Autonomy, Axiom, Alfred Jules Ayer

A Concise Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Religion
by Anthony C. Thiselton, M.Th., Ph.D., D.D.

(Page 9 of 9)

autonomy

In the broad, popular sense of the term autonomy denotes freedom from external constraints to set one's own norms or rules of conduct, or in social applications of the word self-determination or self-government. It derives historically from the Greek auto-, self, co-joined with nomos, law, rule, norm or principle.

A decisive influence in the history and use of the term was KANT (see below). Prior to the eighteenth century the term largely functioned in a communal, social, or institutional context to denote the self-government of a city-state, state or guild.

(1) Plato (428-348 bce) expounds the self-supporting autonomy of the city-state in the Republic, where it is clear that autonomy does not apply to individuals. This would create anarchy. There has to be law or rule, but as against tyranny, where the criterion is raw power; against democracy, where it is mere popularity; against oligarchy, where it is wealth and social influence; aristocracy (Greek, aristos, best) promotes what is best for society as a whole.

The ideal state in the Republic (bks II-V) is ruled by intellectuals who undergo a rigorous philosophical training in order that the rest of the city-state (hoi polloi, the many) may be governed in accordance with truth, wisdom and justice. Yet book VI concedes that in practice philosophers are regarded very differently.

(2) LOCKE (1632-1704) represents a transitional point towards the individualism of modernity. In his Two Treatises on Government (1689), especially in his Second Treatise in Civil Government Locke proposes that the individual has God-given 'rights' to life, liberty and property. However, in effect by an implicit social contract, a power of government must be conditionally assigned to a group of governmental agents to ensure a just distribution of the rights and liberties. 'Pure' autonomy would be anarchy, when sheer might and power deprive individuals of these rights.

(3) KANT (1724-1804) extends autonomy to the will and moral decision of the individual. This is part of his rejection of the compromise with 'freedom' that is imposed by ecclesial and social traditions and authorities which undermine the ethical status of the individual to determine will and action in free, unconditioned, moral decision. A will is 'good' only if it derives its 'law' from itself alone, i.e. in sheer autonomy.

(4) SCHLEIERMACHER (1768-1834) PERCEIVED THAT KANT'S TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY, OR CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY, raised new questions which theology had to address. However, he also perceived that autonomy struck at the heart of religion and religions. For religion is characterized by an immediacy of awareness or feeling of 'utter dependence' upon God (schlechthinig Abhängigkeit, The Christian Faith, 2nd edn, sect. 4).

(5) TILLICH (1886-1965) subjects both 'autonomy' and 'heteronomy' to a forceful critique. If autonomy is to be viewed positively, 'autonomy does not mean the freedom of the individual to be a law to himself (Systematic Theology, vol. I, London: Nisbet, 1953, 93). At best, it denotes 'obedience to the law of reason' (ibid.).

All the same, individual-centred autonomy remains 'shallow', just as heteronomy (law imposed by another) can be oppressive. What is needed is to avoid the 'catastrophe' of autonomy and the 'destructive' impact of heteronomy by rooting both in 'theonomy': the threefold interaction or dialectic between individual reason, social constraint and divine order, provide a balancing 'depth' which one of these alone fails to yield (ibid., 92-96).

(6) Controversy about the status of autonomy has divided the two broad intellectual approaches that might provisionally be described as the modern and the postmodern. Modernity inherits a philosophy of individual capacities and rights inherited through Locke and Kant. Postmodernity inherits from HEGEL, MARX, NIETZSCHE, HEIDEGGER ( 1889-1976) and FOUCAULT (1926-84) the view that against the enormous power-shaping factors of social and communal forces, individual autonomy is illusory.

(7) Religions, including the Christian religion, tend also to underline the power of the social structures into which the individual is born, and to be less optimistic than secular modernity about the powers of individual reason. Nevertheless, within a context of a doctrine of divine grace and of human dependence upon God, they do not share the pessimism of some postmodern thinkers. They do not agree that the individual is utterly helpless to make responsible decisions which affect his or her own destiny. They do not see humankind as determined decisively or entirely by social history.

Averroes

See Ibn Rushd.

Avicenna

See Ibn Sina.

axiom

Axioms are self-evident propositions or principles. They provide a premise or foundation on the basis of which inference may be deduced. ARISTOTLE defined axioms as indemonstrable propositions that cannot be doubted. They are akin to postulates, except that postulates are capable of demonstration. KANT regarded axioms as A PRIORI principles of intuition. PLATO, DESCARTES and LEIBNIZ held the strongest views of axioms as 'innate' to the human mind, but the term may also be used in a less ABSOLUTE sense to denote what is commonly held to be true.

'Axiom' should be distinguished from 'axiom of choice' as a technical term for a mathematical postulate about sets, and also from 'axiology' which explores issues of value. (See also deduction.)

Ayer, (Sir) Alfred Jules (1910-89)

A.J. Ayer became Professor of Mind and Logic at the University of London (1946-59) and subsequently Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford (1959-1978). However, he made his name through the publication of Language, Truth and Logic (1936), later revised in the light of criticism in a second edition (London: Gollancz, 1946). This established his reputation as the leading British exponent of LOGICAL POSITIVISM.

AYER'S LOGICAL POSITIVISM

Ayer argued that all propositions are either ANALYTIC STATEMENTS, which derive their truth from formal or 'internal' logical validity, or statements about the world which can be verified by observation and experience, i.e. are empirically verifiable. He expounded this as a theory of meaning.

