Pojęcie autonomii w niemieckiej społeczności medialnej i jego instytucjonalne powiązania
The Understanding of Autonomy in German Media-based Community and the Concept’s Intitutional Links

Summary/Abstract: The concept of autonomy is being derived here form Immanuel Kant’s conceptions of moral reason and dignity. The relationships between autonomy and other concepts are analysed, those other concepts being mutually related but also contrasting (self-willedness, authenticity, ability to engage in reflection, responsibility). A hypothesis is put forward that the concept of autonomy is now subject to considerable changes and internal diversification, which results form tensions and contradictions at the interface of legal norms, social institutions, and practice. This is because individual subjects desire to achieve self-determination and in using their rights they border on self-willedness, whereas the logic of many institutions is based on compulsion. However, a fragmentation of social spheres (politics, market economy, scholarship, education, arts) causes a diversification of the concept of autonomy and puts an individual in a situation of uncertainty. As a result, the desire to achieve autonomy makes one concentrate on one’s own body as the stronghold of personal autonomy.The functioning of the concept of autonomy is analysed in two liberal German dailies, ,,Frankfurter Allgemeines Zeitung'' (FAZ) and ,,Tageszeitung'' (Taz), in 1993 and 2003, in relationship to such other concepts as freedom, equality, justice, democracy, work, property, security, community, or human dignity.In conclusion it is proposed that relationships be observed between the semantics of values, normative law, and the logic of institutional actions, as well as that analyses of value terms be conducted against the backdrop of the contradictions in the functioning of social structures.

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