Tengan - PHIL301 RR4, Professor George Tsai at UHM PDF

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Professor George Tsai at UHM
Synchronous online class
Reading Response assignment on class readings
I got an A in his class...

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Tengan 1 Megan Tengan Professor Tsai Philosophy 301 18 February 2021 Reading Response 4: Raz - Autonomy and Pluralism To sum up Raz’s piece, he says that to live an autonomous life, you need to be free from coercion, make choices, have a variety of choices - which are to be morally acceptable, as well as be mentally capable as the “author” of your life. Although I have never read about human autonomy to this degree before, I understand exactly what Raz is saying and I agree. The allegory of The Man in the Pit was just as illuminating, furthering Raz’s statement that there must be a multitude of choices, but more so in a qualitative way than quantitative. The man has a thousand different choices, except it does not mean autonomy because they are all trivial, versus the significance of a “normal” person’s decisions. Our free choices, besides being free from coercion, must also be independently chosen, with no manipulation from others. Raz believes that the desires of those around us are not allowed to sway us. Should we want to remain autonomous, our parents cannot manipulate us into doing what they want with our lives, which seems to become more obsolete as time goes on. This relates to the timeline of autonomy in history that we observed together as a class. In the class discussions concerning these conditions of autonomy, our ideas were drawn to the social contingency of autonomy as a value in life, because people have not always seen it as so important. Raz also talks about this, such as the autonomy of marriage; arranged marriages were (and still are) commonplace, but obviously not autonomous. In our western society today, autonomy is a very large part of how we live our lives because of the special relationship we hold between our autonomy and wellbeing. Compared to back then, autonomy now has a central place in modern times; for example, women are able to depart from the traditional role of birth

Tengan 2 giver to CEO if they wish. It was interesting to observe this phenomenon as an increase in autonomy because I never viewed it in such a way. Breaking gender norms, in a sense, is gaining more autonomy in one’s life. The author of one’s life is choosing to move on from tradition if it so suits them and their wellbeing, which is exactly what we have come to value in our society....