HIJERARHIJSKA ANALIZA LIČNE AUTONOMIJE I PROBLEM MANIPULACIJE
HIERARCHICAL ANALYSIS OF PERSONAL AUTHONOMY AND THE PROBLEM OF MANIPULATION

Summary/Abstract: In the first part of the paper I investigate a hierarchical analysis of personal autonomy which is developed through Harry Frankfurt’s theory of free will and Gerald Dworkin’s theory of personal autonomy. Hierarchical analysis of personal autonomy considers person autonomous regarding desire A if he has the desire to have desire A. One of the main advantages of hierarchical analysis of autonomy is that it does not require a person to have any specific values to be considered autonomous. In spite of this and other advantages, hierarchical analysis of personal autonomy is facing the problem of manipulation which I will discuss in the second part of paper. Frankfurt`s theory is purely structural and ahistoric because it does not take in consideration a way of acquiring second order desires or desire to desire or not desire A. That allows the possibility of influences on a person that would diminish their autonomy. On another hand, Dworkin apparently avoids the problem of manipulation by introducing a requirement for procedural independence which protects a person from influences which are paradigmatic cases of violating of autonomy. However, Dworkin`s contribution is not theoretically satisfying because it is not enough for acceptable analysis of autonomy to just list few intuitive examples of constraining personal autonomy, but it is necessary to propose a reason why that kind of influences is considered dangerous for personal autonomy viz to establish some kind of criteria. Such criteria will enable us to evaluate borderline cases about which people have different intuitions according to it. That is the reason why the final goal of this paper is to contribute to the definition of criteria on which procedural independence will be based, through a systemic approach to the problem of manipulation.

• Details
• Contents