External Assistance to Autonomy: A Fundamental Conundrum in Human Affairs

Kant’s notion of autonomy is not only a central concept in pure moral philosophy; it is also a key organizing concept in applied moral philosophy. Across the whole spectrum of human endeavors, there are helping relationships wherein some helpers (e.g., doctors, teachers, social workers, advisors, managers, or organizers) try to help their counterparts (e.g., patients, students, clients, workers, and so forth) to help themselves. But there is a fundamental “helping self-help conundrum” in the very idea of helpers giving external assistance to others to become more autonomous, i.e., to become independent of external assistance. This conundrum makes genuine autonomy-enhancing help very subtle, difficult, and scarce. There is, however, a golden thread in applied moral philosophy running from Socrates, Stoics, and Augustine down to modern philosophers such as John Dewey, Leonard Nelson, David Hawkins, and Gilbert Ryle. This tradition appreciates the limitations highlighted by the fundamental conundrum and which argues that genuine help must be indirect to create the preconditions and catalyze the processes of the others taking an active and constructive role in helping themselves. The analysis also highlights the “yin and yang” of unhelpful help as social engineering (yang) and “rapacious benevolence” (yin). Iven Illich in particular developed a general critique of the “helping profession,” with their professional cartels always finding more “needs” and “disabilities” that need to attended to, that thereby generate more learned disabilities and disabling help.