# Autonomy

Autonomy (Ancient Greek: αὐτονομία autonomia from αὐτόνομος autonomos from αὐτο- auto- "self" + νόμος nomos, "law", hence when combined understood to mean "one who gives oneself one's own law") is a concept found in moral, political, and bioethical philosophy. Within these contexts, it is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision. In moral and political philosophy, autonomy is often used as the basis for determining moral responsibility and accountability for one's actions.
Arranged alphabetically by author or source: A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · Anonymous · See also · External links

## A

* What the philosophers once knew as life has become the sphere of private existence and now of mere consumption, dragged along as an appendage of the process of material production, without autonomy or substance of its own.
** Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life (1951), as translated by E. Jephcott (1974), p. 15

## B

* The failing of contemporary criticism is double: Hand in hand with the suppression of aesthetic autonomy, one finds also a growing reluctance to recognize the complex and dynamic temporality of literature.
** Russell Berman, Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty, and Western Culture (2007), p. 5
* Periodization is the disciplinary strategy with which the present establishes its rule over all time and encourages conformism, to the detriment of autonomy, individual and aesthetic.
** Russell Berman, Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty, and Western Culture (2007), p. 20
* The university ... must be contemptuous of public opinion because it has within it the source of autonomy—the quest for and even discovery of the truth according to nature.
** Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (1987), p. 254
* He who feels that in his inmost being he cannot be compared with others, will be his own lawgiver. For one thing is needful: to give style to one’s character. This art is practised by him who, with an eye for the strong and weak sides of his nature, removes from it one quality and another, and then by daily practice and acquired habit replaces them by others which become second nature to him; in other words, he puts himself under restraint in order by degrees to bend his nature entirely to his own law.
** Georg Brandes, “An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism,” Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 26
* From none but self expect applause; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
** Richard Francis Burton, The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870), VIII

## C

* Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he’s always ready to escape their control.
** Nicolas Chamfort, Reflections, D. Parmée, trans. (London: 2003) #169

## D

* There cannot be any politics of resistance, aesthetics of emancipation, or prose and poetry of agential autonomy in history for people around the world—nothing except a Starbucks Coffee version of the so-called “Western classics” to go and save them.
** Hamid Dabashi, in an interview quoted in "Lolita and Beyond", Iran Heritage]], August 4, 2006

## E

* We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and irrational.
** Terry Eagleton, in "Culture conundrum" The Guardian, May 20, 2008
* A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his own thought, because it is his.
** Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 47-48
* It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion. It is easy in solitude to live after our own. But the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
** Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), p. 55
* That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.
** Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” Essays: First Series (1883), pp. 62-63
* Autonomy means that the movement must be truly independent and a free association of all those united around common goals, rather than membership as the result of some oath or other pressure.
** Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution (1993)

## F

* Most business literature still views autonomy as a virtue, as though communication, teamwork, and cooperation were lesser values.
** Keith Ferrazzi, in Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time p. 17
* I, who have the strength and awareness to be my own motive force, will not be the little cog that is overwhelmed, annihilated by the heavy social gears.
** Bruno Filippi, "The Free Art of a Free Spirit," The Rebel’s Dark Laughter: The Writings of Bruno Filippi (1918)

## G

* The upper technologies of knowledge representation and acquisition, autonomy and sociality, support product innovation and provide the beginnings of foundations for knowledge science. Well's dream of a world brain making available all of human knowledge is well on its way to realization and it is in the representation, acquisition, and access and effective application of that knowledge that the commercial potential and socio-economic impact of convergence lies.
** Brian R. Gaines, in "Convergence to the Information Highway"
* The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture and of the technique of life.
** Anthony Giddens, in Sociology: Introductory Readings p. 79

## H

* The grimaces on these mocking distorted faces signalize disobedience, opposition and turmoil, as well as a kind of childlike autonomy in the depraved world of adults.
** Gottfried Helnwein, in Gottfried Helnwein p. 130
* The autonomous individual, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. The autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding call of frustration, and the seed of the convulsions which shake our world to its foundations.
** Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955), Section 29
* Ursus had communicated to Homo a portion of his talents: such as to stand upright, to restrain his rage into sulkiness, to growl instead of howling, etc.; and on his part, the wolf had taught the man what he knew—to do without a roof, without bread and fire, to prefer hunger in the woods to slavery in a palace.
** Victor Hugo, The Man Who Laughs (1869)

