Empowering Failures of Personal Autonomy

>The first Law School Faculty Colloquium of 2023 will take place on January 26, 2023 with Hugo B. Lafreniere, Postdoctoral fellow, Sciences Po School of Law.

Abstract: The contemporary literature attributes failures of global personal autonomy – where a person is rational and coherent but fails to exercise control over the specific set of events that constitutes her life – exclusively to disempowering phenomena, such as poverty, oppression, or imprisonment. In contrast, I argue that empowering phenomena, such as inheritances, exploitation, and rent-seeking, can also undermine the autonomy of those benefiting from them. I explain the invizibilisation of these "empowering failures of personal autonomy" through the popularity of a "more is better" mindset, according to which autonomy is a essentially a question of being as capable as possible. As an alternative, I defend an “autonomous life” conception of personal autonomy, according to which being autonomous rather means living a life that is devoid of heteronomous elements, where such elements are defined as features of a person’s life that are caused by mechanisms other than this person’s own autonomous agency.

Invite-only event.

Information and contact: ecole.droit@sciencespo.fr