 previous article in this issue | next article in this issue  |
|
Document Details : Title: Relationaliteit en waardigheid Subtitle: De grenzen van de autonomie Author(s): SUHARJANTO, Dewi Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 47 Issue: 2 Date: 2007 Pages: 174-184 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.47.2.3203523 Abstract : Autonomy is an essential concept in the theory of action. It implies that we must live our lives independently without seeking justification from others. In medical practice the concept is used to refer to the freedom that patients have to choose from among various treatments and diagnostic methods. Daily exercise of medical disciplines dealing with human reproduction and prenatal diagnosis shows that many patients have little or no sense of this freedom; they may even consider it burdensome to have to decide about matters that exceed their knowledge. The concept of autonomy as developed in the current theory of action and ethics does not apply to these women’s experience. It proves to be an intersubjective event for them. The present article treats the genesis of the concept of autonomy from this perspective. It starts by describing the intentions currently attached to the concept and how these have led to a situation where the abstract other of philosophy has little to do with the daily life of any specific other. Next the article discusses the impossibility of approaching this dissimilarity relevantly and practically using only transcendental ethics. The traditional concept of autonomy presupposes a subject that can act on his/her own authority in symmetrical, equivalent relationships. However, the relationship between doctor and patient shows that rights and duties differ in each personal confrontation – depending on the degree to which the patient subjectively experiences being robbed of his/her power and the degree to which the doctor is able to sustain this sense of shortcoming. Next the article discusses the idea that ultimate responsibility does not mean that we lose our freedom when we do not make our decisions alone; nor can it mean that the autonomous subject must always and constantly be conscious of his/her freedom. On the contrary, the article shows how freedom – seen practically – comes about with others’ aid and this within specific and normative humane ethics that itself is the foundation for the ethics of autonomy. The epistemological premise of the ethics of humanity is the conviction that we also meet ourselves in the other. However, this Kantian idea should not be understood solely as a foundation for a metaphysics of morals; rather, as Paul Ricoeur noted, it contains something poetic that surpasses the strictly ethical. This permits the discovery of a middle path between objectivising the jobholder and the complete dissolution of the self in the relation to the other or the different in a therapeutic relationship. |
|
