Premium
Autonomy as a balance of freedom and equality
Author(s) -
Premat Christophe
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
international social science journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.237
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1468-2451
pISSN - 0020-8701
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2451.2008.00662.x
Subject(s) - autonomy , sociology , inequality , injustice , creativity , social inequality , balance (ability) , state (computer science) , humanity , power (physics) , epistemology , law and economics , political science , law , psychology , mathematics , philosophy , mathematical analysis , physics , algorithm , quantum mechanics , neuroscience
Social inequalities are not due to the process of socialisation itself, but to the amplification of inequalities existing in a pre‐human state where there were no shared values and meanings. This state is fictitious in so far as human beings owe their humanity and their survival to a process of imposed social norms. As social subjects, they are incapable of surviving outside a social relationship. Using this anthropological basis two types of societies can be distinguished: heteronomous societies that justify inequality by a set of beliefs in the superiority of some beings over others, and autonomous societies that have formulated the abstract idea of equality of rights and conditions. Autonomy is the recognition that equality of conditions must be developed as part of a social compact that needs to be reinvented in every period in order to correct inequalities that persist in the welfare state. From this standpoint, inequalities drive social creativity, because individuals constantly need to create new institutions that are able to reduce the weight and injustice of such inequalities. This view avoids a utopian vision of equality that would negate a basic characteristic of human beings, namely, their power of creativity.