As the community of philosophers worldwide mourns the recent passing of Professor Jerome Borges Schneewind, it now falls to the current generation of philosophers to reflect on the great gains, implications, and challenges of what he called the modern “invention of autonomy.” This “invention” is an undeniable revolutionary advance in ethical relations. At the same time, contemporary challenges—such as those brought about by our post-truth era and the advancements in AI technology—pose the question of whether the “invention” of autonomy is something comparable to an upgrade applicable to the human moral character.
As Schneewind points out, Kant took the term “autonomy” from the political thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There, it referred to states as self-governing entities. Kant forces the limits of the term, traditionally understood to characterize the functioning of an artificial entity (which, for instance, Hobbes called the Leviathan) to extend its applicability to the moral functioning of the human agent in society. With this in mind, should we be tempted to take the autonomous functioning of the human agent as just a more complex process, but in essence similar to the autonomous functioning of an artificial entity? Of course, we are reminded by specialists in the ethics of technology and bioethics that there is a difference between Person Autonomy and Machine Autonomy. Nonetheless, contemporary fears regarding the “existential threat” that autonomous AI poses to humanity seem to be veering towards assimilating the two types of autonomy. In our context, what I see as more worrisome even than the (potential) threat itself posed by Machine Autonomy is the general public’s overlooking of the aspect of the human agent becoming autonomous.
The riddle of autonomy may be spelled out in this simple way: do we become autonomous by behaving, or functioning as if we are morally autonomous already, or rather by being fully aware of our heteronomy, and take it as a transitional phase in the process of becoming autonomous moral agents?
In his critique of Kant, Žižek argues that submission to moral law resembles the movement on a Möbius strip, where the progress on the side of form makes the moral agent run into content and vice versa. This may be read as a moral behavior that is only apparently autonomous, but for the sake of the internalization of autonomy. Žižek’s critique may seem irrelevant from the point of social morality since, as far as the stability of society is concerned, it does not matter too much if someone functions as-if-autonomously, without necessarily being/becoming morally autonomous. If this is the case, then perhaps the (modern) political aspect of autonomy comes back into play, within the horizon of a group of people merely striving to find ways to co-exist, without necessarily having to help each other become truly autonomous.
Traditional and modern approaches to human morality contain their own answers to the riddle of autonomy, but it seems to me that no moral system may abandon the notion that moral life involves an effort of self-disciplining. This is irrespective of the source normatively imposing this discipline, which can either be internal or external to the moral agent/subject. The difference between the promises of these moral systems and the promise of the modern state lies in the fact that the latter has had the capacity for cultivating an ethos of self-disciplining on a much greater scale than any moral community. This is due to the state’s historical hegemony on the means of educating its citizens and ensuring that a collective discipline is appropriated at the level of a national identity. Of course, education cannot be reduced to training. Nonetheless, as long as citizens, as well as “aliens” living in a certain country, are expected to “function” in a certain way, by adjusting their behavior to the social and political expectations and the values largely taught by the educational system of that country, the thin line separating education and training may become blurred.
Unfortunately, the error of the modern state has been comparable to the “sin” of many pre-modern religious systems of thought, in that it conflated the two aspects contained in the riddle of autonomy: embrace the rules of conduct imposed by your state authority, while considering them the fruit of your own attachment to the values inherent in your national identity. In other words, the message of the modern nation-state is that these are your rules, as the rules on which you have legislated in tandem with your fellow nationals: the state is actually at your service, just to make sure that you are observing these moral principles incorporated in the rules of social behavior, and that you are teaching them to your children correctly. The complications stemming from this conflation did not take long to appear, especially when the cultivation of the word of self-discipline has often been accomplished by the sword and ideological teaching. The phenomena of recent history, such as ethnic cleansing, colonialism, culture wars, the degrading of political participation in the elections game focused on obtaining the highest number of votes, the state’s narrow understanding of the “integration” of newcomers as “assimilation,” nationalistic and populist temptations, and the like, point towards the weakness of the political promise, at least in its modern version, to solve the riddle of the autonomy of the human being as a moral agent.
