Autonomy Reconsidered: A Proposal to Abandon the Language of Self- And Other-Control And to Adopt the Language of “Attunement”

In this exploratory essay, I shall question the moral status of the notion of autonomy and its attendant notion of self-control. I will argue that autonomy as it is usually understood, namely having control over oneself and one's environment, is a morally problematic notion because control implies negation and suppression of the "other" (eveing if the other is none other than aspects of oneself). I shall further argue that thinking of autonomy not in terms of control but in terms of "attunement" will answer my concerns about autonomy and provide a conceptualization of the more integrated and harmonious moral agency. What I propose then is a change of our moral vocabulary and its attendant ways of thinking.