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214 LETTERS IN CANADA 19~b sirant connaitre la litterature haytienne 11 partir de I'experience vecue par des ecrivains 'du dehors' ainsi que de leur contribution au fait litteraire. (SUZANNE CROSTA) Lawrence Haworth. Autonomy:An Essay in Philosophical Psychology and Ethics Yale University Press. 248. us $18.95 Part I of Haworth's book is devoted to a descriptive account of autonomy. Borrowing from the work of three philosophers and a psychologist (5.1. Benn, G. Dworkin, H. Frankfurt, and R.W. White), he sets about elaborating a view of human nature in which humans are distinguished from other creatures by 'a central tendency to grow' - to grow, especially, in their capacity for 'self-rule: Here autonomy is conceived of psychogenetically, as the outcome of natural tendencies and as manifesting itself in distinct developmental stages. Even the minimal autonomy which children possess depends on achieving certain measures of competence, independence, and self-control. These things the child comes by quite naturally: through the workings of an innate 'competence motive'; through the natural tendency to assert one's will (to insist on doing things for oneself); and through the development of more sustained capacities for concentration and for keeping momentary impulses in check. Extensive self-rule requires more than a measure of these qualities, however. Minimally autonomous agents may exercise great skill and ingenuity in accomplishing their ends, without giving a thought to the appropriateness of those ends; theirs is a mere technical competence. 'Normal' autonomy develops as the minimally autonomous agent begins first to evaluate her ends on the basis of criteria borrowed from 'significant others: and then turns her critical attention to the adopted values themselves. In this way she gains critical competence, thus making her ends truly her own. Haworth's views on critical reflection lie at the heart of his account of normal autonomy. Opposing himself to the Humean position that "tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger: he insists that it is possible to rationally evaluate one's ends, and provides a number of examples of how to go about it. We may wonder, for instance, whether our preferences are consistent with our values and principles, or whether acting on them may have unacceptable consequences. By rationally reflecting on our ends along these lines, Haworth contends, we arrive at second-order wants endorsing or disavowing our first-order wants. Further reflection may result in thirdorder endorsement or disavowal of second-order wants, and so on, in principle, ad infinitum. This counter to Hume is not entirely convincing. Haworth's examples of rational reflection mostly concern the evaluation ofsome wants (broadly construed) on the basis of other wants, a possibility which Hume was certainly not concerned to deny. What Hume did deny is that critical reflection is open-ended in the way Haworth supposes. (See L.A. SelbyBigge , ed, Enquiries, 1902, p 293.) But surely Hume has the upper hand here. If evaluation of wants always proceeds on the basis ofother wants as Haworth's own examples strongly suggest - then the second-order wants which may arise through critical reflection possess no weight of their own; whatever weight they carry in deliberation and action is wholly attributable to the first-order wants which gave rise to them in the first place. Second-order wants due to critical reflection are thus merely a variety of instrumental want with a special type of object (namely, other wants). Under such circumstances, attempting to reflect further on our second-order wants is unlikely to do more than lead us directly back to our initial reflection on the first-order wants. Part II of Autonomy is devoted to a development and defence of 'autonomism ' - the view that human autonomy is the fundamental value, on which other values depend. Autonomism is defended primarily through attacks on libertarianism and utilitarianism. In both cases, an attempt is made to argue that what the respective theorists regard as the fundamental value (liberty in the case of the libertarian, satisfaction of wants in the case of the utilitarian) is really quite worthless in the absence of autonomy. Though I find the case against libertarianism...

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