The modern nation-state favored discipline and punishment as means of forwarding the political promise of forging Person Autonomy through the means of a functionalistic autonomy of the machine. Nonetheless, as the nation-state did not possess a perfectly functional algorithm ensuring the Machine Autonomy of its subjects, the best it could do was to bring into play the age-old natural fear, so as to trigger subjects’ strict observance of the behavioral algorithms imposed by credos, canons, castes, institutions, professions, regimes, and the like. However, there is more to fear than its mere instrumentalization to consolidate (self)disciplining. Fearing is intrinsically connected with another phenomenon that is as natural as itself: daring. As the formula mysterium tremendum et fascinans shows, the negative drive of humans to step back while entering in contact with any mysterious event is only temporary, soon to be met with the counter reaction to be fascinated not only negatively, but also positively by the unknown. Already the archaic human beings will not only fear the unknown (taken first as a potential source of injury), but would soon thereafter dare to make contact with what fascinates them, to know, understand, and finally appropriate it. This intrinsic relationship between fearing and daring has laid the foundations for cultural and scientific evolutions throughout human history. Ignoring, deliberately marginalizing, and even attempting to eradicate the dimension of human daring seems to have been one of the greatest historical deficiencies not only of traditional religions and systems of thought, but also of the modern nation state.
And still, the liberal tradition, illuminated by the ideals of the Enlightenment, does offer more space for a postmodern conceptualization of daring as an incentive towards citizen advancement in the direction of moral autonomy. To illustrate this opening of the liberal state for offering more visibility to its citizens’ daring to scrutinize the moral character of political life and institutions, I will use a world-famous catchphrase, or more precisely a “catphrase”: Fear me, if you dare! I have had the opportunity to reflect on these words of wisdom while being invited by my six-year-old daughter to watch with her, over and over, one of her favorite computer-animated movies, Puss in Boots: the Last Wish (the image of this essay being one of my daughter’s drawings at the time she watched this movie in cinema). After all, who may be better advised to characterize the postmodern political attitude of the liberal state, if not Puss in Boots, that furry outcast, the hero, the inspiration for children’s own imaginative prospecting into self-disciplining, and the legend that will never di—?
What might these apparently nonsensical words mean if applied to the attitude of the liberal state towards its citizens? First of all, the “dare” content of this catchphrase may be read as an echo of another saying, which was nevertheless pronounced in a religious context: Love, and do what you will. While rivers of ink have flown to challenge, criticize, or defend Augustine’s controversial formula, juxtaposing it alongside Fear me, if you dare! may have the effect of bringing attention to the “dare” dimension which did not pass unnoticed by Augustine. However, the autonomy of the “do what you will” would subsequently be buried in Augustine’s and the modern political theorists’ more urgent preoccupations of offering citizens/subjects a more expedient instrument for self- and collective discipline, in other words a formal/political discipline. Luckily for the inhabitants of some countries, in today’s postmodern times, the do what you will and the if you dare aspects of human conduct are less and less taken by the liberal state as the main source of political instability. In fact, this seems to be the most obvious difference between liberal democracy and other forms of state rule which still remain firmly anchored in the modern model of authoritarian political thought, and sometimes even in the model of premodern and theocratic systems.
Make no mistake, the liberal state is still relying on fear as its modern instrument of disciplining subjects, although it does seem to admit the intricate connection between fear and daring. The liberal orientation of the state allows for its citizens to dare the state to adjust its institutions, practices, and values according to broader concepts of social justice and inclusiveness, but at the same time the very same liberal state seems quite reluctant to give up its awe-inspiring face. So, if you dare me, you might as well do it without losing your fear for me, otherwise I will crush you like an ant! After all, the very liberalization and democratization of the state has largely been an outcome of the incessant daring, over generations, by heroes (real, romanticized, or fully imaginary), by revolutionary ideas and actions and by previously unimaginable acts of sacrifice on the part of individuals and groups who did what they willed to dare the unjust system, without advocating anarchy.
