A
while ago, I tried to make a distinction between liberty and
autonomy. Both are related to the idea and ideal of rights. Both
have to do with being able to do what one wants to do whether because
of desires, obligations, associations, physiological needs and/or
physiological proclivities. Liberty refers to the absence of power
over one's life. The power can be legitimate or illegitimate.
Autonomy refers to one's ability to choose what one's course of
action will be. The main difference is that liberty, along with
referring to human freedom, can describe the level of freedom of any
organism, where- as in the case of autonomy, only humans can make
life-directing decisions. A pet dog that escapes his/her home can be
said to have won liberty, if not safety. But only humans can
meaningfully choose and, therefore, only they can enjoy autonomy. Of
course, autonomy can be restricted, delayed, or deprived. But if we,
at all, can see ourselves seeking, through our choices, those
conditions that determine the quality of our lives and how innate
that desire is, then we can understand how sad, or even depressing,
the deprivation of that ability can be. We can then visualize or
feel that we are born with a right to be autonomous – to decide in
which ways we can attain our desires. The sense we derive from this
state of affairs is that we have a natural right to be autonomous.
The natural reactive state of being deprived of what we want is
frustration; the natural reactive state of being deprived of the
ability to decide what we should do in order to get what we want is
hopelessness. In either case, the lack of autonomy leads to a level
of discontent.
As
a matter of fact, an issue over autonomy arises only when our
autonomy, through no action or choice of our own, is limited. So how
does this happen? Richard Dagger1
offers understandable language by which to analyze this area of
concern. He first distinguishes between two sorts of rights:
special and general rights. General rights are rights we all have
because they either enhance or protect our autonomy. For example, we
all have the right to participate in economic activity – to be able
to work, to exchange for goods and services, to save for future
eventualities, and so on – because without this right we would
suffer from want for the things that make life possible and
meaningful. Hence, in its most basic sense, our autonomy will
neither be enhanced nor protected without this general right. On the
other hand, special rights are those rights we acquire through
agreements with others as when we enter a contractual relation.
Here, though, we usually are called upon to relinquish some autonomy
or liberty in exchange for the autonomy or liberty we are seeking in
the agreement. The agreement is an exchange. General rights are
held against all others while special rights are against a specific
other party(ies) – that is, the other party(ies) identified in the
agreement. Some rights are easily categorized as being either
general or special. Some are not. The example I give above
illustrates the type that is not so easily categorized: the right to
work might be general, but in a particular case, work is attained by
an arrangement with another party.
Dagger
goes on to provide a four question test by which to determine what
type of right a particular putative right2
is. By so doing, he gives us a set of concerns deserving of our
consideration and he provides questions a civics teacher might
introduce in his or her lessons.
Before
sharing the test he devised, let me address why determining what type
of right a particular putative right is is important. I feel the
essence of the concern has to do with the definitional distinction I
laid out above. General rights are not rights we accept by choice;
they are simply part of the legal-constitutional arrangement in which
we find ourselves or is proposed by some political faction. Special
rights, on the other hand, are rights we choose to acquire or
relinquish through an exchange with others. Even though part of the
arrangement usually calls on us to surrender some autonomy, the fact
that we choose to be a party to such an agreement is an
expression of our autonomy. And all this reflects the questions on
Dagger's list: Does the right protect an individual's autonomy?
Does the right promote an individual's autonomy? Does the right
infringe or violate the rights of others? And can the right be
realized? By analyzing the state of a given proposed right, as
reflected by the answers to these questions, we discover the content
of that “right” and better define what it is.
For
example, by answering the question does the right promote an
individual's autonomy, we can analyze the issue of whether citizens
have a right to health care regardless of whether they can afford
either the care or the related insurance coverage. On the one hand,
we can readily see that illness can seriously interfere with a
person's autonomy. On the other hand, the taxes that are needed to
fund universal health care will also restrain people's autonomy. Of
course, this leads to calculations and meaningful classroom
discussions. It also makes related information more functional to
students who might be concerned with their own autonomy. That's just
another way of saying that the use of Dagger's questions assists
teachers in making their resulting lessons more relevant.
1Dagger,
R. (1997). Civic virtue: Rights, citizenship, and republican
liberalism. New York, NY:
Oxford.
2Putative
right is a right someone claims to exist.
No comments:
Post a Comment