences. Many would go a step further and claim that people should also be encouraged to live as much as possible according to what they have themselves chosen, and that they should give up traditional forms of life and role patterns.One aspect of this cult of individual freedom or autonomy is the idea that we should develop a critical attitude towards anything established, accepted or traditional: every form of power or authority, prevailing moral norms and educational customs, traditional role patterns, etc. A further feature of this is the tendency to describe any improvement in the fortunes of the weak, the vulnerable and the less well off as an ‘emancipation’. The idea that the poor, the handicapped and the elderly should receive more support, assistance, respect and attention is translated by the assertion that they, too, should be ‘liberated’.The ideals that we associate with words like ‘emancipation’ or ‘self-affirmation’ were at one time innovative and revolutionary, but they gradually became established as accepted ways of thinking and thus became part of a new common sense. Nowadays, anyone wanting to be provocative will attain their goal more easily by scoffing at everything falling under the rubric of emancipation than by speaking out in its defence.This fact is characteristic of an ambiguity in our culture. While the ideals of self-affirmation and emancipation enjoy enormous popularity, in certain intellectual circles they are treated with suspicion. At stake here is the general image of humanity associated with these ideals. Thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Lacan, Derrida or Baudrillard have, each in their own way, attacked the idea of the autonomous subject and stressed that people’s most intimate thoughts and desires are determined by something that transcends them: by the language they speak or the culture to which they belong.Rejecting the idea of the autonomous subject is usually one aspect of a more general critique of ideas inherited from the Enlightenment. The question whether and to what extent this critique is justified occupies a central position in many contemporary philosophical discussions, and much of what goes on in contemporary philosophy can be described in terms of the opposition between those who would defend Enlightenment ideals and those who would reject or cast doubt on those ideals.What I would like to discuss here undoubtedly fits into a framework that could be called ‘antiliberal’ or ‘anti-humanist’. However, it is certainly not my intention to criticize humanism or liberalism directly and systematically. (shrink)

This essay explores some concerns about the quality of informed consent in patients whose autonomy is diminished by fatal illness. It argues that patients with diminished autonomy cannot give free and voluntary consent, and that recruitment of such patients as subjects in human experimentation exploits their vulnerability in a morally objectionable way. Two options are given to overcome this objection: (i) recruit only those patients who desire to contribute to medical knowledge, rather than gain access to experimental treatment, (...) or (ii) provide prospective subjects the choice to participate in standard doubleblind study or receive the experimental treatment. Either option would guarantee that patients in desperate conditions are given a more meaningful choice and a richer freedom, and thus a higher quality of informed consent, than under standard randomized trials. Keywords: autonomy, double-blind trials, prerandomized and randomized trials, informed consent CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that boredom can be an important experience that contributes to personal autonomous agency by providing authentic motivation, and that strategies of social media providers to bind users’ attention to their platforms undermine this authenticity. As discussed in social epistemology and media ethics for a while now, such strategies can lead to so-called epistemic or filter bubbles. Our analysis of the relation between boredom and social media use focuses on a similarly impairing effect of social media (...) on users’ autonomy, which we call authenticity bubbles. (shrink)

This article attempts a philosophical defense of an autonomy-based approach to multicultural education. I contend that multicultural education is necessary in order for students to be able to develop personal autonomy. This, in turn, can empower students to effectively formulate their own version of the good life. The development of autonomy need not, as many critics claim, promote atomistic individualism. Rather, contemporary liberal autonomy strives for a balance between the individual and the community. In defending (...) multicultural education, my argument relies on Joseph Raz's notion of autonomy and Will Kymlicka's concept of a context of choice. I conclude that through multicultural education, students can expand their contexts of choice and consequently develop individual autonomy, an essential ingredient of the good life. (shrink)

The concept of individual autonomy is one of the most frequently utilized--and perhaps least understood--terms of current moral, political, and legal debate. The first anthology devoted entirely to this philosophical concept, The Inner Citadel includes both extensive discussions of autonomy itself and theoretical applications of autonomy to various areas of philosophical inquiry. John Christman has assembled essays, many appearing in print for the first time, by such eminent philosophers as Gerald Dworkin, Joel Feinberg, Harry Frankfurt, and (...) David A. J. Richards. Together, these essays provide the necessary foundation for the myriad debates and controversies in areas such as bioethics, feminism, and paternalism whose resolution turns on the nature and value of individual autonomy. As the idea of autonomy is central to such a wide range of philosophical issues and impinges on other disciplines as well, The Inner Citadel will be essential for courses in moral, political, social, and legal philosophy, as well as a valuable resource for students of law, political science, and psychology. (shrink)

It is a commonplace in liberal circles that individual persons have a right to individual autonomy or self-determination. Each mentally competent adult has a right to be at liberty to live and shape their own life in accordance with their own view about what makes for a good life, free from undue coercion or interference by others, so long as they do not harm others. In the words of John Stuart Mill, mentally-competent persons should have the liberty (...) of “framing the plan of our life to suit our own character, of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow, without impediment from our fellow creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they may think our conduct foolish, perverse or wrong”. (shrink)

