Le 7 mai 2019, j’ai défendu ma thèse à Queen’s University et celle-ci a été acceptée. J’obtiens donc le titre de PhD en philosophie !

Cela explique en bonne partie mon hiatus de ce blogue et de publications en général, alors que je me consacrais à compléter mon doctorat (et à donner quelques conférences entre-temps). J’ai quelques idées de billets de blogue en tête, alors il se peut que je recommence à partager des idées et réflexions, en fonction de mes disponibilités et inspirations.

La thèse elle-même, intitulée Inclusive Autonomy: A Theory of Freedom for Everyone, peut être consultée/téléchargée sur Academia.edu ou sur QSpace, la base de données de thèses et mémoires de Queen’s University.

Comité d’évaluation :

• Will Kymlicka (supervisor)
• Christine Sypnowich (second reader)
• Andrew Lister
• Grégoire Webber (external from Queen’s University, Faculty of Law)
• Natalie Stoljar (external examiner, McGill University)
• Colin Farrelly (chair)

Résumé (342 mots) :

Persons with cognitive disabilities and nonhuman animals are denied the right to make personal choices because it is claimed that they are not autonomous, for autonomy requires the capacity to revise one’s preferences and to have second-order desires. In this thesis, I argue first that this account of autonomy (that I call ‘rational autonomy’) does not provide a satisfying foundation to the right to make personal choices and to the interest in liberty, even for the paradigmatic cases of humans deemed rational agents; second, I propose and develop a new conception, named ‘inclusive autonomy’, that is intended to do justice to rational agents, persons with cognitive abilities, and nonhuman animals.

This enquiry involves multiple steps. First, I criticize the way rational autonomy intends to support a right to make personal choices, by arguing it is empirically inaccurate, that it could be perfectionist or elitist if it is deemed as a requirement rather than a value to promote, and that it generally fails to explain why choices that have not been rationally revised cannot be protected by the right in question. Second, I argue that persons with cognitive disabilities and nonhuman animals also possess an interest in liberty, and especially an objective interest in non-domination, and for the same reasons as rational agents. Third, after assessing a few notable alternatives to rational autonomy, I identify four desiderata for a satisfying conception: the balance between the right to take risks and paternalism, the antidomination requirement, the anti-ableist requirement, and the social support requirement. Inclusive autonomy, defined as the ability to form subjectively defined goods, is equipped to address these desiderata if it is further supplied by an account of preference formation and a theory of paternalism. For these reasons, I explain how the structuring of opportunities and the interest in non-domination can help individuals to develop authentic preferences, even when they are unable to revise their desires; and I discuss three provisos—the competence threshold, the social support principle, and the limited intervention requirement—that impose conditions for paternalistic interventions while enabling agents to enjoy autonomy to the greatest extent possible.

Mots-clés : autonomy; liberty; rights; interests; animals; cognitive disability; domination; paternalism; adaptive preferences; relational autonomy; ableism; speciesism.

Chapitres :

• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Rational Autonomy and Personal Choices
• Chapter 3: The Interest in Liberty
• Chapter 4: Towards an Alternative Account
• Chapter 5: Preference Formation, Social Influences, and Adaptive Preferences
• Chapter 6: (De)limiting Paternalism: Tentative Groundwork
• Chapter 7: Conclusion