The Principle of Autonomy
Philosophy distinguishes two principles of autonomy. First of all, it is a concept of “moral autonomy” proposed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant. “Moral autonomy” refers to the ability to apply a moral law on oneself, thus, limiting the frontiers of immoral deeds. According to Kant, this principle should become the fundamental organizing law of all morality. On the other hand, it is a concept of “personal autonomy”, which generally means capacity of individual to act appropriately to his/her own decisions. Taken the second principle, one can underscore that theory of autonomy is simply a concept targeted at explaining the general sense of “self-rule”. The latter includes two notions: independence of thoughts and ability to rule oneself. Viewing the idea of independence of thoughts via lens of political idealism, one example might be given. If a person who favors right or left wing ideas has an opportunity to express his/her thoughts without being circumscribed by any government authorities, then this notion works. Otherwise, there is no utility in having independent thoughts, however, not having opportunity to express them. For instance, there were plenty of political scholars in the Soviet Union who had independent thoughts, but did not have ability to avail them while being persecuted by the Soviet government. That is to say, independence of thoughts toughly interlinked with external conditions, e.g. level of political pressure, external environment, etc. Therefore, the hypothesis of possibility to have independent standpoint does depend on external order of things. Of course, taking into consideration subjective level, each human being has physical ability to keep in his/her mind whatever he/she thinks about the world. Nevertheless, the real independence comes only when one can express ideas without being somehow limited by acts of external agents.
The second notion – ability to rule oneself – is a very opaque statement since as long as human being lives within society, it is practically impossible to be fully independent from any other agents and people. For example, the man, indeed, controls his body and mind. However, there is no instrument to prevent any “illegal” action from other person unless it follows the rules and principles mentioned in Kant’s moral imperative. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that everybody will follow Kant’s instructions and that is why the force became legal instrument of circumscribing person’s freedom of will.
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