## I

* Modernized poverty appears when the intensity of market dependence reaches a certain threshold. Subjectively, it is the experience of frustrating affluence which occurs in persons mutilated by their overwhelming reliance on the riches of industrial productivity. Simply, it deprives those affected by it of their freedom and power to act autonomously, to live creatively; it confines them to survival through being plugged into market relations. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply experienced, it is with difficulty expressed. We are the witnesses of a barely perceptible transformation in ordinary language by which verbs that formerly designated satisfying actions are replaced by nouns that denote packages designed for passive consumption only: for example, "to learn" becomes "acquisition of credits." A profound change in individual and social self-images is here reflected. ... The peculiarly modern inability to use personal endowments, communal life, and environmental resources in an autonomous way infects every aspect of life where a professionally engineered commodity has succeeded in replacing a culturally shaped use-value. The opportunity to experience personal and social satisfaction outside the market is thus destroyed.
** Ivan Illich, Toward a History of Needs (1978)
* He wants a better product rather than freedom from servitude to it. It is vital that he come to see that the acceleration he demands is self-defeating, and that it must result in a further decline of equity, leisure, and autonomy.
** Ivan Illich, Toward a History of Needs (1978), p. 123

## J

* Just as a man, as a social being, can not in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors.
** Carl Jung, quoted by Claire Dunne in Carl Jung: Wounded Healer of the Soul: An Illustrated Biography p. 199

## K

* Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding.
** Immanuel Kant, "What is Enlightenment?" (1784)
* It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts.
** Immanuel Kant, "What is Enlightenment?" (1784)
* Morality is thus the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will, that is, to a possible giving of universal law through its maxims.
** Immanuel Kant, quoted by Michael J. Sandel in Justice: A Reader
* Reasoning is one of the highest powers of man. It is a mark of originality and intelligence, and stamps its possessor not a copier but an originator, not a follower but a leader, not a slave, to have his thinking foisted upon him by others, but a free and independent intellect, unshackled by the bonds of ignorance and convention. The man who employs reason in acquiring knowledge, finds delights in study that are denied to a rote memorizer. When one looks at the world through glasses of reason, inquiring into the eternal why, then facts take on a new meaning, knowledge comes with new power, the facts of experience glow with vitality, and one's own relations with them appear in a new light.
** Harry Dexter Kitson, How to Use Your Mind: A Psychology of Study (1916), p. 137
* Its ethic is liberty and its characteristic is autonomy — the freedom of the will from external constraint. It says "I shall...
** Danny Kruger, in On Fraternity: Politics Beyond Liberty and Equality p. 13

## L

* Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.
** Étienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)
* Men are like handsome race horses who first bite the bit and later like it, and rearing under the saddle a while soon learn to enjoy displaying their harness and prance proudly beneath their trappings. ... There are always a few, better endowed than others, who feel the weight of the yoke and cannot restrain themselves from attempting to shake it off: these are the men who never become tamed under subjection. ... These are in fact the men who, possessed of clear minds and far-sighted spirit, are not satisfied, like the brutish mass, to see only what is at their feet, but rather look about them, behind and before, and even recall the things of the past in order to judge those of the future, and compare both with their present condition. These are the ones who, having good minds of their own, have further trained them by study and learning. Even if liberty had entirely perished from the earth, such men would invent it. For them slavery has no satisfactions, no matter how well disguised.
** Étienne de La Boétie, Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Part 2
* I wasn't good with authority, went to lots of schools, didn't like the fact that there was no autonomy.
** Nigella Lawson, in SAT and ACT Vocabulary Building p. 95
* Τί δὲ καὶ ἀφ’ ἑαυτῶν οὐ κρίνετε τὸ δίκαιον;
** Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?
** Jesus in Gospel of Luke 12:57

