Moral autonomy after Kant: a continental reassessment from Hegel to Foucault
This article proposes a reinterpretation of Kantian moral autonomy as "historically situated critical agency," synthesizing Hegel's emphasis on social recognition and Foucault's genealogical critique of power to establish a form of self-governance that retains normativity without relying on transcendental foundations.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Imagine trying to make a difficult moral choice while standing in a room where the walls, the furniture, and even the air you breathe have been designed by someone else. You feel you are choosing freely, but the very tools you use to think—your language, your values, your sense of right and wrong—were placed there by history, culture, and power. This is the central puzzle of moral autonomy: the ability to govern oneself. For centuries, philosophers have debated whether we truly possess this freedom or if we are merely following scripts written by society. The question matters deeply because our laws, our human rights, and our sense of responsibility all depend on the idea that people can think for themselves and choose their own path. If we are entirely shaped by outside forces, can we truly be held accountable for our actions? If we are entirely free, why do we all seem to share the same values?
A recent paper by Quoc Hung Tran from the Banking University of Ho Chi Minh City tackles this old problem by looking at how three major thinkers over the last two hundred years tried to solve it. The author does not simply pick a side; instead, he weaves their ideas together to create a new way of understanding how we can be free while still being part of a world we did not create. The paper moves from the rigid rules of the past to a more flexible, realistic view of how people actually live and think today.
The story begins with Immanuel Kant, an 18th-century philosopher who set the standard for how we think about freedom. Kant argued that a person is truly free only when they make their own rules based on pure reason, ignoring outside pressures like money, fame, or even their own desires. For Kant, the moral law is like a universal instruction manual that every rational mind can discover on its own, independent of history or culture. He believed that if you act according to this self-made law, you are autonomous. However, later thinkers found a problem with this view. They felt it was too abstract, like trying to build a house without any bricks or mortar. It assumed a person could step outside of their life, their family, and their time in history to think purely, which is something no human being can actually do.
The paper then introduces Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who argued that freedom is not something you find inside your own head, but something you build with others. Hegel believed that we only become free when we are recognized by other people and when we live within real social institutions like families, communities, and laws. You cannot be a free person in a vacuum; you need a society that supports your freedom. Think of it like learning to speak: you cannot invent a language alone; you must learn the words and grammar that your community uses, and only then can you express your own unique thoughts. Hegel showed that our ability to make choices is deeply tied to the world we live in, but he still believed that this world could be rational and just.
The final piece of the puzzle comes from Michel Foucault, a 20th-century thinker who took a much sharper look at how power shapes us. Foucault argued that even the things we think are natural or universal, like our ideas of sanity, health, or justice, are actually created by systems of power and knowledge. He suggested that we are not just shaped by society; we are constructed by it. In his view, the "free individual" might be an illusion created by the very systems that control us. Yet, Foucault did not leave us hopeless. He suggested that while we cannot escape these systems, we can learn to question them. He called this "parrhesia," or the courage to speak the truth to power. By studying how our rules and identities were made, we can find the cracks in the system and choose to change ourselves or our world.
Tran's paper brings these three perspectives together to propose a new concept called "historically situated critical agency." This is a fancy way of saying that we are free, but our freedom is always rooted in a specific time and place. We are not the isolated, perfect thinkers Kant imagined, nor are we completely trapped puppets. Instead, we are people who inherit a set of rules and values from our history, but we also have the power to examine those rules, ask where they came from, and decide whether to keep them or change them.
The author argues that this new view is better than trying to stick to old ideas. It is not enough to just say "I am free because I think rationally," because our thinking is always influenced by our culture. It is also not enough to say "I am free because I can resist power," because resistance needs a shared language and community to be effective. The paper suggests that true autonomy happens when we do both: we recognize that we are part of a social world that shapes us, and we use that understanding to critically question and reshape that world.
This approach changes how we see everyday life. It means that being a moral person is not just about following a set of fixed rules. It is about being a "worldly critic." It means looking at the laws we live by, the values we hold, and the institutions we trust, and asking: Who made these? Do they serve everyone? Can they be improved? The paper suggests that this kind of thinking is essential for modern society, where complex systems like digital platforms and global markets constantly try to shape how we think and act. By understanding that our freedom is a practice rather than a fixed state, we can take an active role in shaping the conditions that produce us.
The paper concludes that this synthesis offers a way forward that is both realistic and hopeful. It acknowledges that we are shaped by forces beyond our control, but it insists that we are not powerless. We can use our history and our social connections as tools to critique and improve our world. This view does not require us to believe in magical, perfect freedom. Instead, it asks us to do the hard work of understanding our place in history and using that knowledge to make better choices. In a world that often feels overwhelming, this perspective offers a clear path: we are free not because we are above the world, but because we are deeply engaged in it, ready to question, learn, and change.
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