RT Article
T1 Autonomy and History: How a Desire Becomes One’s Own
JF Journal of moral philosophy
VO 11
IS 3
SP 265
OP 293
A1 Weimer, Steven
LA English
YR 2014
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1817472453
AB A common view among autonomy theorists is that a desire is autonomous only if it has the right sort of history. Usually, an autonomy-compatible history is taken to consist in the desire’s having had proper origins. In a recent article in this journal, Mikhail Valdman has proposed an alternative historical theory on which a desire’s origins are irrelevant. On Valdman’s “agent-engagement” theory, a desire is autonomous if and only if the agent has made it her own by deliberatively deciding it is worth maintaining and acting on. I argue that both of these approaches are overly demanding: the history of many autonomous desires lack proper origins, agent-engagement, or both. Taking as my starting point Alfred Mele’s account, which I go on to revise and supplement in several important ways, I outline a more flexible historical theory of autonomy which recognizes multiple ways in which a desire can become one’s own.
K1 Valdman
K1 Mele
K1 desires
K1 History
K1 Autonomy
DO 10.1163/17455243-4681024