Toleration and Freedom From Harm by Andrew Jason Cohen

Author:Andrew Jason Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2017-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

II. Implications for Individuals within a Polity

In this section, I begin to show what a full commitment to freedom from harm and the harm principle as HP1A* requires within a state. My aim is to determine how liberals, who I assume are committed to toleration, should want toleration manifested within their state. I argue that the liberal state should tolerate autonomous sacrifices of autonomy, including instances where an individual chooses to become a slave, to be lobotomized, or to be killed.

Many theorists, including Kant and J. S. Mill (perhaps), and more recently, John Rawls, Joseph Raz, and Will Kymlicka, take autonomy to be the central value of liberalism. Others, including Jean Hampton and, in some works, Chandran Kukathas, take toleration to hold that place. In his 2003, however, Kukathas takes freedom of conscience to be the most basic value (17). My view is similar to his, but it is freedom from harm instead of freedom of conscience that I take as most basic. What this means, as we have already seen, is that my view extends toleration further than the other views. This will be clearer as I use autonomy as a means to elucidate what should be tolerated.

Autonomy and toleration serve different purposes in a liberal theory.20 Consideration of these purposes is instructive. Toleration is a behavior that one may only engage in when in society with others. By contrast, autonomy is a trait of persons—whether in society with others or not. This difference alone matters. Toleration is at the core of a liberal polity as it recognizes that all deserve to lead their lives as they see fit. For many, this means allowing—or helping—others lead their lives autonomously. That, as I argued in chapter 5, is not necessary. Even those without autonomy are allowed to live their lives as they see fit if HP1A* is taken to specify the proper limits of toleration.

We can understand “autonomy” (literally: self-rule) to combine “voluntarism,” or the ability to choose one’s ends (see my 1998), with independence, such that the autonomous agent chooses for herself, without dependence on others (see my 1999). Thus understood, autonomy is a capacity that at least some can exercise; for better or worse, we can also fail to exercise it. I take this form of autonomy to be of both instrumental and intrinsic value. As Mill argued, it is instrumentally valuable as a means to promoting rationality, justification of beliefs, project pursuit, and societal progress. Others have noted its intrinsic value. It “is intrinsically valuable because it is an essential ingredient and a necessary condition of the autonomous life” (Raz 1986, 409; see also Mills 1998, 163).21 The autonomous life is, I take it, obviously of intrinsic value. Nonetheless, that it is intrinsically valuable does not mean it is valuable to all—again, as noted in chapter 5.

It is, I hope, clear that when an autonomous agent is tolerated, her autonomy is protected. In her case, respecting freedom from harm prevents others from interfering with her autonomous actions.

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