I was really fascinated by the idea that autonomy discourse, specifically concerning relational approaches, cannot be disentangled from social factors, such as oppressive norms and external perspectives on an individual’s decision-making processes. The following passages resonated with me as I was reading:
“What follows from a relational Self is that our personal autonomy can only be developed within a society… we can explore ways that social ties can be a positive or negative resource for the agent in all their endeavours - that is, how social factors contribute to an individual’s autonomy” (4).
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This passage highlights for me the foundations of relational autonomy theorizing, such that human beings are inherently social and are thus inseparable from the contexts that they inhabit. I found it interesting that societal factors can be supplemental or detrimental to a person’s autonomy, and that there is so much debate around whether an individual’s psychology or their “social relationships, norms, practices, and institutions” constitute their autonomy. The idea of the Self as relational has always been intriguing to me, and the question of how social processes and systems of oppression shape an individual’s psychosocial development is something I enjoy exploring in the context of my psychology research.
“Cécile Laborde has pointed out how a perfectionist commitment to autonomy can be exclusionary for those who engage in practices singled out as incompatible with autonomy… The message here is that we ought to be careful not to espouse an idealized relationality at the cost of recognizing the possibility of autonomy for agents who find themselves within imperfect social relations” (8).
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The idea of equipping cultural sensibility in debates surrounding autonomy appealed to me, especially within the context of this class. I’m almost certain that we all have preconceived notions of what is compatible or incompatible with autonomy. If most of us in the class come from individualistic cultural backgrounds, e.g., the U.S., we might be inclined to map our views of autonomy onto other societies that define autonomy differently, i.e., collectivistic cultures like Korea or South American nations.
“An inclusive, multidimensional way of autonomy theorizing might help us track the rich layers of autonomy without implicitly reducing the concept of autonomy to just one idea, description, or value… Her multifaceted view treats autonomy as a complex concept, on which people can be autonomous to varying degrees, perhaps by meeting one or more dimensions of autonomy without necessarily satisfying all of the dimensions at once” (9).
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This perspective on autonomy was precisely how I dealt with the difficulties of distinguishing between different schools of thought within the discourse, e.g., procedural vs. substantive, internalist vs. externalist. I thought to myself, “Is autonomy that simple?” and “Can autonomy be so strictly defined by these philosophical approaches when there are so many factors to be considered?” I believe that thinking of one’s agency as multidimensional, though it’s definitely less structured and straightforward, can leave more room for the individual to elaborately evaluate all the components influencing their framework(s) of autonomy.