Comments to Moral Autonomy, Personal Autonomy and Human Rights in Carlos Nino by Juan Iosa

GARCÍA VALVERDE, FACUNDO

Buenos Aires

Workshop; New readings of Kant s Political Philosophy; 2019

Grupo de Estudios Kantianos

Iosa?s principal objective is mainly critical. This is sad because hisquestions at the end of the paper are really suggestive and it would beinteresting to see why they would demand a new interpretation of liberalism. However, let?s begin with the critical objectives. Carlos Nino was an analytical Argentinean philosopher raised under twotraditions: one, the conceptual analysis and other, the explosion andsubsequent construction of the Rawlsian tradition. However, I think that he wasalso deeply influenced by some of Habermas? first works on democracy and on hisideal speech situation. This influence is particularly important in the topicworked by Iosa, and in the idea that there are formal (and not so formal)assumptions that we have to make when we engage in moral discourse. According to Nino, a principle of personal autonomy can be inferred fromthe inevitable presuppositions that a person has to assume when engages inmoral discourse. One of these presuppositions is moral autonomy. The object ofIosa?s critique of Nino is this: to denythat the value of personal autonomy can be inferred from the value of moralautonomy.Before focusing in Iosa?s interesting objections, let?s take a few linesto analyze what would it mean this derivation. According to Nino, there issomething common in personal autonomy and in moral autonomy: that any principleof action (be self or others regarding) must be acceptable (under idealconditions of speech) for the individual that is going to use it as a reasonfor action. This is what takes Nino as the huge Kantian contribution to moralreflection. This more general feature ofautonomy is what would make it safe to say that personal autonomy is a subsetof moral autonomy and what it would grant that, if we find moral autonomyvaluable, then we will instantaneously find personal autonomy valuable. Theliberal implication of these Nino?s thesis (liberal in the antiperfectionistand antipaternalist aspect) would be that imposing an illegitimate law wouldviolate moral autonomy (political autonomy) as much as imposing an (evencorrect) conception of a good life would violate personal autonomy.