Difference between autonomous will and heteronomous will in deontology
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Autonomy and Heteronomy
No one before Kant had imported the concept of “autonomy” into ethics. It had always been a strictly political term, referring to a nation or people that is self-governing, or free from colonization or conquest. But at the end of the paragraph that begins with the statement quoted above (Kant 1997, 40/4:432), Kant adapted the oqnce strictly political term to refer to individual persons. He there also introduced autonomy’s antonym into ethics: “heteronomy.”
Heteronomy in the history of ethics. It is clear from the context where he introduced the terms “autonomy” and “heteronomy” that Kant wanted to emphasize, in a dramatic way, the contrast between his approach to ethics and all that had gone before. One way he did this was to distinguish between hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives . Principles of duty had always been presented as hypothetical imperatives, he claimed. But it is clear, or at least it was to him, that moral principles can be adequately expressed only by categorical imperatives. The difference is that, in principles of the first type, we would be told how to act in order to achieve some end. Yet if we did not care about the end presented by the principle, it would not give us any reason to do what it commands. For example, a hypothetical moral imperative might be: “Thou shalt not commit adultery, in order to be pleasing to God, and avoid punishment in a future life.” But if you do not believe in God, or in a future life, then the imperative does not give you any reason not to commit adultery. A categorical imperative, by contrast, would say simply that adultery is wrong, or that you ought not commit adultery. It would not offer any future condition to be realized by your obedience as the reason why you should obey. Ethical principles had been conceived historically as hypothetical imperatives, Kant said. What he suggested instead is essentially that the commands of morality are given categorically by each rational agent to him- or herself; and therein lies the reason for obeying this. This is the difference between the heteronomy of the moral imperatives found in the history of ethics leading up to Kant, and the autonomy implied by the categorical moral imperative as Kant introduced it (see Schneewind, 1998).
No one before Kant had imported the concept of “autonomy” into ethics. It had always been a strictly political term, referring to a nation or people that is self-governing, or free from colonization or conquest. But at the end of the paragraph that begins with the statement quoted above (Kant 1997, 40/4:432), Kant adapted the oqnce strictly political term to refer to individual persons. He there also introduced autonomy’s antonym into ethics: “heteronomy.”
Heteronomy in the history of ethics. It is clear from the context where he introduced the terms “autonomy” and “heteronomy” that Kant wanted to emphasize, in a dramatic way, the contrast between his approach to ethics and all that had gone before. One way he did this was to distinguish between hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives . Principles of duty had always been presented as hypothetical imperatives, he claimed. But it is clear, or at least it was to him, that moral principles can be adequately expressed only by categorical imperatives. The difference is that, in principles of the first type, we would be told how to act in order to achieve some end. Yet if we did not care about the end presented by the principle, it would not give us any reason to do what it commands. For example, a hypothetical moral imperative might be: “Thou shalt not commit adultery, in order to be pleasing to God, and avoid punishment in a future life.” But if you do not believe in God, or in a future life, then the imperative does not give you any reason not to commit adultery. A categorical imperative, by contrast, would say simply that adultery is wrong, or that you ought not commit adultery. It would not offer any future condition to be realized by your obedience as the reason why you should obey. Ethical principles had been conceived historically as hypothetical imperatives, Kant said. What he suggested instead is essentially that the commands of morality are given categorically by each rational agent to him- or herself; and therein lies the reason for obeying this. This is the difference between the heteronomy of the moral imperatives found in the history of ethics leading up to Kant, and the autonomy implied by the categorical moral imperative as Kant introduced it (see Schneewind, 1998).
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