## M

* The individual would be free to exert autonomy over a life that would be his own. If the productive apparatus could be organized and directed toward satisfaction of the vital needs, its control might well be centralized, such control would not prevent individual autonomy, but render it possible.
** Herbert Marcuse, in Sociological Theory in the Contemporary Era: Text and Readings p. 112
* The student of social psychology ... is concerned not so much with the panaceas that may be proposed for the solution of the economic problems, but is interested rather in the possibility that under any economic system a maximum number of people should be able to grow from infantile tribal ways to self-directing maturity.
** Everett Dean Martin, The Conflict of the Individual and the Mass in the Modern World (1932), p. 5
* I've learned that in order to achieve what I wanted, it made more sense to negotiate than to defend the autonomy of my work by pounding my fist on the table.
** Thom Mayne, in THE IDEA OF THE FUTURE IS DEAD’ Interview with Thom Mayne by Anna Tilroe
* The mass has no autonomy from institutions; on the contrary, agents of authorized institutions penetrate this mass, reducing any autonomy it may have in the formation of opinion by discussion.
** C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1961), p. 304
* There exists at present a living body, which is my body... I am one of those philosophers who have held that that ‘the Common Sense view of the world’ is in certain fundamental features, wholly true.
* George Edward Moore, in “A Defense of Common Sense” quoted in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid p. 319
* Intellectually, the political realist maintains the autonomy of the political sphere, as the economist, the lawyer, the moralist maintain theirs.
** Hans Morgenthau, in Political Theory and International Affairs: Hans J. Morgenthau on Aristotle ... p. 4

## N

* In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for a second time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated an assortment as he is: he knows it but he hides it like a bad conscience—why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conventionality and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that constrains the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. With the great majority it is indolence, inertia. ... Men are even lazier than they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences with which unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them. Artists alone hate this sluggish promenading in borrowed fashions and appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone’s secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle.
** Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 127
* We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance.
** Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
* No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.
** Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 129
* There exists in the world a single path along which no one can go except you: whither does it lead? Do not ask, go along it.
** Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 129

## P

* Is the intellect to be regarded as autonomous and self-sufficient, as pursuing ends of its own, and as judging by standards of its own? or is it to be regarded as the servant of alien interests which impose their ends and standards upon it? The modern tendency has been towards the latter or practical interpretation of the knowing faculties.
** Ralph Barton Perry, "The Integrity of the Intellect," Harvard Theological Review, vol. 13, no. 3, July 1920, p. 221

## R

* The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.
** David Riesman, quoted in Crowds p. 204
* I worship freedom; I abhor restraint, trouble, dependence. As long as the money in my purse lasts, it assures my independence; it relieves me of the trouble of finding expedients to replenish it, a necessity which has always inspired me with dread; but the fear of seeing it exhausted makes me hoard it carefully. The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom.; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery. Therefore I hold fast to that which I have, and desire nothing.
** Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (Wordsworth: 1996), p. 35

## S

* I neither want nor expect autonomy to lose its status in the centerpiece of bioethics. But that centerpiece of bioethics should be a whole bouquet of concepts, and not just the single flower of autonomy, however beguiling it may be.
** Carl Schneider, in Informed Consent : Legal Theory and Clinical Practice: Legal Theory and ... p. 32
* I'll never Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand, As if a man were author of himself And knew no other kin.
** William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (c. 1607-08), Act V, scene 3, line 34
* Autonomy has never been recognized as a legally protectable interest. It has been vindicated only as byproduct of protection of two other interests – bodily security as protected by rules against consented contact, and bodily well-being as protected by rules governing professional competence.
** Marjorie Shultz, in Informed Consent: Legal Theory and Clinical Practice p. 147
* He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down.
** Solomon, Proverbs 25:28 KJV
* Again, it reduces someone's moral responsibility and intellectual autonomy to a racial stereotype — that all blacks are innocent victims who cannot be held responsible for their beliefs or arguments; or that all blacks are so oppressed that any bigotry they utter is permissible.
** Andrew Sullivan, The bigotry of Belafonte
* Autonomy is traditionally regarded as the instrument of agency for individuals who are perceived as separate, independent and fully rationale.
** Susan Sherwin, in Informed Consent: Legal Theory and Clinical Practice p. 32
* I have always been a strong supporter of patient’s autonomy in decision-making, particularly at the end of life and believe that this should be respected. By the same token, the doctor involved in the end-of-life decisions also has his autonomy to consider.
** Rodney Syme, in A Good Death: An Argument For Voluntary Euthanasia, p. 129

