One of the major insights in Kantian ethics is the idea that respecting autonomy is a basic moral obligation. In Kantian ethics, the value that respect recognizes is a specific sort of rationality – that is, rational nature that autonomously legislates moral law. Respecting rational nature involves behaving in ways that recognize that value, and the ways that recognize that value are, of course, connected to what that value is. In the case of Kantian rationality, the idea is that rational nature needs to be respected as something that is an end in itself – it needs to be treated as the end that it is, and not ever as a mere means. This is a complicated idea, and there are many subtleties that I will not discuss here – however, this idea of rational nature as an autonomous moral legislator that needs
to be respected as an end gives us a basic idea of what it is about rational nature that places limits on our attitudes and behavior.
According to Kant’s analysis93, respecting rational nature as an end in itself involves at least two basic requirements. These include: (1) Respecting the ends that others set, as well as setting and promoting those ends for oneself (as far as possible); and (2) Only setting ends for oneself that could be held as ends by the other rational beings involved.
According to the first requirement, respecting rational nature involves taking the fact that something is an end for someone else as a reason for you (at the very least) to not interfere in their achievement of that end, and (at the most) to help them achieve that end. If someone has willed a certain (good) end for herself, treating her rational nature as an end in itself means taking that fact as a reason to help her (or at least not inhibit her) in achieving that end. Having that commitment to other people’s (good) ends, then, is what is meant by treating their ends as my own, and setting them for myself and promoting them as much as possible.
The first requirement, then, is primarily concerned with the attitudes and behavior that we exhibit towards the end that others set. The second requirement, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the ends that we set for ourselves. According to the second requirement, respecting other people as ends in themselves means only setting ends that the other people involved would set for themselves – that is, we shouldn’t set ends that involve other people in our actions in ways that they would not will for themselves. The general Kantian idea that we should not use other people as mere means, but only as ends in themselves, gets its fullest expression in this requirement,
because here we see that treating others as ends in themselves in part just means not treating them as mere means. That is, part of seeing and treating rational nature as an end in itself is not treating it as something you can manipulate in any way you wish when setting your ends. Seeing rational nature as an end means seeing it as the sort of thing that can’t be used merely instrumentally; and this gets expressed in the idea that when we set our ends, we shouldn’t involve other people in the achievement of those ends in ways they would not will for themselves (that is, in ways that are fundamentally opposed to what they could or would will for themselves). A paradigm case of this is using another person as a mere instrument in the achievement of our ends (for example, using another person as a human shield).
With these requirements, a clear idea of the importance of autonomy emerges. The common theme in these two requirements is that what other people will, or would will, for themselves is important in figuring out the ways in which they can, and must, be treated and viewed by others. As regards the first requirement, what respecting rational nature involves is seeing the things that others do autonomously will for themselves as being important in setting requirements on what I myself can will. For example, if my partner wills that she get her work done by the end of the day, then part of what it means to respect her rational nature is that I not inhibit her in the achievement of that end. It also means setting that end as an end for me as well, and promoting it in my own activities (as far as possible). Again, respecting her involves respecting her ends, so I should not get in the way of her getting her work done, and should see the importance she puts on getting her work done as giving me reason to set this as an end for myself, too, and to promote the achievement of it as much as possible. For example, I should not chat
incessantly to her while she’s trying to work, or try to pick a fight with her when she’s in the middle of formulating a complicated argument. Doing these things would fail to respect her end, because it would mean not taking that end seriously enough to not get in the way of her achievement of it.
In addition, since this is a good and important end for her, I should also see it as an end for me too. Her getting her work done is not just important to her, it should be important to me, too. Since her end gives her good reasons to do certain things (e.g., turn off the TV and put away the video games), it also gives me reasons to do certain things. For example, it gives me good reason to offer to cook dinner, or to make her coffee so that she doesn’t have to stop to do it herself. Of course, there are limits on how far I must make her ends my own (and on how much this requires me to do), but the idea is that the fact that this is an end for her at least gives me some reasons to do some things. That is, respecting her ends also means helping her to do what she wills to do94.
What does this have to do with autonomy? The idea in the background here is that my partner is a rational being who has the power to structure her life in certain ways that are important to her – she is autonomous. Because this is a big part of what it means to be a rational creature with the ability to set rational ends, respecting her rational nature largely involves seeing this autonomy as worthy of regard (this, then, is an example of how the nature of the value that respect recognizes dictates certain sorts of behaviors and attitudes). That is, I must see her autonomy (an integral part of her rational nature) as
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Of course, how much one is required to do to help people achieve their ends (that is, how far I must make their ends my own) will vary according to many different factors. For example, that a woman in China has certain ends will give me some reasons to do certain general things (i.e., not engage in practices that severely impoverish other nations, give to certain charities), but I will not have a reason to make her coffee while she works. This has partly to do with the fact that what I can do to help her achieve her ends is very different from what I can do to help my partner. It also has to do, for Kant, with the fact that the duties that
setting requirements on how I must view the ends that she sets, and how I must view her efforts to achieve them. I need to see her ends and her efforts to achieve them as things that legitimately limit the things I do, because these are important parts of her rational nature, and I must not unnecessarily impede or obstruct them. This then, is the way that the first requirement connects with autonomy – it articulates the fact that what other people choose to do with their lives is something I should not unnecessarily interfere with, because failing to do so is failing to respect the worth of their rational nature (which is largely seen as the autonomous capacity to set ends).
