Against Autonomy

Argues that laws that enforce what is good for the individual's well-being, or hinder what is bad, are morally justified.

This book investigates "cultural instruments," meaning normative forms of analysis and practice that are central to Western culture. It explores their history from antiquity to the early Enlightenment and their use and reworking by different cultures, moving from Europe to Africa and the Americas, especially the Caribbean, in the process giving close readings of a wide range of authors.

The notion that consent based on the concept of autonomy, underpins a good or beneficent medical intervention is deeply rooted in the jurisprudence of most countries throughout the world. Autonomy, Consent and the Law examines these notions in the UK, Australia and the US, and critiques the way in which autonomy and consent are treated in bioethics and law.

Nietzsche is a central figure in our modern understanding of the individual as freely determining his or her own values. These essays by leading Nietzsche scholars investigate what this freedom really means: How free are we really? What does it take to be free? It might be a 'right', but it also needs to be earned.

"The Project of Autonomy radically rediscusses the concept of autonomy in politics and architecture by tracing a concise and polemical argument about its history in Italy in the 1960's and early 1970's. Architect and educator Pier Vittorio Aureli analyzes the position of the Operaism movement, formed by a group of intellectuals that produced a powerful and rigorous critique of capitalism and its intersections with two of the most radical architectural-urban theories of the day: Aldo Rossi's redefinition of the architecture of the city and Archizoom's No-stop City. Readers are introduced to major figures like Mario Tronti and Raniero Panzieri who have previously been little known in the English-speaking world, especially in an architectural context, and to the political motivations behind the theories of Rossi and Archizoom. The book draws on significant new source material, including recent interviews by the author and untranslated documents."--PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE.

In recent years, debate on the state's economic role has too often devolved into diatribes against intervention. Peter Evans questions such simplistic views, offering a new vision of why state involvement works in some cases and produces disasters in others. To illustrate, he looks at how state agencies, local entrepreneurs, and transnational corporations shaped the emergence of computer industries in Brazil, India, and Korea during the seventies and eighties. Evans starts with the idea that states vary in the way they are organized and tied to society. In some nations, like Zaire, the state is predatory, ruthlessly extracting and providing nothing of value in return. In others, like Korea, it is developmental, promoting industrial transformation. In still others, like Brazil and India, it is in between, sometimes helping, sometimes hindering. Evans's years of comparative research on the successes and failures of state involvement in the process of industrialization have here been crafted into a persuasive and entertaining work, which demonstrates that successful state action requires an understanding of its own limits, a realistic relationship to the global economy, and the combination of coherent internal organization and close links to society that Evans called "embedded autonomy."

Spinoza was one of the most influential figures of the Enlightenment, but his often obscure metaphysics makes it difficult to understand the ultimate message of his philosophy. Although he regarded freedom as the fundamental goal of his ethics and politics, his theory of freedom has not received sustained, comprehensive treatment. Spinoza holds that we attain freedom by governing ourselves according to practical principles, which express many of our deepest moral commitments. Matthew J. Kisner focuses on this theory and presents an alternative picture of the ethical project driving Spinoza's philosophical system. His study of the neglected practical philosophy provides an accessible and concrete picture of what it means to live as Spinoza's ethics envisioned.

Women have historically been prevented from living autonomously by systematic injustice, subordination, and oppression. The lingering effects of these practices have prompted many feminists to view autonomy with suspicion. Here, Marilyn Friedman defends the ideal of feminist autonomy. In her eyes, behavior is autonomous if it accords with the wants, cares, values, or commitments that the actor has reaffirmed and is able to sustain in the face of opposition. By her account, autonomy is socially grounded yet also individualizing and sometimes socially disruptive, qualities that can be ultimately advantageous for women. Friedman applies the concept of autonomy to domains of special interest to women. She defends the importance of autonomy in romantic love, considers how social institutions should respond to women who choose to remain in abusive relationships, and argues that liberal societies should tolerate minority cultural practices that violate women's rights so long as the women in question have chosen autonomously to live according to those practices.

People are socially situated amid complex relations with other people and are bound by interpersonal frameworks having significant influence upon their lives. These facts have implications for their autonomy. Challenging many of the currently accepted conceptions of autonomy and of how autonomy is valued, Oshana develops a 'social-relational' account of autonomy, or self-governance, as a condition of persons that is largely constituted by a person’s relations with other people and by the absence of certain social relations. She denies that command over one's motives and the freedom to realize one's will are sufficient to secure the kind of command over one's life that autonomy requires, and argues against psychological, procedural, and content neutral accounts of autonomy. Oshana embraces the idea that her account is 'perfectionist' in a sense, and argues that ultimately our commitment to autonomy is defeasible, but she maintains that a social-relational account best captures what we value about autonomy and best serves the various ends for which the concept of autonomy is employed.

This book explores the central importance Kant's concept of autonomy for contemporary moral thought and modern philosophy.