## T

* But while I breathe Heaven's air, and Heaven looks down on me, And smiles at my best meanings, I remain Mistress of mine own self and mine own soul.
** Alfred Tennyson, The Foresters, Act IV, scene 1
* It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending.
** Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886), ch.11

## U

* They tell me I am here to realize I know not what social end; but I feel that I, like each one of my fellows, am here to realize myself, to live.
** Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life (1913)

## V

* My parents have a wonderful marriage, but they have been together since my mother was 12, married when they were just teenagers and are barely ever separated. They even work together. As a result, I have always thought of marriage as involving the loss of a certain amount of autonomy.
** Jessica Valenti, in My big feminist wedding

## W

* Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decision.
** Denis Waitley, quoted by Lanna Nakone in Every Child Has a Thinking Style: A Guide to Recognizing and Fostering Each ... p. 71
* It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.
** Simone Weil, in Quotes about God p. 31
* Thoreau's famous retreat to Walden Pond is thus in a continuum with his sense of the duty of disobedience. ... He understood this exile as the need to create a society—even if a society of one on the banks of a tiny Massachusetts pond—that he could willingly join.
** Curtis White, "The spirit of disobedience: an invitation to resistance," Harper's Magazine, April 1, 2006
* Among those who stressed the ‘autos’ were Kant’s early [[w:German Romanticism|Romantic followers and critics (usually both followers and critics at once) who thought that each of us should be the author of our own morality. My morality, therefore, is valid only for me, as an expression of my unique individuality. After all, a moral law proceeding from my will seems by that fact alone to be a law valid only for me, perhaps even a law whose content is subject to my whims and arbitrariness. But that leads to a natural question: How can a law bind me at all if I am its author, because that apparently puts me in a position to change or invalidate it at my own discretion? The same thoughts, once we try to answer this question, might also lead in the direction of associating the concept of moral authority with some notion of individual “authenticity,” “choosing oneself,” or “becoming who one is,” sometimes taking those who travel this road beyond morality entirely. For just that reason, however, the self-esteem which appears to ground Kantian morality can begin to seem (as it does to some of Kant’s critics) like a kind of arrogance or even a perverse self-deification, in which each person blasphemously usurps the traditional place of the Deity as the giver of moral laws. The tradition that went in this direction therefore included some, such as the later Schelling and Kierkegaard, whose encounter with Kantian ethics ended (paradoxically) in some form of “theonomy” or theological voluntarism that either preserved the notion of autonomy only by a speculative pantheist merging of the self and the Deity or else rejected outright (as a demonic or satanic principle) the whole idea that the rational creature might tear itself away from its creator and claim authority over itself.
** Allen W. Wood, Kantian Ethics (2008), Ch. 6. Autonomy

## Z

* If, on the other hand, your primary goal is wholeness, egalitarianism, autonomy, and an intact world, then there's quite a lot wrong with it.
** John Zerzan, in You May Be an Anarchist — And Not Even Know It

## Anonymous

* How you answer the question, whether individuals should be persuaded to live their whole lives in a state of chemical dependency, first upon contraceptive steroids and then on replacement therapy, depends upon your regard for the autonomy of the individual.
** Anonymous in Skepticism about Hormone Replacement Therapy
* Autonomy itself is not the monolithic concept it is sometimes imagined to be; as flower, instead of being simply an American Beauty, autonomy would be more of a varietal that come in several hues.
** Anonymous, in "Informed Consent : Legal Theory and Clinical Practice: Legal Theory and ..." p. 147

