Nietzsche once wrote that, he wanted to be an “autonomous, rational
human being”…
and at first read, it makes sense… however once you think about it,
then it is not so obvious…
for example, the word “Autonomous” not subject to outside control, independent,
acting according to one’s moral duty rather than one’s desires…
but as we have noted before, morality isn’t about one person…
it is a collective take on how everyone is to act in accordance
to the rules…you cannot have a single person morality…
morality by its very definition, is two or more people engaging
in how we should act and interact with people within our society…
but to be autonomous, means you are engaging in your own rules of
morality… so to be autonomous is not to engage in morality because
autonomous means one person and morality means more then one person…
how does a person be autonomous and still be able to engage in
morality? if we are engaging in morality, then we are engaged with
two or more people about how we are to act with each other…
and the word autonomous is about the one person being independent,
holding to your own values and rules…
to hold to both concepts equally and with conviction, means
that you are in conflict with the state when you act
autonomously…
because seriously, how often will my autonomous self be in harmony and unanimity
with the goals and needs of the state where the concept of morality holds
for two or more people…
the fact is, that my autonomous self will be in conflict with the society
morality…
how do we resolve this conflict between being autonomous
and being moral within a society?
if you adjust your autonomous self to be in sync with society
then you are no longer being independent and autonomous…
and one certainly cannot expect society to adjust itself or
sync itself to one human being, it cannot make morality
to fit one specific individual…
morality seems to be, to me at least, to be an all or nothing
proposition…you cannot choose which moral precepts
you will abide by and which one’s you will ignore…
I will abide all the rules of society and be a moral person,
except the rule about killing people… if I am to be an
autonomous person, I must be able to kill people…
you can see the conflict…
let us expand this concept of being autonomous to, well everyone…
everyone is an autonomous being who act upon their own idea’s
and understanding of what it means to be human…
we are free and independent to act upon our own values
as we see fit…
now everyone is in an completely autonomous society, which is the ideal society
of the anarchist, BTW…well that makes no sense, a completely
autonomous society… you can have one, autonomous or you can have the
other, society, but how do you connect the two?
so, is the goal of everyone being autonomous really the best goal we could
try to achieve, given that we would no longer have any type of collective
morality in doing so?
and then we have our second word, after autonomous, rational…
given the fact that much of human understanding of the world comes from
the emotional, feeling side of existence… is being rational, the best chance
we have of understanding the universe given we have such things as instincts
which is the way we override reason and rationality…
much of human existence is engage in both instincts and emotions/feelings…
David Hume for example once wrote:
“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of passions,
and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and
obey them”
in other words, Hume had rationality and reason to serve
instincts and emotions and feelings and passions…
I for one, don’t believe that is the true and proper role of rationality
and reason…to be slaves of, servants to instincts, emotions, feelings
and passions…
so, the problem still exists, we can attempt to be autonomous
and be outside of morality which can only exists in two or more people…
how do we resolve this conflict between being autonomous
and being moral?
Kropotkin