Understanding Autonomy, Heteronomy, and Moral Responsibility

Autonomy and Heteronomy

A conscience is autonomous when it proposes the rules that should govern its actions, having decided them through reflection and without external coercion. By moral autonomy, we mean those laws we set for ourselves because we believe they are good for everyone.

A heteronomous conscience is guided by:

• Tradition
• Authority
• The influence of others (the majority)

Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Psychologists like Lawrence Kohlberg have interpreted moral conscience as the ability to make judgments about what is right and what is unjust. He distinguishes three levels:

1. Preconventional Level

The person understands standards only by meeting their own interests and respecting rules to avoid the consequences of violating them.

2. Conventional Level

The person considers just what is consistent with the laws of their society. The individual recognizes they are a member of a community whose norms, rules, and principles they admit.

3. Postconventional Level

People differentiate between the rules of their society and universal morals. These individuals feel like members of humanity, where particular justice is inseparable from global solidarity.

Responsibility

The word responsibility originates from legal terminology, alluding to the defense of an action that has been called into question. By the eighteenth century, the concept was used in the legal field to justify that when someone causes injury to another, they must assume the repair of the damage or accept a penalty fixed by law and the judge.

Human Action and Moral Responsibility

Humans carry out multiple actions throughout their lives. Some are unconscious, such as breathing, while others are performed consciously, such as watching a movie or going on an excursion. A human action is any act performed consciously, freely, and voluntarily.

Actions that are likely to be approved or rejected by society are qualified as moral acts. To judge a person's moral responsibility for an act, two requirements are necessary:

• Knowledge: The person must know the circumstances and the consequences of the action. We must, therefore, exempt from responsibility those who are unaware of what they are doing.
• Volition: The action must be caused by the individual themselves, not by an external agent that forces them to act in a certain way regardless of their will.