Autonomía y heteronomía

Abstract

This essay deals with the autonomy/heteronomy dichotomy, that is not equal but is alike the well known one autonomy/authenticity. And its plausible deconstruction is also parallel. I examine the topic that the autonomy presupposes a form of authenticity or, in other terms, that universalism is also a kind of contextualism, in a sense that we only will read or judge actions the same way, because -or when- we belong to a community of autonomous individuals, of universalists. On one hand, it is necessary trying to articulate universalism as something more than wishful thinking, and, at the same time, fighting against relativism or moral skepticism. If we do not want to have recourse to a transcendental argument, we have to think in much more modest terms, which would be necessary to describe this way: Opposite to a kind of transparency of the contexts or its opened character, we have to tend to close the contexts, to consider them as a whole, with the «lack of competence» that its opacity brings out -and our opacity, incidentally -. Transparency derives from the universality of judgement, and conversely. To be a moral subject requires the plasticity to act in opaque contexts and to take in charge it and its consequences.