Any view on autonomy—and certainly Plato’s—assumes that it is not merely the ability to give oneself whatever rule one desires. If one is to have autonomy, one needs to be properly structured and have the parts of the soul in order. Otherwise, just as Heraclitus says in B117, “a man when drunk is led by a boy, stumbling and not knowing where he goes, since his soul is moist.” This volume, edited by Pettersson and Remes, thus brings together articles that go beyond the notion of autonomy, engaging the Idea of the Good or the notion of desire.
In the first chapter, Amber D. Carpenter sets up the bases for the discussion. She connects self-rule and self-mastery with an epistemic quality of being autologizomenos, able to give accounts for oneself. The process of acquiring knowledge sets us free because it structures the soul. The chapter makes it clear that the origination of a principle of action from the self does not show whether the person is autonomous or not. A prisoner in Plato’s cave is neither free, nor autonomous, regardless of whether he decides the rules according to which he acts within the cave. To be autonomous, one must come out of the cave and understand the Good, which structures one’s soul. This means that the Good is the source of the rules one gives oneself. As Carpenter writes, “If someone is a knower their thoughts are their own – one can give and defend explanatory accounts oneself, because one has in fact made episteme authoritative in one’s soul; but the value in those thoughts comes from their being bound by the norms of knowing” (42).
The dialogue between internal and external factors in decision-making and autonomy is developed in the following chapters. The authors focus on self-governance in the context of a tripartite soul, which determines competitive desires. While Plato believes that self-governance is achieved when all the parts of the soul function harmoniously by following reason, as Nicholas D. Smith emphasizes, this also means that the agent of choice is external: the Idea of the Good, the knowledge of which determines reason to act properly. Thus, we get to a position where self-rule is ideal, but one can achieve self-rule only after appropriating knowledge. To become autonomous requires, paradoxically, to first place oneself in the hands of others and receive education in the Good. Franco V. Trivigno’s chapter explores this situation from two perspectives. First, he discusses how the agent is nurtured toward self-rule by an educational program within an ideal city, as in the Republic. Second, he shows how the agent engages in philosophical self-improvement within a non-ideal city, as in the Hippias Major.
In an ideal system, an individual is guided toward autonomy by the educational system of the city. Knowledge gives people the freedom to choose according to rationality. Thus, “a set educational program starts citizens on their rational journey with the right ethical beliefs and dispositions already in place.” In non-ideal conditions, “the agent must figure everything out for themselves within a culture that provides at best contradictory and at worst false ethical beliefs” (88).
Trivigno discusses the role of dialectic, including its danger if it is practised too early. This danger is present in the ideal conditions, because guardians would need to attempt to refute the beliefs on which they were raised, but dialectic is particularly dangerous under non-ideal conditions: the guardians can turn from being law-abiding to being lawless—perhaps the same danger facing Socrates in the Crito, where he is encouraged to run from prison.
The question of whether Socrates should run from prison appears in Thomas Lott’s chapter: “Socrates and Conflicting Epistemic Requirements: Autonomy and Authority.” Lott proposes a consistent account of how Autonomy and Authority can regulate the epistemic behavior of non-experts. His proposal is that Socrates searches for knowledge in what ought to be done here and now: should Socrates run away from prison, for example? When deliberation is needed, Socrates invokes Authority. When, however, he wants to acquire a holistic view of the subject matter, when he tries to acquire expertise, he then emphasizes Autonomy.
As Lott notices, the problem with this account is that Socrates seems to switch from one aim to the other within a conversation. I wonder, though, whether the explanation is much simpler than that: one should always listen to the expert, Socrates may say, and thus always rely upon Authority. But since no one has proved that we have any experts in the domain of virtue and since we have no criteria by which we can recognize virtue-experts (Socrates shows that tragedians and sophists, while widely praised as such, have not proven themselves to be virtue-experts), the best approach is to rely on Autonomy. Nevertheless, Autonomy is not perfect, because while autonomous we rely on someone who clearly is not an expert: the self.
Marina Berzins McCoy explores the limits of autonomy in the context of our dependence on others. Often, Socrates is praised for being able to depend on himself alone for rational thought. McCoy, though, points out that rational thought does not take place in solitude only, but also, and primarily, in society. She claims that a philosopher “must be willing to be vulnerable to others in the process of developing reasons and acting in accordance with reason” (152) and that Plato’s Socrates “repeatedly presents reason as social in nature” (153).
Her approach seems to focus on rationality as the power of expressing one’s own ideas. If autonomy relates to one’s own ideas and our desire to make them better, then indeed it is fully connected with vulnerability. But I think Socrates speaks of a different autonomy. Individually owned ideas are not necessarily the expression of a rationality that is above passions. If my thoughts are mine alone, then I may have no connection with the source of truth, and in this case I may still fool myself into believing I am autonomous while being far from it.
