Liberation from Self
A Theory of Personal Autonomy

Professor Berofsky provides a detailed, sophisticated and comprehensive treatment of autonomy.

Bernard Berofsky (Author)

9780521480451, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 September 1995

288 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.59 kg

"Berofsky's work is an important addition to this literature. It offers a provocative new theory of autonomy while critically discussing much of the extant literature and challenging many common assumptions. It is a book that no one interested in the topic of autonomy can afford to ignore...this book is an impressive addition to the growing literature on autonomy. It is packed with imaginative examples and arguments that challenge all existing views, and it presents an original conception of autonomy that must be taken into account by anyone who writes on the subject in future." Robert Kane, The Philosophical Review

This is a detailed, sophisticated and comprehensive treatment of autonomy. Moreover it argues for a quite different conception of autonomy from that found in the philosophical literature. Professor Berofsky claims that the idea of autonomy originating in the self is a seductive but ultimately illusory one. The only serious way of approaching the subject is to pay due attention to psychology, and to view autonomy as the liberation from the disabling effects of physiological and psychological afflictions. A sustained critique of concepts such as moral autonomy, self-realisation, ideal autonomy, and identification is offered. The author replaces these with an alternative model that reveals how spontaneity, vitality and competence enable human beings to act in the real world.

1. Introduction
2. Freedom and autonomy
3. Freedom of action
4. Agent freedom
5. Values and the self
6. Autonomy and rationality
7. Rationality, values and integrity
8. The liberation theory of autonomy: objectivity
9. The liberation theory of autonomy: the place of self
10. The value of autonomy
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of mind [HPM]