Respecting the oppressed in the personal autonomy debate
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Respecting the oppressed in the personal autonomy debate Andre´a Daventry1
Accepted: 22 September 2020 Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract It is common in the autonomy literature to claim that some more demanding theories of autonomy disrespect certain individuals by giving the result that those individuals lack autonomy. This claim is often made in the context of the debate between substantive and content-neutral theories of autonomy. Proponents of content-neutral theories often argue that, in deeming certain people non-autonomous—especially certain oppressed people who seem to have internalized their oppression in certain ways—the substantive theories disrespect those people. They take this as reason to accept content-neutral views over substantive views. Despite its ubiquity, this concern about disrespect is hard to pin down precisely. In this paper, I articulate two questions that need to be answered before we can understand the disrespect objection. First: Who, exactly, is supposedly being disrespected by substantive views? Second: Why is it that excluding people with these features is disrespectful? I consider a number of possible answers to each of these questions, and I argue that none of them gives us a plausible explanation of why we should think substantive theories of autonomy are disrespectful to anyone. No matter how we fill in the details, I will argue, there is simply no reason to prefer content-neutral theories of autonomy over substantive ones on the grounds of respect. Keywords Autonomy Oppression Respect Agency
& Andre´a Daventry [email protected] 1
Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, USA
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A. Daventry
1 Introduction It is common in the autonomy literature to claim that some more demanding theories of autonomy disrespect certain individuals by giving the result that those individuals lack autonomy. This claim is often made in the context of the debate between substantive and content-neutral theories of autonomy. While the distinction between these theories has been made in different ways by different people, I will define a substantive theory of autonomy as one which places constraints on the values, desires, or general pro-attitudes a person can have while still being fully autonomous, and content-neutral theories of autonomy as those according to which a person can be fully autonomous regardless of the particular pro-attitudes she has. Proponents of content-neutral theories often argue that, in deeming certain people non-autonomous—especially certain oppressed people who seem to have internalized their oppression in certain ways—the substantive theories disrespect those people. They take this to be reason to accept content-neutral views over substantive views. One frequently discussed example of this sort is the Deferential Wife as described by Thomas Hill: This is a woman who is utterly devoted to serving her husband. She buys clothes he prefers, invites the guests he wants to entertain, and makes love whenever he is in the mood. She willingly moves to a new city in order
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