Kantian autonomy and the moral self

Review of Metaphysics, The, Dec, 2008 by Eric Entrican Wilson

Kant's account of autonomy is his response to this problem. To appreciate further his understanding of the difference between autonomy and heteronomy in this context, we can take our cue from the words themselves. If I can be forgiven for pointing out the obvious; the prefix of the word "heteronomy" comes from the Greek word for "other" (hetero), and the prefix of the word "autonomy" comes from the Greek for "self" (auto). Bearing this in mind, it is hardly surprising that the language Kant uses to characterize heteronomous volition and action reflect the etymology of the word itself. If the will were restricted to heteronomy, he argues, then "the will would not give itself the law but a foreign impulse [ein fremder Antrieb] would give the law to it by means of the subject's nature, which is attuned to be receptive to it." (32) This notion of a "foreign impulse" is indeed quite common to the terms in which he discusses inclinations and other sources of sensuous incentives. He repeatedly and consistently distinguishes between volition that is determined by respect for the moral law and volition that stems from "alien influences" or "alien causes." (33) Thus the obvious contrast: autonomy is self-determination, while heteronomy is other-determination.

The point is familiar to any reader of Kant. There is a deeper and less obvious conceptual point here, however. Namely, it is impossible to clarify the difference between autonomy and heteronomy without clarifying the distinction between self and other. We cannot make sense of the concept of autonomy, in other words, without establishing what it is that properly belongs to the self. As with so many other pivotal issues in modern philosophy, the distinction between autonomy and heteronomy thus rests on a conceptual distinction between what is internal and what is external to the self. This explains why Kant sometimes characterizes autonomy as "inner freedom," in which the will is determined by something that springs from within, as opposed to heteronomy, in which the will owes its end to something that comes from without, something "alien." (34)

This is by no means a simple issue. There are of course many different ways to characterize the difference between what is internal and what is external to the self, or what properly belongs to it and what does not, since these concepts have many different senses, depending on context and usage. There is, for example, a literal sense in which each and every one of my sneezes and itches belongs to me. If you notice me sneeze and then say, "bless you," I understand that you are addressing me and that you are ascribing the sneeze to me. I acknowledge and endorse that ascription when I say "thanks" in response. But it is just as obvious that if a historian were to someday write my biography, he or she would not include such episodes. Nor would anyone think that my story would be incomplete if they were missing. Yet one should resist the temptation to infer from this sort of thing that physical episodes never belong to the person in the sense that they are not "internal" to her self. Changes in personality structure wrought by brain injuries, for example, make this perfectly clear. Similarly, objects and events located outside one's epidermis are external or foreign in an obvious literal sense. Yet in other respects this is not always the case. There is a perfectly meaningful and uncontroversial sense in which some things that happen to my wife or my best friend also happen to me, even partially constitute who I am. Analogously, the rules, standards, and ideals that characterize the various institutions and practices in which we participate are outside each of us in one sense, yet we sometimes meaningfully describe them as "ours" in another respect. In cases where we do not, we sometimes say that we are "alienated" or "estranged" from them, and such language indicates that something is amiss. It often indicates the recognition that one can expand the boundaries of one's self by belonging to something that exists outside of it. Properly belonging to something external can alter the criteria of what is to count as internal. (35)