"Ursus had communicated to Homo a portion of his talents: such as to stand upright, to restrain his rage into sulkiness, to growl instead of howling, etc.; and on his part, the wolf had taught the man what he knew—to do without a roof, without bread and fire, to prefer hunger in the woods to slavery in a palace."
In developmental psychology and moral, political, bioethical philosophy, autonomy is the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision. Autonomous organizations or institutions are independent or self-governing. Autonomy can also be defined from a human resources perspective, where it denotes a level of discretion granted to an employee in their work. In such cases, autonomy is known to general
"The autonomous individual, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. The autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding call of frustration, and the seed of the convulsions which shake our world to its foundations."
"A similar notion is that the morally autonomous individual is one who obeys social norms not out of unthinking conformity, but as a result of an independent evaluation of their moral worth. John Harris identifies autonomy as the ability to control ones destiny by exercising ones faculties and John Finnis equates it with the ability to “exercise individual liberty to do what one pleases”. Judge Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit, in considering the lawfulness of the Washington law against assisted suicide, stated that “at the heart of liberty is the right to define ones own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life”. A common thread to emerge from these definitions, and the definition that we shall adopt, is that autonomy is the capacity of individuals “to choose both the deisrable ends of their own lives and .. the means by which they pursue those ends.”."
"What the philosophers once knew as life has become the sphere of private existence and now of mere consumption, dragged along as an appendage of the process of material production, without autonomy or substance of its own."
"In some ways autonomy, broadly defined, is not an enforceable right in any useful sense. It is the basis of all fundamental rights – namely to be able to behave and to be treated with the dignity that goes with being human, whatever one is, it is that self that commands respect. This underlies all of the rights of the European Convention. Privacy, freedom of expression etc., are the part-expression of this in positive law, for those situations in which the autonomous individual finds him or herself in the context of society. Then, the autonomy rights of one may clash with those of the other and one will give way. Given that it is the social context that will decide which right has the stronger claim, it must follow that many autonomy claims are unenforceable and privacy rights are weak."
"Autonomy makes a person the sovereign authority over her or his own life, in recognition of the fact that we each have only one life and that what happens in it – what happens to “us” - is our most special and intimate concern. Although political philosophers might sometimes make heavy weather of it, this is a perfectly familiar and comprehensible idea (as indeed it must be to qualify as a compelling personal and political ideal that can be taken to heart by people like us). Ronald Dworkin contributes the following memorable image: Each person follows a more or less articulate conception of what gives value to life. The scholar who values a life of contemplation has such a conception so does the television-watching, beer-drinking citizen who is fond of saying “This is the life”, though of course he has thought less about the issue and is less able to describe or defend his conception. Having a life-plan – or, more accurately, a “plan for living” - is part and parcel of living life “from the inside”, to borrow Kymlickas useful metaphor."
"The Kantian idea of moral autonomy as “self-determination” is as good a place as any to begin elaborating the conception of personal autonomy I favour. The autonomous life cherished by liberals is the life that can be characterised as (in part) self-determined, self-authored or self-created, following plans and ideals - “a conception of the good” - that one has chosen for oneself. Choice, on this view, is prerequisite to leading a successful, fulfilling and authentic existence according to ones own moral rights. To have an autonomous life a person must be free to deliberate about and choose the projects he or she will take up in life from an adequate range of options accommodating the diversity of human aptitudes, abilities, interests and tastes. In contrast to the value of liberty conceived as the negative right to be left alone, that is an active, “positive” conception of autonomy which requires, as Rawls nearly summarised, the opportunity “to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of the good”. Jeremy Waldron helpfully expands: The dominant theme in modern liberalism is that an individual conception of the good life is a plan of life or a strategy for living that an individual uses as a basis for making and reflecting on his more important decisions and for scheduling his enjoyments and set backs (to the extent that he has any control over them). His conception, moreover, defines what is to count as a setback or any enjoyment for him; and it defines for him the things that are most, and least, important in his life."