Autonomy. Beate Roessler

without necessarily becoming skeptical of her choice.⁴⁵

We have seen that there are many different possible ways to deal with ambivalences. We can integrate, tolerate, accept, or compartmentalize them. We can reconcile them with each other, make compromises, or try to switch between identities. These are all possible strategies for coping reasonably with ambivalences, and they are more realistic and more suitable for daily life than strategies of externalization. Autonomy, then, can straightforwardly be understood as reasonably and adequately coping with ambivalences, with the irreconcilability and contingency of desires and possibilities, with the complexity of the question of how we want to live. Of course, we are not always ambivalent, nor are we ambivalent in every area of our lives. But when and where we are, this does not make us irrational or heteronomous. Calmly (like Frank Bascombe) coming to terms with ambivalent conflicts, emotions, decisions, finitude – that is, coming to terms with ourselves – thus clearly appears to be an expression of autonomy. These ambivalences do not stand in the way of a self-determined, well-lived life.

Notes

      1  1 Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (New York: HarperCollins, 1996 [1971]), 94.

      2  2 Harry Frankfurt, “The Faintest Passion,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 66(3) (1992), 5‒16 (9).

      3  3 Cf. Paul Benson, “Taking Ownership: Authority and Voice in Autonomous Agency,” in John Christman and Joel Anderson (eds), Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 101‒26; Marina Oshana, “Autonomy and Self-Identity,” in ibid., 77‒100; and Cheshire Calhoun, “Standing for Something,” Journal of Philosophy 92 (1995): 235‒60.

      4  4 Marya Schechtman, “Making Ourselves Whole: Wholeheartedness, Narrative, and Agency,” Ethical Perspectives 21 (2014): 175‒98 (180).

      5  5 Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, “A Plea for Ambivalence,” in Peter Goldie (ed.), The Philosophy of Emotion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 425‒44; Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, “Akrasia and Conflict,” Inquiry 23 (1980): 193‒212; Steve Harrist, “A Phenomenological Investigation of the Experience of Ambivalence,” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 37 (2006): 85‒114. See also Richard Wollheim, The Thread of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 174‒82; Harry Frankfurt, “The Faintest Passion”; and “Identification and Wholeheartedness,” The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 159‒76. I return to the difference between practical and theoretical conflicts in greater detail below.

      6  6 Sigmund Freud, “The Dynamics of Transference,” in James Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XII (1911‒1913): The Case of Schreber, Papers on Techniques and Other Works (London: The Hogarth Press, 1958), 97‒108 (105f.).

      7  7 Lear refers to the “Rat Man” as Mr R in order “[t]o give him the respect he deserves.” See Jonathan Lear, Freud (New York: Routledge, 2005), 12. Cf. Sigmund Freud, “Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis,” in James Strachey (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. X (1909): Two Case Histories (‘Little Hans’ and the ‘Rat Man’) (London: The Hogarth Press, 1955), 151‒318; and Jonathan Lear, “Avowal and Unfreedom,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69(2) (2004): 448‒54: “Freud teaches us that emotional ambivalence lies at the heart of the human condition” (450).

      8  8 The choice between poet and farmer can be found in Wollheim, The Thread of Life, 178; between clarinetist and lawyer in Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 332.

      9  9 J. S. Swindell, “Ambivalence,” Philosophical Explorations 13 (2010): 23‒34.

      10 10 Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 77‒150, (97‒100). Williams rightly sees this example as demonstrating that utilitarianism cannot adequately describe the relationship between a person and their projects or intentions, and thus cannot understand integrity (cf. ibid., 100).

      11 11 As a reminder: with respect to terminology, as explained in the introduction, I employ throughout the distinction between ethical and moral theories or problems used by authors such as Bernard Williams and Jürgen Habermas, and which has since become commonplace. Ethics is here understood as the comprehensive theory of the good life, morality as the theory of our obligations toward others. Hence there can also be conflicts between the two.

      12 12 Bernard Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 22f.; “Ethical Consistency,” in Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 166‒86.

      13 13 The question of how to describe this difference surely depends on the underlying moral theory, i.e. on whether one is arguing from a utilitarian, Kantian, or virtue ethics perspective.

      14 14 Cf. David Svolba, “Swindell, Frankfurt, and Ambivalence,” Philosophical Explorations 14 (2011): 219‒25.

      15 15 Cf. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, “Akrasia and Conflict,” Inquiry 23 (1980): 193‒212; as well as Richard Moran, “Frankfurt on Identification: Ambiguities of Activity in Mental Life,” in Sarah Buss and Lee Overton (eds), Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 189‒217 (190‒2).

      16 16 Here Calhoun draws on the example of María Lugones. Cf. Calhoun, “Standing for Something.”

      17 17 Rorty, “A Plea for Ambivalence,” 434. Cf. Swindell, “Ambivalence.”

      18 18 Cf. Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” The Importance of What We Care About, 11‒25, where he develops his concept of freedom of the will and autonomy; “Autonomy, Necessity, and Love,” Necessity, Volition, and Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 129‒41.

      19 19 Harry Frankfurt, “Reply to J. David Velleman,” in Buss and Overton (eds), Contours of Agency, 124‒8 (126). On the arguments that follow, see especially Frankfurt’s essays “The Faintest Passion”; and “Identification and Externality” in The Importance of What We Care About, 58‒68; and “Identification and Wholeheartedness,” ibid., 159‒76.

      20 20 Frankfurt, “Identification and Wholeheartedness,” 170.

      21 21 For Frankfurt, as we have already seen, internal conflicts are always conflicts between desires. Cf. Frankfurt, “Autonomy, Necessity, and Love,” 132‒3; and “The Faintest Passion,” 9‒11. For a critical view, see Gary Watson, “Volitional Necessities,” in Buss and Overton (eds), Contours of Agency, 137. Moran (“Frankfurt on Identification”) and Scanlon also criticize Frankfurt’s concept of desire, arguing that it cannot describe such conflicts without recourse to grounds or reasons. Frankfurt in turn argues that Scanlon’s account of desire is “excessively intellectualized and rationalistic.” See Harry Frankfurt, “Reply to Scanlon,” in Buss and Overton (eds), Contours of Agency, 184‒8 (184).

      22 22 Cf. J. David Velleman, “Identification and Identity,” in Buss and Overton (eds), Contours of Agency, 91‒123 (91‒4).

      23 23 Cf. Freud, “Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis,” along with Lear, Freud, 30‒50.

      24 24 Velleman, “Identification and Identity,” 103. Cf. Lear, Freud (New York: Routledge, 2005), 12‒18 and 24‒8. Frankfurt offers a critical response to Velleman in his “Reply to J. David Velleman,” in Buss and Overton (eds), Contours of Agency, 124f.

      25 25 Velleman, “Identification and Identity,” 104.

      26 26 Bernard Williams, “Ethical Consistency,” 169.

      27 27 Ibid., 169f.

      28 28 Ibid., 172.

      29 29 Ibid., 173. This is but one reason Williams’s interpretation of Agamemnon is so much more convincing than Frankfurt’s. Cf. Frankfurt, “Autonomy,