In his book The Morality of Freedom, Joseph Raz argues that the promotion of personal autonomy can serve as a constitutive principle for a comprehensive political theory. He maintains that three conditions are necessary for attainment of individual autonomy: appropriate mental abilities, an adequate range of options, and independence. In this essay, by focusing on Raz’s conception of an adequate range of options, we suggest that Raz’s theory justifies environmental conservation in general. We present an empirical framework (...) of present-day assaults on personal autonomy, construct a heuristic scenario, and argue against both neoclassical economics and utility maximization as adequate criteria regarding environmental decisions. We conclude that successful environmental policies should directly or indirectly strive to provide the conditions necessary for promoting individual autonomy. (shrink)

The randomization ingredient in double-blind controlled experiments may be objectionable to patients who, in their desperation, come to such trials seeking a last chance of cure. Minogue et al., who view such a situation as inherently exploitive and undermining of patient autonomy, propose that such “desperate volunteers” instead be enrolled in the active arm, while other patients, less desperate and more committed to medical progress, continue to be randomized. Their view is critiqued as destructive of medical progress, inappropriate in (...) its lack of clinical response to such patients, and fatally flawed by unrealistic notions of autonomy and voluntariness. (shrink)

Since the first European settlers arrived in the Americas, American Indian and Alaskan Native people have suffered from devastating diseases, violence, and genocide. During the conquest of...

After so much scholarship has been devoted to the dispute between the defenders and critics of liberalism, it is reasonable to ask whether the topic has been exhausted or, at the very least, if the rival and incommensurable options have been so thoroughly defined that one simply has to pick a side. John Christman's new book, The Politics of Persons, demonstrates that this intuition is flawed. The central concern of this compelling work is to outline an alternative conception of (...) class='Hi'>autonomy that incorporates a wide range of insights provided by the critics of liberalism. What emerges is not only a plausible philosophical compromise but also a politically relevant model for understanding how the policies and .. (shrink)

Drawing on the built environment concept of “inclusive design” and its emphasis on creating accessible environments for all persons regardless of ability, I suggest that a central task for feminist disability theory is to redesign foundational philosophical concepts to present opportunities rather than barriers to inclusion for people with disability. Accounts of autonomy within liberal philosophy stress self-determination and the dignity of all individual persons, but have excluded people with intellectual disability from moral and political theories by denying (...) their capacity for individual autonomy, seen as a chief marker of moral personhood. This paper modifies and extends feminist theories of relational autonomy by arguing for the need to view autonomy as a feature of persons that is manifested only through relations of support, advocacy, and enablement. An “inclusively designed,” relational account negotiates the tensions encountered in attempts to apply autonomy to people with high support needs, and politicizes the concept as an advocacy tool for people with intellectual disability and their allies. (shrink)

Open Access: Social media participation undermines individual autonomy in ways that ought to concern ethicists. Discussions in the philosophical literature are concerned primarily with egregious conduct online such as harassment and shaming, keeping the focus on obvious ills to which no one could consent; this prevents a wider understanding of the risks and harms of quotidian social media participation. Two particular concerns occupy me: social media participation carries the risks of (1) negatively formative experiences and (2) continuous partial (...) attention due to our habituation to the variable rewards that social media platforms provide. Although social media offer benefits as well as risks, self-knowledge of whether one benefits more than one suffers from one’s social media participation is vexed by the very processes involved in participating. We are not as free to leave social media as we are to enter. I conclude with a consideration and rejection of the objections that the ubiquity of the practice indicates implied consent to risks, and that users of social media can simply choose not to use such communication technologies at all. I argue that we cannot be said to consent to enter into social media usage meaningfully, even implicitly, and we do not all have equally easy options to avoid the contexts that provide the stimuli of persistent desires. (shrink)

A liberal state based on propositions about the desirability of individual autonomy is bound to be committed to educational programmes which are incompatible with the beliefs and values of parents from non- liberal religious and cultural minorities. One response to this has been support for public funding of those separate schools which offer an education culturally congruent with the values of parents in non- liberal communities. To resolve the potential threat to liberal individualist ideals a condition of support (...) for individual autonomy is usually attached to liberal acceptance of this solution. This condition is in conflict with the motivation which underpins the setting up of such schools. Despite the growing literature on this debate surprisingly little attention has been given to the work of Isaiah Berlin. This article draws on Berlin's version of liberalism developed within the context of a commitment to value pluralism in order to seek clarification of this liberal dilemma. (shrink)

Summary This article is concerned with recent attempts to balance the claims for political citizenship in a liberal democracy (liberalism) with competing claims for cultural identity within traditional non?liberal communities (communitarianism). Claims of the first kind are usually seen as universal in that they are based on what it is to be human, while claims of the second kind are seen as particular in so far as they relate to membership of a specific culture. Singh (1997) argues for discussion method (...) as a means of reconciling the claims of democratic citizenship with those of cultural attachment in non?liberal communities. In an earlier and related paper, Singh (1995) also seeks an accommodation between shared and particular values in a multicultural society. Halstead (1997) is concerned about the dilemmas faced by liberal educators and by Muslims with regard to the sex education curriculum and Muslim pupils. In an earlier paper, Halstead (1995) makes proposals for a curriculum which combines a communitarian commitment to the cultural integrity of non?liberal communities with active participation in the life of a liberal democracy. I will argue that whether we begin from a liberal commitment to individual autonomy (Singh) or from a concern for the cultural integrity and survival of non?liberal communities (Halstead), there are very real difficulties in achieving a reconciliation between liberal and communitarian perspectives. (shrink)

