Kant and Contemporary Notions of Autonomy

Kant and Contemporary Notions of Autonomy

Even after over 300 years of Kant’s birth, his notion of autonomy is a main inspiration for our contemporary thought in the philosophy of agency, moral philosophy, as well as bioethics. However, I shall argue that Kant’s conception only has a general resemblance with contemporary notions of autonomy. Contemporary Kantian accounts often construe autonomy as a conscious decision or a reflective endorsement of an action. I first raise puzzles for this conception before I outline an alternative account of Kant’s notion. According to my interpretation, Kant and contemporary Kantian conceptions of autonomy only share a very general understanding of autonomy as self-determination. However, both conceptions operate with a different concept of the will. Kant himself does not connect autonomy with our conscious willing, but with our pure will. The claim is then that our pure, pre-conscious faculty brings forth the moral law by itself, independently of inclinations. We can become aware of the product of autonomy, the moral law, but autonomy itself is not a conscious act.