The way in which the second requirement connects with autonomy is similar to the first. The second requirement states that I should not set ends for myself that involve others in ways that they would not themselves will (that they would not autonomously choose for themselves). If I fail to meet this requirement, I must override other peoples’ autonomous choices in order to will (and achieve) the ends that I myself set. Thus, respecting the rational nature of others means, in part, respecting the choices that they would freely make. If what I intend to do seems to involve others in ways they would not choose to be involved, then I fail to respect what they would autonomously will in the situation. For example, if I intend to take someone hostage in order to exhort money from their loved ones, I am choosing to use them in achieving my ends (getting rich) in a way they would not will for themselves. That means that I see their ability to structure their own lives according to their own choices as irrelevant (or at least not of great importance) to what I can do. I am not respecting their rational nature (which is largely the ability to make autonomous choices) as limiting what I can choose to do. But this is
wrong, because what others would choose to do is relevant to how I can choose to involve them in the things that I choose to do.
One very important idea, then, is the idea that other peoples’ autonomous choices are not irrelevant to mine, and must be respected in the choices that I make. Part of the reason this is intuitively appealing is that we see other people as having definite plans for, and ideas about, how their lives should go, and the intuition is that we should not
unnecessarily get in the way of these plans and ideas. Not allowing other people to make autonomous choices means not paying proper regard to what is valuable in their ability to live their lives in this way – they are rational creatures that direct their lives in certain ways, and there is value in this that should be respected.95 Not respecting their autonomy in the ways discussed means not respecting what is integral to them as rational creatures. If we take a step back from the Kantian commitment to a very sophisticated form of rationality (i.e., the ability to autonomously legislate moral law), and look instead at the general idea expressed in the requirement to respect autonomy, an answer to the puzzle of this chapter begins to emerge. What has been deemed of utmost importance is that we properly regard the autonomous decision-making (and life-structuring) abilities of rational creatures. But is the sophisticated form of Kantian rationality required to
generate this sort of requirement?96 It seems not – for don’t non-human animals do precisely what human beings do in this regard, even if it is on a very basic level? It seems that non-human animals also have a way that they wish to structure their lives
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In the latter half of this chapter, I will discuss this further. The Kantian claim that the ability to legislate moral law is what is unconditionally valuable is complicated and will be given a closer look in the last section.
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Again, Kant’s argument for this will be given closer treatment later – for now, I am just trying to show that the general insights that this Kantian idea captures seem to extend beyond the bounds that Kantian
(they like to eat this or that food, they like to curl up in this or that chair, etc.), and this seems (at a low level) to be a matter of their choosing some things over others. The fact that they may not be able to give us reasons for their choices (or may in fact not really have clearly defined ones) does not matter to the fact that they do discriminate between the things they want to do, and the ones they don’t. For example, it is very clear to me that I have frustrated some sort of end that my cat has when I don’t let her sit on my lap while I am working. She wants to sit there, she initiates action to make that happen, and she is upset when I nudge her off my lap. Given these facts, I think that we can say that she has a certain low-level autonomy, and it seems (on the face of it), that there is no less reason to take her (equally weighty) autonomous choices seriously than to take my partner’s seriously.
It is true that my partner’s choices and those of my cat are disanalogous, but the disanalogy does not have to do with whether they are autonomous choices, but has to do with the complexity and weight of those choices. My cat is not going to care all that much, or for that long, that I nudge her off my lap, while my partner will care very much and for very long if I get in the way of her work. But my partner does make choices that are very like my cat’s sometimes (she likes to sit on the comfy sofa, and not the one with the broken arm), and these, like my cat’s, are no less autonomous for their simplicity.
The point I am trying to make will become clearer if we consider weightier ends that my cat might have – for example, continuing to live free of great pain. Torturing and killing my cat is at least in part wrong because my cat doesn’t want to be in excruciating pain and die – and this is not because pain is bad (even though it is), but because all of the things she does in her life indicate to me that she has preferences for not being in pain
and for continuing to live. This is what she seems to seek and to try to accomplish in her life, and frustrating these ends of hers seems to be wrong in a way that is analogous to the reason it is wrong to do the same thing to a human being. I am failing to see the ends she sets for herself (where her preferences are loosely defined as ends) as giving me any reason to limit my actions involving her. The cases are analogous, and it seems that autonomy considerations, when divorced from the more rigorous conception of rational autonomy that Kant endorses, captures intuitions we have about why it might be wrong to perform actions involving my cat. And it captures these intuitions in a way that is
analogous to the way those intuitions get captured in the human case.97
This expanded notion of autonomy gives us the beginning of a new account of the value that respect recognizes – since respect is so closely tied to autonomy, if we
understand autonomy in the liberal way I have described, we get a more liberal account of the scope of respect. If autonomy considerations are not only present when people are involved, but when other animals are involved, then the scope of respect widens too. And this expansion also points to a different underlying value for us to recognize through the attitude of respect – it was assumed that autonomy was a consideration when those who were capable of it (i.e., those who had a specific kind of rationality) were involved. With our expanded idea of autonomy, the same holds true – it is a consideration when those who are capable of it are involved. But this no longer includes only those who have Kantian rationality – it now includes other sorts of creatures. And where Kant thought a certain kind of rationality was requisite for autonomy, I posit that something different is
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Of course, many Kantians (and non-Kantians as well) will argue that what I have described in the case of my cat is not really autonomy, but some sort of basic preference or desire structure. It may be argued that calling this autonomy is stretching the notion too far, or even question-begging. What I am merely trying to illustrate at this point is that the sorts of considerations about how we are to treat human beings are not
requisite, which thus replaces Kantian rationality as the value that respect recognizes. I will identify this “something different” with a phrase I borrowed from Tom Regan – “being the subject of a life”. For it seems that the bare minimum required for our expanded notion of autonomy is this quality – being a subject in the world, being a creature that has a point of view in the world and directs itself in the world from that subjective point of view.