### “Personal Autonomy, the Private Sphere and Criminal Law” (2001)

“Personal Autonomy, the Private Sphere and Criminal Law”, Peter Alldridge, Chrisje H. Brants – 2001
* In some ways autonomy, broadly defined, is not an enforceable right in any useful sense. It is the basis of all fundamental rights – namely to be able to behave and to be treated with the dignity that goes with being human, whatever one is, it is that self that commands respect. This underlies all of the rights of the European Convention. Privacy, freedom of expression etc., are the part-expression of this in positive law, for those situations in which the autonomous individual finds him or herself in the context of society. Then, the autonomy rights of one may clash with those of the other and one will give way. Given that it is the social context that will decide which right has the stronger claim, it must follow that many autonomy claims are unenforceable and privacy rights are weak.
** p.22
* The Kantian idea of moral autonomy as “self-determination” is as good a place as any to begin elaborating the conception of personal autonomy I favour. The autonomous life cherished by liberals is the life that can be characterised as (in part) self-determined, self-authored or self-created, following plans and ideals - “a conception of the good” - that one has chosen for oneself. Choice, on this view, is prerequisite to leading a successful, fulfilling and authentic existence according to one's own moral rights. To have an autonomous life a perosn must be free to deliberate about and choose the projects he or she will take up in life from an adequate range of options accomodating the diversity of human aptitudes, abilities, interests and tastes. In contrast to the value of liberty conceived as the negative right to be left alone, that is an active, “positive” conception of autonomy which requires, as Rawls nearly summarised, the opportunity “to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of the good”. Jeremy Waldron helpfully expands: The dominant theme in modern liberalism is that an indiivdual conception of the good life is a plan of life or a strategy for living that an individual uses as a basis for making and reflecting on his more important decisions and for scheduling his enjoyments and set backs (to the extent that he has any control over them). His conception, moreover, defines what is to count as a setback or any enjoyment for him; and it defines for him the things that are most, and least, important in his life.
** Jeremy Waldron, “Legislation and Moral Netrality”, reprinted in this “Liberal Rights: Collected Papers 1981-1991”, at 161; as quoted on p.59
* Autonomy makes a person the sovereign authority over her or his own life, in recognition of the fact that we each have only one life and that what happens in it – what happens to “us” - is our most special and intimate concern. Although political philosophers might sometimes make heavy weather of it, this is a perfectly familiar and comprehensible idea (as indeed it must be to qualify as a compelling personal and political ideal that can be taken to heart by people like us). Ronald Dworkin contributes the following memorable image: Each person follows a more or less articulate conception of what gives value to life. The scholar who values a life of contemplation has such a conception so does the television-watching, beer-drinking citizen who is fond of saying “This is the life”, though of course he has thought less about the issue and is less able to describe or defend his conception. Having a life-plan – or, more accurately, a “plan for living” - is part and parcel of living life “from the inside”, to borrow Kymlicka's useful metaphor.
** Ronald Dworkin, “Liberalism”, reprinted in his “a Matter of Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) 191; as quoted on p.59
* If privacy is an essential component of autonomy, and personal autonomy is such a cherished value for liberals and others, does that mean we must have a right to privacy? Alas, matters are not so simple. It certainly is “not” the case that people enjoy rights over everything that is important to them. In order to determine whether there is a (moral) right to privacy we had first better understand what a right is. The most illuminating conception of rights I know is the Interest Theory proposed by Joseph Raz, in these terms : Definition “X has a right” if and only if X can have rights, and, other things being equal, an aspect of X's well-being (his interest) is a sufficient reason for holding some other person(s) to be under a duty.
** Joseph Raz, “The Morality of Freedom, supra” n 12 at 166; as quoted on p.65
* A useful way to approach the idea of a right to privacy is to see how, in their essential structure as rights-generating grounds of duties, privacy interests resemble or overlap with the engative liberties of traditional political theory. Consider first, by way of contrast, how a positive right to autonomy might be specified. True, a right to have an autonomous life is a conceptual impossibility because nobody else can be under a duty to provide me with something that, by definition, I must do for myself. Only I can lead my life from the inside; nobody can coerce me into doing so, for coercion destroys genuine self-determination through external pressure, nor can I be relieved of the funamentally personal responsibility for leading an autonomous life in any other way. However, it is possible to sidestep this conceptual objection by reconstituting the supposed entitlement as a right to be provided ith “the conditions and opportunities” for leading an autonomous life. This right is “conceptually” unproblematic, but has never (to my knowledge) been a moral or political reality in the history of the world. For nobody could claim such a right unless society's amterial and technical resources were such that the same right could be universalized to everyone, in accordance with the foundational moral norm of equal respect for persons. Once this “merely” contingent, but under current conditions impossibly demanding, matrial prerequisite is acknowledged, one is obliged to conclude, with Raz, that our mastery over the physical environment has not yet developed to the point where there could bea general right to be provided with the conditions for living an autonomous life: A right to autonomy can be had only in the interest of the right-holder justifies holding members of the society at large to be duty-bound to him to provide him with the social environment necessary to give him a chance to have an autonomous life. Assuming that the interest of one person cannot justify holding so many to be subject to potnetially burdensome dutis, regarding such fundamental aspects of their lives, it follows that there is no right to personal autonomy. Personal autonomy may be a moral ideal . . . But in itself, in its full generality, it transcends what any indivdual has a right to. Put it another way: a person may be denied the chance to have an autonomous life, through the working of social institutions and by individual action, without any of his rights being overridden or violated.
** pp.65-66