International migration has a female face in the beginning of the twenty-first century; since at least 1990, a total of 49 percent of international migrants have been women (UN 2008).1 Many women relocate in pursuit of goals that they can’t realize in their countries of origin, and many women move on their own to developed countries as caregivers to the very old or the very young, as nurses to attend to the sick in hospitals, and as domestic workers.2 How should (...) we regard their decisions to do so? One way of thinking about such moves is to deplore the fact that women have to move in order to attain certain goals in their lives; it would be more desirable to live in a world that would not make such moves necessary... (shrink)

Although informed consent is an integral part of clinical practice, its current doctrine remains mostly a matter of law and mainstream ethics rather than empirical research. There are scarce empirical data on patients’ perceived purpose of informed consent, which may include administrative routine/courtesy gesture, simple honest permission, informed permission, patient-clinician shared decision-making, and enabling patient’s self decision-making. Different purposes require different processes.

The featured case discussion on the role of consent and individual autonomy in the PIP breast implant scandal raises interesting and important questions regarding the right of patients (and individuals in general) to decide whether to have their personal data included in medical registries and used for research. The fate of the National Breast Implant Registry, following the introduction of a policy that demanded formally recorded informed consent, is particularly enlightening. Combined with the (ex post) fact that reliable (...) and comprehensive data would have been useful in this specific case, it clearly illustrates the dangers of overemphasizing individual autonomy in observational research. The issue is timely, as the European Commission has recently proposed a new Data Protection Regulation (European Commission, 2012) that may have serious implications for registry based research. In this commentary, I will first discuss two aspects of the regulatory framework that arguably contribute to the problematic situation and then offer an alternative view on why requiring consent should not be the default position in this kind of research. (shrink)

The dissertation explores the implications of the liberal value of individual autonomy for the rights of cultural minorities in liberal societies. Liberals traditionally have assumed that respect for autonomy precludes the political recognition of citizens' cultural identities. But in recent years a number of self-styled "liberal nationalists" have argued that honoring the value of autonomy actually entitles cultural minorities and their members to a plethora of cultural rights, including political autonomy, minority jurisdiction over land and (...) language, the public subsidization of ethnic festivals, the symbolic recognition of ethnic and religious groups, and even a right to national self-determination. I argue that both the "liberal neutralist" and the "liberal nationalist" accounts of what individual autonomy stands for are mistaken. I present an alternative way of viewing the connection between the value of individual autonomy and claims for cultural recognition, one that preserves the primacy and inherent complexity of this central liberal value. Rightly understood, liberal autonomy supports the political recognition of cultural identity in principle and in a wide range of cases, but the principle and the cases fall well short of the extravagant claims recently made in its name. My analysis suggests that the principle of liberal autonomy sustains a civil right to cultural expression in the manner of classical civil rights, an approach that many liberal democracies implicitly have been moving toward in recent years. (shrink)

For the purpose of advancing the feminist commitment to inclusion and nonliberal articulations of pluralism, in this essay I conceptualize the Native account of individual autonomy that itself evolves from a commitment to pluralism. I demonstrate that Native individual autonomy is concurrently strong and feminist in nature—what I call “radical-cum-relational.” That is, Native autonomy is more radical than the traditional liberal conception and is simultaneously grounded in relationality, which is the basis of much of feminist (...) ethics. I demonstrate that the Native conception of autonomy is radical and promotes the highest degree of individual self-determination and independence qua individuality and particularity. Yet this radical self-determination depends on intense social interdependency. The grounding metaphysics and epistemology of the Native framework are conceived entirely in terms of ethical relationships between and responsibilities to other individuals, animals, and the Earth. That is, no part of the Native paradigm can be understood outside of the ethical connections persons have by virtue of their primary position as community members. It is by situating radical autonomy against a background of ethical social interdependence, together with thebackground condition of gender equality of Native practices, that the radical construal of Native individual freedom is feminist. To shore up and illustrate the connection between Native autonomy and feminism, I argue that an identification between the Native social practice of gifting and feminist reciprocity can be made, specifically Iris Marion Young’s notion of asymmetrical reciprocity. Finally, I argue that this connection avoids the problem of incommensurability and so is theoretically possible, responsible, and fits the criterion of respectfulness also at the foundation of the Native framework. Broadly speaking, the problem of incommensurability is concerned with theorists’ inability to recognize foundational incompatibilities between paradigms and their forced attempts to mergethem, often at the price of ignoring inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and contradictions that result from impossible translations and conversions. Historically and to the present day, Western philosophy has been egregiously guilty of distorting Native theories and practices. In this essay I argue that since translation takes place at the level of praxis rather than at the level of language, my argument circumvents problems that arise from failed attempts to map cultural concepts onto others that do not share similar foundations. (shrink)