These remarkable people have been in fact only iconic illustrations of the mostly invisible efforts of a broader number of individuals who, throughout history, took heart and overcame their “world,” or the system that had put in place discriminatory practices. They were not moved by the pragmatic approach that took an action to be truly effective only if it was publicized. Perhaps our globalized world is in desperate need to learn more stories of people who dared to speak about their truth and show truth to power in full modesty, without much publicity, and without any ambition to gain followers. Perhaps this is what it means to have reached the level of moral autonomy, to act truthfully to oneself, to others and to the system, without any pretension of being right, without any ambition to show a model of behavior, and even less to impose it on others. For those of us who have not reached that level of autonomy, it remains to accept that a degree of heteronomy needs to be taken into consideration in the process of self-disciplining, especially when we are engaged in following exemplary conducts.
Current trends in social media, especially following someone, may be read as attitudes provisionally embracing heteronomy as a way to consolidate one’s own critical sense of the social processes at work in a certain context, perhaps ultimately culminating in the formulation of an autonomous moral judgment. Of course, post-truth complicates this picture, determining social media to be, in many cases, a source of manipulation of opinion rather than contributing to the formation of emancipated moral beings. Our digitally enhanced world has seen an ever-increasing number of people wishing to pose as experts and gain as many followers as possible for the sake of pragmatic goals (e.g. for having a source of revenue, for fame, or at least for the feeling that their lives are meaningful). Not that the content they produce cannot be used by their followers in creative ways as part of their own self-disciplining efforts towards reaching the morally autonomous level. Of course it can! Still, disconnection from the immediate practical goals of the individual may make the very attitude of speaking or showing truth to power more daring. This means that their moral claim may be less prone to manipulation and somehow disconnected not only from their immediate interests, but also even from the specific ethos of their own upbringing.
The step forward in the direction of a postmodern engagement with “the political” may be understood in the sense of daring the state, and, by extension any other system, to show either the ugliness of their power, or the willingness to become open to public scrutiny and accept reform. Our increasingly culturally diverse societies have a profound need to develop transnational and trans-community values to prevent our identities from forming rigid crusts around our autonomy-in-the-making. Without embracing premodern forms of discipline, which placed community interests over an individual life well lived, and without slipping into the useful idiotism of those serving the interests of modern-type group- or nation-centered powers, postmodern forms of self-disciplining may need to open themselves to the possibility that moral autonomy may be something to be constructed in a kind of dependence of otherness, which can be discovered in togetherness.
In writing this post, I have vaguely contemplated the possibility of coining this perspective -as “the ethics of daring” or something like it. I now explicitly refrain from this, and I am quite happy that the term “dare” itself resists being shaped as just another “-ism.” This would at most have increased the readers’ disorientation, in the already vast terminology of the “discipline” of ethics. What matters, more than having established a theory of “daring,” is its ubiquity in every culture, even though, in the collective imaginary, it has been traditionally disconnected from the capacities of the average individual, and rather seen as the prerogative of gods, legendary characters and extraordinary individuals. One of the greatest virtues of “daring” is that, although many times expressed in simplicity and humbleness, it makes blunt power powerless. Daring shocks, or interrupts the expectation of those in power that nobody will stand tall and contest the imposed order, regime, the way things are. This interruption, made possible by dare, is not something that can be exhaustively defined as “dissent,” or “defiance,” which can only be conceived in tandem with, and reactions to a pressing agency. While encompassing these kinds of contesting attitudes, daring is in itself a positive and constructive dimension, which may potentially express itself even in the absence of any pressure, oppression or threat. So, if you dare, are you doing it in disconnection from any immediate or foreseeable individual interest? Is daring a manifestation of autonomy avant-la-lettre, that is a fully (and unpredictable) selfless gesture of profoundly selfish moral agents?
If you have been touched in any way by this editorial, and if you have also taken the time to read the editorials of my predecessors in the Ethical Dilemmas in Public Philosophy series, please contact me and suggest a topic for a post. Let’s dare to start a conversation involving either theoretical reflections, or case studies. Your post might be just the kind of constructive contribution which our community of philosophers worldwide expects to take a glance at on their smart screens while doing their not-so-smart everyday routines.
