Autonomia wyzwaniem dla naszej edukacji
Autonomy as a challenge for our education

Author(s): Andrzej M. Kaniowski
Subject(s): Education
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: autonomy; Kant; natural law; Good; freedom; Kohlberg
Summary/Abstract: The idea of autonomy can be considered “one of three or four innovations throughout the history of philosophy”, following Jürgen Habermas. We owe today’s understanding of this idea, which has always been related to the idea of freedom, to Immanuel Kant, but this idea has been forged both in the course of intellectual – particularly philosophical – reflection and in the social, political and economic struggle for its realization in concrete historical conditions. Autonomy based on one’s own doing, that is, on being the author of one’s own actions, can be understood in various ways. However, this diversity can be put in order. The model for the development of moral thinking, elaborated by Lawrence Kohlberg, is helpful here. The autonomy in its Kantian understanding is only attainable at the post-conventional level of development of this thinking. At this level of development of moral thinking, the measure of the rightness of one’s own conduct, that is to say, the measure of how good or bad one’s conduct is, is the norm that we can present to ourselves as the norm that governs the will or the freedom, both internal and external, of every single rational being. Subjecting one’s will and freedom to such a norm is nothing else but autonomy, or “one’s own norm-giving”. The aim of the considerations conducted in the article is, first of all, to show – against the background of various possible variations of the understanding of autonomy – Kantian concept of autonomy as a particularly important way of understanding it, having fundamental significance for our perception of ourselves, both as individuals, i.e., unique individuals, and as creating our own political order of communities. The idea of autonomy, this particular product of Greek-Latin thinking and the centuries-long struggle to make it a reality, is particularly threatened in today’s world. Because of these threats, it is the idea of autonomy – as an idea which is also to be adopted in the process of education and upbringing – that is a particular challenge for our education, both Polish and European.

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