### "Privacy law in Australia” (2005)

"Privacy law in Australia”, Carolyn Doyle, Mirko Bagaric – 2005
* Autonomy has been defined in many ways. It has been treated as a synonym of freedom of the will, sovereignty, liberty and self-rule, or equated with self-knowledge, self-development, responsibility, dignity and integrity. It has been identified with self-assertion, critical reflection, freedom form obligation, absence of external causation and knowledge of one's own interests. The concept is related to actions, beleifs, reasons for acting, rules, the will of others, thoughts and principles. Gerald Dworkin's illuminating discussion of autonomy points out that the only consistent features in the variety of views and definitions of autonomy are that it is a desirable notion, that it relates to persons, and that the existence of a core meaning is doubtful. Many philosophers emphasise concepts such as freedom and self-definition when discussing autonomy. Thus, Dworkin suggests that autonomy enables people “to define their nature, give meaning and coherence to their lives and take responsibility for the kind of person they are”. John Rawls suggests that “acting autonomously is acting from principles that we would consent to as free and equal rational beings”.
** G Dworkin, “The Theory and Practice of Autonomy” (1986) p.20.; J Rawls, “A Theory of Justice” (1972) p 516; p.36
* A similar notion is that the morally autonomous individual is one who obeys social norms not out of unthinking conformity, but as a result of an independent evaluation of their moral worth. John Harris identifies autonomy as the ability to control one's destiny by exercising one's faculties and John Finnis equates it with the ability to “exercise individual liberty to do what one pleases”. Judge Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit, in considering the lawfulness of the Washington law against assisted suicide, stated that “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life”. A common thread to emerge from these definitions, and the definition that we shall adopt, is that autonomy is the capacity of individuals “to choose both the deisrable ends of their own lives and .. the means by which they pursue those ends.”.
** J Finnis, “Living Will Legislation” in L Gormally (ed), “Euthanasia, Clinical Practice and the Law” (1994) pp 167, 171; D Thomasma and HT Engelhardt, “Re-examining Thou Shalt Not Kill” in D Thomasama, T Kimbrough-Kushner and C Ciesielski-Carlucci, “Asking to Die: Inside the Dutch Debate bout Euthanasia (1998) pp 7, 16, note 7; Feldman p 700; quoted on p.37
* Autonomy is incapable of shoring up other interests unless one is willing to accept that it is justifiable. The right to autonomy has a rich history and transcends both deontological and consequentialist thinking. Autonomy is an individualistic concept and hence there is the tendency naturally to associate the right to autonomy or freedom of action with deontological theories.
** p.38
* He states that autonomy is literally “self-government” and people are autonomous “to the extent to which they are able to control their own destiny, by the exercise of their own faculties”:
** J Harris, “The Value of Life: An Introduction to Medical Ethics” (1985) p 195; as quoted on p.75

## See also

* Heteronomy
* Independence
* Individualism
* Individuality
* Self-sufficiency