Abstract
Rüdiger Bittner surveys with a skeptical eye classic and contemporary ideas of Kantian autonomy. He allows that we can be more or less free in a modest (quasi-Hobbesian) sense and that many people may want more of this freedom from impediments that make it difficult or impossible to do various things. He argues, however, that high-minded general affirmations of human freedom are unfounded and not likely to retain their grip on our thinking. While acknowledging the value of Bittner’s challenges, I raise questions about Bittner’s dismissal of ideas of freedom apparently imbedded in ordinary language and his critique of the idea of autonomy in Kant’s ethics and broadly Kantian theories. A key issue is how to make sense of the claim that a moral law can be a law and yet also self-imposed. Given certain background assumptions about Kant’s conception of autonomy of the will, the key claim requires different interpretations when it concerns the supreme moral law (the Categorical Imperative) and when it concerns more specific moral laws (for example, derivative principles in Kant’s Doctrine of Virtue). Bittner’s challenges are valuable because they require us to work out and articulate more carefully what we mean by autonomy and why it is important. As Bittner says, Kant’s idea of autonomy is not the same as the ideas of autonomy that appear in medicine, politics, and everyday life. Nevertheless, those who care about either have some reason to think about how these are connected.
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Notes
Bittner (unpublished), p. 3. My italics.
Bittner (unpublished), p. 4. My italics.
Bittner (unpublished), p. 4. My italics.
The simple objection I have in mind is that it makes no sense to say that the moral law is self-imposed if this were to mean that the fundamental principle behind common morality is both necessarily rational for everyone (a “law”) and yet is so because voluntarily chosen (“self-imposed”). Among the Kantian assumptions that many will find unsustainable today are the beliefs that every rationally competent person—able to understand, to do means-end reasoning, etc.—necessarily recognizes and feels the authority of the moral law (as expressed in the Categorical Imperative). Some contemporary Kantians have tried to revive and bolster what they take to be Kant’s argument for this thesis, but I share familiar doubts about those arguments and also doubt that Kant intended to refute skeptics as they suggest.
Bittner, “Autonomy modest,” pp. #–#, (2002), pp. 217–18, and Bittner (unpublished), part 2, section (e), pp. 15–16.
Immanuel Kant (1996) [1,797–8], 12 [6: 213–14, 18 [6: 226]. (2002b) [1,793], 33–4 [6: 4–5], 46–70 [6: 21–50]. Bracketed numbers in citations to Kant’s works refer to the volume and page of the standard Prussian Academy edition Kants gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1902).
Kant (2002a), pp. 221-40 [4: 410-40].
Kant (2002a), pp. 240-48 [4: 440-48].
Kant (1996), pp. 173–218 [6: 418–69].
O’Neill (1989), pp. 81–104.
The view I sketch is expressed (but insufficiently developed) in several essays, for example Hill (2012), chs. 3, 8, 11, and 14.
This ideal includes but goes beyond a right of autonomy and valuing capacities of autonomy, as I explain in Hill (1991), especially pp. 35–7.
Hill (2012), pp. 15–31.
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Hill, T. Rüdiger Bittner on Autonomy. Erkenn 79 (Suppl 7), 1341–1350 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9556-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9556-y