Perhaps shame, praise, and blame are indeed important for the concept of autonomy, as McCoy affirms, but rather in an indirect fashion. Due to them, we can progress toward the state of being autonomous. If we did not have them, we may remain in a non-autonomous state while believing we are autonomous. McCoy, though, makes the stronger claim, that they are part of autonomy.
McCoy associates the state of autonomy with producing one’s own ideas. She discusses how Socrates finds the need to “keep one’s own ideas open to change as significant” (156). But isn’t being able to realize that your ideas are worth nothing the state of autonomy? The state of a philosopher? Consider, for example, the situation in which someone shows you that your ideas are wrong. If you are like Socrates’ interlocutors, you may experience shame, but this is primarily because you put your trust in your ideas, and not in the truth. Your autonomy is false because it has you as agent. Instead, if you are genuinely autonomous, that is, having your eyes fixed on truth, you may experience joy instead of shame, because having your own ideas checked and shown to be wrong brought you closer to truth. This is why I would rather say that shame’s connection with autonomy is that it shows when autonomy is understood falsely as the law given by oneself.
I think it is true that “Socrates’ view of reason […] seems to be more expansive than one of an autonomous agent who reasons alone, or even of an agent who needs others so that he can later know on his own” (161). However, this does not mean that being autonomous is the state in which you produce ideas which are then refuted by others, leading perhaps to shame. Being autonomous is being sufficiently vulnerable to own that your ideas are worth nothing prior even to being shown by others that this is so. For this, you still do not need others, because you reach this state prior to being shown by them that you are wrong, but you rejoice in them for they give you plenty of occasions to sharpen your ideas against theirs. In fact, this is in full agreement with McCoy’s characterization of Socrates: he is a “person who comfortably lives with discomfort, knowing that this kind of proper sense of himself is precisely what allows for the pleasures of seeking the truth” (166). Perhaps paradoxically, I would call this the autonomous state par excellence.
The last chapter, Andy German’s “The Natural Preconditions of Political Freedom,” is an intellectual delight on freedom and nature that begins with considerations about the philosophy of Nietzsche. German criticizes modernity for conceptualizing consciousness as separate from nature. Instead, he presents a view of the Good that allows Plato to connect the power of knowledge, provided by the Good, with an effort for developing harmony.
I think German’s account encounters problems because he claims that the Good is Perfection-as-such. If that were the case, then I do not see how the Form of the Good is “beyond being.” While the einai and ousia of each thing are present as a result of the Good, there are different ways of understanding this than claiming that the Good is Perfection-as-such. Applying this further to a city, German writes that “what the philosopher is trying to do in imitating the Good is enable the activity of the Good—the power of making something fully determinate—to exhibit itself in the way the good of the city or the good of the soul become what they most properly are—distinct, unified, stable” (252).
While the account is tempting, I propose that its structure is even more beneficial if we understood the Good as what Lloyd P. Gerson calls in his Plato’s Moral Realism integrative unity. The Good would thus not only make each thing perfect in itself, but it would provide for the perfect working together of each thing with others within a cosmos. This would also allow the state to be conceived as a living organism, and not as a fixed, lifeless body in which particular developments can harm the integrity of the whole. In fact, this view is more consistent with German’s own conclusion, that “Plato does not operate with a simple dichotomy between nature and free self-creation” (253). Human beings go toward perfection, but this is within a universe that is alive and determinate at the same time, just as, perhaps, the structure of DNA.
To be sure, autonomy is a difficult notion that requires a comprehensive understanding of what we mean by motivation, knowledge, and the Good, and this volume provides great contributions in the field.
Authors and Titles
Introduction, Pauliina Remes, Olof Pettersson
Part I – Self-Determination: From Legislation to Giving Rational Accounts
- Accounts and Accountability: The Importance of Being Autologizomenos (Amber D. Carpenter)
Part II – Motivational Challenges to Self-Rule
- Plato’s Problems with Aversion (Nicholas D. Smith)
- A Complex Model of Action: What Is Ruling? (Oda E. W. Tvedt)
Part III – Internal and External Authorities
- Dialectic and Rational Agency: Establishing Self-Rule in the Republic and Hippias Major (Franco V. Trivigno)
- Socrates and Conflicting Epistemic Requirements: Autonomy and Authority (Toomas Lott)
- Awakening Autonomy: Olympiodorus’ Commentary on Plato’s Gorgias (James M. Ambury)
Part IV – The Limits of Autonomy and Self-Rule
- Vulnerability, Dialogue, and the Limits of Autonomy (Marina Berzins McCoy)
- Plato, Dialogue, and Epistemic Autonomy (Olof Pettersson)
Part V – Reconciling Between Freedom, External Authority, and Nature
- Self-Government and Law in the Crito and the Statesman (Charlotta Weigelt)
- Freedom, Willing Servitude, and the Limits to Autonomy in Plato’s Laws (Susan Sauvé Meyer)
- The Natural Preconditions of Political Freedom (Andy German)