Sociology (Spring '17) ON THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMY Metin Noorata

Autonomy and its conceptualization in modern philosophy assumed a far more nuanced
meaning compared to its literal and normative signifcation specifcally from the eighteenth-
century onward. Initially, autonomy whose word origin comes from the Greek autonom, from
autnomos which means living under one's own laws, where auto and nmos literally refer to 'self'
and 'law', respectively (Barnhart & Steinmetz, 2010, pp. 66-67) in Greek antiquity referred to
the self-governance of an independent city-state. However, autonomy in its philosophical usage
broadly refers to the distinctive feature and power of human beings commonly referred to in
moral philosophy as the 'property of persons' to act morally and objectively without appealing
to experience and falling under the infuence of desire. Three philosophers who were
instrumental in appropriating meaning to the notion of autonomy in its more philosophical
abstraction will be referred to here: Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
The notion of autonomy, generally speaking, is closely connected with the notion of
freedom. One of the earliest attempts to draw a distinction between a self-governing political
entity and that of a self-directing individual was by none other than Baruch de Spinoza.
Although Spinoza does not explicitly refer to autonomy as a term, he does, however, in retrospect
allude to its signifcance. Spinoza underscores the import of human agency in the context of
making decisions and taking action in a refective, self-directed, and rationally thought out way,
which implies that our actions are essentially the product of our own wills, rather than someone
else's or some other factor outside of us (Uyl, 2003, p. 35). The mind and body dilemma, a core
issue in the thought of his contemporary Ren Descartes (1596-1650), for Spinoza can be
explained in terms of what he refers to as activity and passivity. Spinoza unlike Descartes discerns
an interconnection between the mind and body, and while explicating their affect on one another
(See Spinoza, 1985, Vol. 1, pp. 457-477), Spinoza postulates that, The human Body can be
affected in many ways in which its power of acting is increased or diminished, and also in others
which render its power of acting neither greater nor less (Ibid, p. 493). Spinoza further
elaborates his postulation in that ideas that are 'adequate' in the mind are adequate in God
insofar as he constitutes the essence of that Mind; whereas 'inadequate' ideas in the mind are
also adequate in God...not insofar as he contains only the essence of that Mind, but insofar as he
also contains in himself, at the same time, the Minds [or ideas] of other things (Ibid) (insertion
Sociology (Spring '17) ON THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMY Metin Noorata

mine). What follows is that 'inadequate' ideas are a result of which the mind is its partial cause,
and in this case the mind becomes more liable to passions the more it has inadequate ideas,
conversely, [the mind] is more active the more it has adequate ideas (Ibid, p. 494) (insertion
mine). Activity for Spinoza therefore corresponds to the free and autonomous mind which in
contradistinction to passivity is the mind that is constrained by the passions. What Spinoza here
attempts to address and draw attention to is relatively more unambiguously elucidated by
Rousseau who identifes autonomy of the individual in relation to the political and social realm in
such a way that is thoroughly concerned with morality as we shall also see with Kant.
In The social contract (2002), after concluding the underlying cause of the adverse human
conditions of eighteenth-century Europe as being rooted in the materialistic burdens of
civilization in general, Rousseau seeks to conceptualize a frm standpoint to counter these
artifcial desires and factitious human impulses by an opposing principle that rests in reason
beyond nature (Sensen, 2013, p. 6). In order for human action to be truly moral, Rousseau
argues, the acts themselves must be entirely autonomous, wherefore autonomy of the individual
is interrelated with moral freedom. Hence, according to Rousseau, it is under the social contract
alone [that] enables man to be truly master of himself; for the impulse of mere appetite is
slavery, while obedience to a self-prescribed law is freedom (Rousseau, Book I, p. 167) (insertion
mine). Rousseau in other words asserts that autonomy together with freedom can viably be
achieved through civil laws instituted by the state, laws that essentially act as an external
mechanism both in inhibiting individuals from internal servitude to their passions and in
facilitating empowerment for one to ultimately be their own master. Just as the social contract
which demands individuals to forsake certain freedoms for the beneft of the collective, the laws
themselves likewise restrain certain actions for the beneft of the individual. Both the social
contract and the laws of the state are instrumental given that they serve some means to an end
which in the latter's case is the autonomy of the individual. With Rousseau, however, individuals
are only made to be actors who merely exercise their autonomy, and not legislators who ultimately
sanction their autonomy a matter which was left to Kant.
In what is arguably the major thrust of his three critical works on philosophy of The
critique of pure reason, The critique of practical reason, and The critique of the power of judgment, Kant's
notion of autonomy is what he sees as a necessary result of adhering to the laws of reason and
Sociology (Spring '17) ON THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMY Metin Noorata

morality which are to be unconditionally obeyed in themselves and not for the sake of anything
external to them. In one of his earliest works on the Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals (2002),
Kant formulates three principles of what he calls the moral law; it shall suffce us here to focus on
Kant's third formula,1 namely, the formula of autonomy. Kant uses 'autonomy' as a modifer for
'reason' and 'will', i.e. 'autonomous reason' and 'autonomous will', and this is evident in his
characterization of his formula of autonomy as the idea of the will of every rational being as a will
giving universal law (Kant, 2002, p. 58). Alternatively, Kant describes autonomy as, Not to
choose otherwise than so that the maxims of ones choice are at the same time comprehended
with it in the same volition as universal law (Ibid). Kant also refers to his third formula as the
formula of the realm of ends, which means to, Act in accordance with maxims of a universally
legislative member for a merely possible realm of ends (Ibid, p. 56). Kant's 'supreme principle of
morality' is grounded in the 'autonomy of the will' which is the property of the will through
which it is a law to itself (independently of all properties of the objects of volition) (Ibid, p. 58).
Autonomy for Kant thus forms the necessary ethical basis of a set of formulations that
presuppose all human morality in such a way that 'free rational agents' are not only actors e.g.
see Kant's frst formulation but legislators - i.e. the authoritative source of universal moral laws.
Alongside autonomy, which, to reiterate, is achieved through obedience to reason itself as the
source of all moral laws, there is also heteronomy which is obedience to a law external to itself in
what Kant specifcally refers to as 'heteronomy of the will' as the source of all ungenuine
principles of morality (Ibid). Here Kant implicitly refers to, and in the meantime diverges from,
Rousseau who positions moral authority with society as a collective represented by the state (See
Baradat & Phillips, 2017, p. 83) rather than with human reason alone.

1 The frst two formulas are as follows: (1) Kant's categorical imperative fnds expression in the formula of universal
law: Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a
universal law (Kant, 2002, p. 37); its coequal being the formula of the law of nature: So act as if the maxim of
your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature; (2) the formula of humanity as end in itself:
Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same
time as end and never merely as means (Ibid, pp. 46-47).
Sociology (Spring '17) ON THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMY Metin Noorata

Bibliography
1. Baradat, L.P. & Phillips, J.A. (2017). Political ideologies: Their origins and impact. New York:
Routledge.
2. Barnhart, R. K., & Steinmetz, S. (Eds.). (2010). Chambers dictionary of etymology. Edinburgh:
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3. Kant, I. (2002). Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals (A.W. Wood, Ed. and Trans.). New
Haven: Yale University Press. (Original work published 1784)
4. Rousseau, J.J. (2002). The social contract and the frst and second discourses (S. Dunn, Ed.). New
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