Alienation, Autonomy, and the Self

Abstract

45 Reflection on the self reveals a variety of puzzles: What preserves our identity through time? How do we refer to ourselves? By what means, if any, do we gain self-knowledge? But the metaphysical, semantic, and epistemological questions about the self are not exhaustive. For when one thinks, decides and acts, there is a straightforward sense in which every thought, decision and act is one’s own: one is identical, in some way that the metaphysics of personal identity will explain, with the subject of each of these. Yet not everything one thinks, decides and does is expressive of who one really is, in some other sense. Each of us has been horrified by a desire, dream or action undertaken or contemplated, and in these instances, the states and actions that are the self’s in the straightforward (metaphysical) sense are not ones that one is willing to admit, or even ought to admit, into one’s self-conception. A moral or psychological notion of the self, distinct from the metaphysical notion, is central to the concept of autonomous agency. If this were not the case, then every uncoerced action performed by the metaphysical self would be autonomous. But it is not so. We see this not only in certain instances of internal compulsion, including cases of kleptomania, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and various addictions, but also in more ordinary instances of internal distress and conflict. The difficulty on which I focus is this: it is clear that one can be alienated from certain of one’s actions and attitudes, but it is not clear in what that alien-