Propositions that are neither analytic nor empirically verifiable, Ayer argued, do not communicate genuinely propositional meaning. It does not make sense to ask whether they are true or false, since all true-or-false propositions fall into one of these two specified categories only.

Propositions about God or about ethics are 'non-sense', since their meaning cannot be tested and demonstrated by the principle of verification. Such statements as 'To steal is wrong' are not true-or-false propositions; they are recommendations concerning the adoption of values or emotive expressions of approval or disapproval.

Ayer defines 'non-sense' as being 'devoid of literal significance' on the ground that the content of a supposed proposition neither meets the criterion of verification nor depends on the validity of internal logical relations within an analytical proposition. In the latter case, 'the validity depends solely on the definitions of the symbols it contains' (Language, Truth and Logic, 2nd edn, 78).

RELIGION, ETHICS and METAPHYSICS characteristically employ sentences that purport 'to express a genuine proposition, but ... in fact, express neither a tautology nor an empirical hypothesis' (ibid., 41). Hence they do not match up to the proposed criteria of meaning. Ayer rejects 'the metaphysical thesis that philosophy affords us knowledge of a reality transcending the world of science and common sense' (ibid., 45).

Ayer asserts: 'The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability' (ibid., 48). Until we know how a proposition would be verified, the speaker 'fails to communicate anything' (ibid., 49).

Although he had earlier demanded a principle or criterion of 'verification', Ayer recognized in his 1946 edition that it was sufficient for a proposition to be capable of verification 'in principle'. Thus, for example, in the era before space travel the proposition 'There are mountains on the far side of the moon' remained verifiable in principle, even in the era when space technology had not reached the point where it could be verified in practice. In principle the proposition was capable of verification, given the appropriate technology.

In his introduction to his 1946 edition Ayer states the point negatively: 'If ... no possible experience could go on to verify it [the proposition], it does not have any factual meaning at all' (ibid., 15).

CRITIQUES OF THE VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE

Logical positivism looks back for its roots to the VIENNA CIRCLE, with its exaggerated respect for the physical or natural sciences and its extreme distaste for metaphysics. First, as many have observed, not only metaphysics and theology, but no less 'every single moral and aesthetic judgement, any judgement of value of any sort, must be regarded as meaningless' (G. J. Warnock, English Philosophy since 1900, Oxford: OUP, 1958, 45). This excludes a wide range of discourse which seems to have genuine communicative currency for very many people, above and beyond merely expressing mere personal preferences or emotions.

Second, Ayer is unclear about why he gives such a privileged status to the principle of verification when it fails to meet its own criteria of meaning. For as a proposition it is neither verifiable by observation of the empirical world nor is it an analytic statement. J.L. Evans described its self-defeating status as like that of a weighing-machine trying to weigh itself.

Third, most seriously of all, Ayer purports to be formulating a theory of meaning and language but in practice merely presents a positivist or materialist world-view disguised in linguistic dress. In the end it is no more than raw positivism dressed up as a theory of meaning.

Fourth, in addition to these three weaknesses, logical positivism too readily divides all language into a simplistic dualism. Apart from propositions of logic, language allegedly either describes observable states of affairs (verifiable at least in principle) or expresses emotions, recommendations, approval or disapproval.

However, as virtually the whole of Wittgenstein's later work clearly shows, language and uses of language reflect a 'multiplicity' that is 'not something fixed', but functions with the diversity of a repertoire of tools in a tool-box to operate in many ways (L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell, Germ. and Eng., 1967, sects. 11 and 23).

LANGUAGE IN RELIGION uses commands, declarations, promises, prayer, decrees, pronouncements, parables, and many genres which are best understood as performing a variety of speech acts. To ask which are either verifiable or analytic propositions, and to dismiss the rest as 'non-sense', ignores the genuine operative currency with which such language performs meaningful communicative acts.

AYER'S OTHER WORKS

Although his reputation is most popularly known through his Language, Truth and Logic, Ayer also addressed problems concerning EPISTEMOLOGY (the nature of knowledge) in The Problem of Knowledge (1956); and issues concerning personal identity, freedom and causation, and the relation between language and states of affairs in Thinking and Meaning (1947) and Philosophy and Language (1960).

Heavily influenced by the EMPIRICISM of HUME and the world-view of RUSSELL, Ayer came to represent a confident, 'common-sense', empiricist world-view in the English philosophy of the 1950s. Yet he also recognized the logical limitations and fallibility of many empiricist claims to 'knowledge'.

In The Problem of Knowledge Ayer writes: 'Claims to know empirical statements may be upheld by a reference to perception, or to memory, or to testimony, or to historical records, or to scientific laws. But such backing is not always strong enough for knowledge. Whether it is so or not depends upon the circumstances of the particular case' (London: Pelican, 1956, 31). This allusion to the particular case holds together the various approaches associated with Ayer, Ryle and others, which often used to be called 'OXFORD PHILOSOPHY' in the 1950s and early 1960s.

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About the Author

Anthony Thiselton is Emeritus Professor of Christian Theology at the University of Nottingham, and Canon Theologian of Leicester Cathedral and Southwell Minster, UK. His academic career has involved fellowships in both the UK and the US, he has lectured around the world, and has published seven books and over 50 papers.