Autonomy: A Perusal of Reason and Human Capacities

             It is interesting that the majority of philosophy that is taught has generally been developed by white males. As Friedman points out, though the personal qualities of someone in particular do not directly affect their view, there is a risk that they might only consider a view that coincides with their singular experiences.  Yet, I have traditionally held the view that ad-homonistic points do injustice to the argument at hand, but exposure to Friedman’s ideas is causing me to question this idea.

Almost all philosophy up until the twentieth century has been written by white men. The first woman philosopher I can think of off the top of my head is Simone de Beauvoir. Conceptions of autonomy do not specifically exclude women, but the baseline theoretical conceptions that have been developed are not the only important aspects to autonomy nor are they the kinds of autonomy that we see in practice. Friedman suggests that autonomy as it has been realized thus far is an autonomy of white men. This kind of autonomy does not mean the same thing for women. She also provides the important caveat that white men are sometimes subjected to some of the same disadvantages that this kind of autonomy has for women.

Still, it is an injustice, in my view, to teach concepts of autonomy that are flawed without acknowledging those flaws. Some flaws that philosophers traditionally try to exclude from their arguments are those biases the creep unbeknownst to the philosopher his/herself.   Though Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, for example, provide views on autonomy that are well known and respected, these views are coincidentally aligned with traditionally male values. Furthermore, these ideas of autonomy are by no means the final say in what autonomy is. It is likely that each of their views possesses a male bias. I think this bias is apparent in all of them.

It is my understanding that each takes reason to be independent of all other human functions and abilities. Reason is taken to be the purely calculating ability of the human. It is independent of the passions, of spirit, of emotions, of desires, of appetites, etc… Yet reason can interact with all of the human capacities. If reason was truly independent, then would it not be lacking in understanding? To understand emotion, one must possess empathy. Reason, by the above definition fails to constitute full understanding. This may be indication that reason is not the almighty concept it is made out to be. Yet, I believe that without reason empathy would not exist. Empathy appears to be a synthesis of the human capacities for emotion and reason.

Perusing these ideas tends to align my perspective on reason with Friedman’s. She points out that traditional ideals of autonomy have been grounded in reason, and that this may not be a well-grounded justification itself. Reason in this sense—the sense I attempted to express that Kant, Aristotle, and Plato take—involves a detachment from emotion. Such a detachment realized in behavior is typically masculine. Friedman makes these points—considering autonomy and not Plato, Aristotle, and Kant specifically—far better than I, and I will leave it where she has.

 I would like to add, however, an interesting idea inspired by Friedman’s point regarding the ideal of autonomy versus the use of autonomy. The use of anything or the act of anyone can be consider as a performance—performance in the sense of success/fail as with athletes. All performances require an attitude. For example, generally an attitude of confidence or disregard for others opinions is required to perform well, whereas an attitude of cowardice will generally result a bad performance. Attitudes require emotions, passions, and feelings. They are mental states of the human being. Reason cannot be exercised (as far as we know) independent of mental states. We may think of reason in an idealized manner (i.e. as pure and independent of other things), but reason cannot be employed without a mental state. Thus human reasoning is never independent of emotions and passions. This further aligns my perspective on reason with Friedman’s suggestions.

Here, I begin to doubt the ideal of reason as presented by those renowned philosophers and with it the idea that an argument can stand independent of its author. I do not mean to say that logic (the field of logic) is skewed by emotion nor do I mean to say that we should consider ad-homonyms a valid option for argument invalidation. I mean merely to suggest that we cannot ignore other factors that might have possibly contributed to a view that are not immediately apparent in that argument.