Free speech and autonomy: thinkers, storytellers, and a systemic approach to speech.

• Author: Williams, Susan H.
• Position: Response to articles by C. Edwin Baker and Seana Valentine Shiffrin in this issue, p. 251, 283 - Symposium: Individual Autonomy and Free Speech

Ed's and Seana's papers together present a powerful argument for the idea that autonomy is a fundamental value underlying the protection of free speech. As I have written elsewhere, I agree with this argument. (1) In this response to their papers, I would like to suggest that an autonomy approach focused on narrative rather than choice as the vehicle for autonomy offers some advantages. First, I will outline briefly the functions served by autonomy that provide a foundation for this value in our moral and political experience. Second, I will offer a narrative model of autonomy and describe how it serves the functions in our moral and political lives for which we need autonomy. Third, I will highlight the two primary advantages of this model: (1) seeing autonomy as an ongoing process rather than an assumed starting point, and (2) focusing our attention on systems of free speech--rather than only on individuals, whether they are speakers, listeners, or thinkers. I believe that this focus on systemic concerns is crucial to rethinking the commitment to free speech in a way that makes issues of inequality central and therefore holds the promise of making free speech a living and meaningful part of people's experience.

1. THE FUNCTIONS OF AUTONOMY AND A NARRATIVE MODEL THAT SERVES THEM (2)

   An autonomy theory needs grounding: it needs to explain the source of the particular version of autonomy that it is using, and that source needs to provide a basis for believing that this autonomy value is fundamental in a way that explains its constitutional status. For Ed, the source is a particular understanding of the respect that a government must show its citizens in order to legitimately demand their obedience to its laws. (3) For Seana, the source is the collection of capacities-rational, emotional, perceptual, and sentient--that "correctly constitute the core of what we value about ourselves" and that together constitute "the individual mind and the autonomy of its operation." (4) I take a more functionalist and relational approach that focuses on social practices. In order to know what autonomy means and why it matters, I begin by asking what is the work that we want and need the concept of autonomy to do in our moral and political lives? If those functions are of fundamental importance to us--as I believe they are--then we have both an explanation of the importance of autonomy and a framework for assessing a particular concept of autonomy to see if it can fulfill these functions.

   I believe that there are at least four primary functions served by the concept of autonomy in our moral and political lives. These functions are fundamental in the sense that, if we did not have a concept of autonomy that could effectively do these things, we would both find our moral lives deeply disrupted and lose moral and political practices of great value to us. All of these functions are described in terms of social practices and the value of those practices runs both to the individuals involved in them in any given instance and to all members of the societies that can sustain them?

   The first function of autonomy is to ground a collection of attitudes towards ourselves, including self-trust and self-respect. Self-trust is the ability and inclination to rely upon oneself, even if it leads to vulnerability. Self-respect is the belief that one is worthwhile as a person and the disposition to act on that belief by, for example, resisting violations of one's rights, being committed to one's own projects and values, and maintaining one's personal standards. (6) Both of these attitudes allow us to experience ourselves as agents and not merely as objects of our own observation. Without self-trust and self-respect, we would be incapable of forming and working to implement plans. I assume that the value of this orientation toward ourselves is obvious enough to need little argument. (7)

   These valuable attitudes toward ourselves are dependent upon a concept of autonomy. If one experienced oneself as the unwilling and helpless pawn of forces beyond one's control, with no capacity for self-direction, then it would be impossible to trust oneself. (8) Similarly, the projects of self-respect--resisting violations of rights, developing and being committed to one's own values, and maintaining personal standards (9)--are possible only if we see ourselves as agents capable of some meaningful self-direction. So, whatever our view of the world and the issues of causal determinism when we adopt the perspective of an "observer," (10) we must also have available to us the perspective of the autonomous, that is, self-directing, agent. (11) Allowing us access to that perspective is one of the important functions of a concept of autonomy that any acceptable version must fulfill.

   The perspective of the autonomous agent is also crucial to our understanding of character and the possibility of integrity. Character is a collection of personality traits, attitudes, and values held by an individual that is relatively stable over time. Character ties a life together, allowing us to see ourselves and others as more than simply arbitrary collections of behaviors and experiences. Owen Flanagan describes soldiers suffering from an identity crisis who were observed by Erik Erikson as follows:

   [T]hey normally experience themselves as the locus of a set of subjectively linked events, as a sort of conduit ... What they lack ... is any sense of coherent and authoritative "me-ness," of personal sameness--any sense that these subjectively linked events occurring to and in them constitute a person, a self, a life. (12) For these soldiers, there is not a complete breakdown of the boundaries of personal identity: they are aware when an act or emotion happens to them rather than to someone else. The problem is that they cannot see why the simple fact of the location of that act or emotion in them makes it theirs in any meaningful sense. They have lost a sense of authorship or autonomy. This sense of autonomous agency is the glue that holds together the disparate elements of a life into a single person with a coherent character.

   Autonomy is also central to our understandings of moral responsibility. In the voluminous literature on responsibility, there is a general consensus that responsibility rests on autonomy. (13) Indeed, rather than arguing for the connection, it is usually assumed and marshaled in support of one or another conception of autonomy (as providing better support for the practices of responsibility). If we think of the ascription of responsibility as a social practice, then it has at least two purposes: one purpose is to attempt to change people's behavior in the future and a second purpose is to establish, maintain and repair the relationships of trust on which the moral community is based. In both of these purposes, the practice of ascribing responsibility relies upon a concept of autonomy.

   The most obvious purpose of ascribing responsibility is to shape people's behavior in the future. The person held responsible for a bad act will, we hope, reflect and decide differently the next time. (14) And, of course, the practice of holding people responsible shapes the behavior of other actors who are aware of it as well. One need not adopt a contra-causal notion of freedom to make sense of this purpose, but one does need a basic concept of autonomy. It may not matter whether the agent could have done differently in the past, but she must have some capacity for decision-making and self-direction in response to the community's norms in order for the ascription of responsibility to affect her future behavior. (15)

   The second purpose of the social practice of ascribing responsibility is to establish, maintain, and repair the relationships of trust on which the moral community is based. In order to live together, we must be able to trust each other, in general, not to violate the shared norms of our community. The practice of ascribing responsibility allows the victim of a violation of that trust to register her hurt and outrage and to assert the fundamental relationship of obligation between herself, the agent of the violation, and the community. (16) As with self-trust, however, this is possible only if the agent in whom trust is placed is seen as autonomous. Without a minimum degree of self-direction, an agent can't be trusted. (17) Thus, both of the central purposes of ascriptions of responsibility rest on a concept of autonomy. (18)

   Finally, autonomy (understood as self-direction), is an important part of how we understand the possibility of social change and the meaning of politics. Obviously, if we are the helpless products of our social conditioning, we cannot hope to be the conscious agents of social change. Change may come, and it may even come through us, but it will not be under our direction unless we have some authorship of our own actions. Political movement and democratic politics, in particular, would make little sense in a world without autonomy. Or, to put it in the way that Ed has so persuasively argued the point, much of the reason that democratic politics has value for us is that it represents both an exercise of and respect for our autonomy. (19) This is the overlapping consensus that Jim sees between Ed's autonomy theory and democracy theories. (20)

2. A NARRATIVE MODEL OF AUTONOMY

   I suggest that a model of autonomy in which the central activity is interpretive rather than volitional can serve these important purposes while providing some crucial advantages over a choice based model like Ed's. Seana's "thinker" is not as...