FEMINISTIČKA REKONCEPTUALIZACIJA LIČNE AUTONOMIJE
Feminist Reconceptualization of Personal Autonomy

Summary/Abstract: The problem of defning personal autonomy is at the core of numerous discussions of interest for feminists. Lack of respect for agent`s preference would be a violation of her autonomy. On the other hand, respect for her adaptive preferences would be capitulation in front of the institutional injustice which produced them in the frst place. In the frst part of the paper, the procedural theory of personal autonomy based on the independent agent`s authorization of desire will be discussed. According to the procedural or value-variable solution to this problem, the agent is autonomous in relation to her own desires, if she identifes with them, regardless of the content of her desires. The procedural analysis of personal autonomy has been originally developed through the theory of the free will of philosopher Harry Frankfurt and the theory of the personal autonomy of philosopher Gerald Dworkin. Te conception of personal autonomy developed by Frankfurt and Dworkin is structural because according to it the agent is autonomous when the frst-order desire (the desire for a certain state of afairs) is in line with the second-order desire (the desire to want a certain state of afairs). Tis conception is also hierarchical because it favours the second-order desires relative to the frst-order desires. Identifcation could be achieved only through changing the frst-order desire so that it is in line with the second-order desire, but not the other way around. The hierarchical conception of personal autonomy is the subject of numerous feminist critiques. Te critique of the one-way identifcation process by philosophers Marilyn Friedman and Diana Tietjens Meyers will be discussed in the second part of the paper as a feminist alternative to the traditional, hierarchical conception of personal autonomy.

• Details
• Contents