Alyssa Lozano

Foundations of Reflection: Self

Dr. Cheltsrom

6 May 2018

Final Self

Group one: Question two

Being autonomous is being able to think on your own, its having your own thoughts and

being strong minded, and not allowing yourself to gravitate towards others process of thinking.

Kant’s reasoning to be an autonomous individual is to due to their subjectivity and how well you

stand alone. Thinking for yourself without any compulsion is not always attainable when you

grow up with outside people working to change your mind on any given thing. As you grow up,

you are restricted to think and be a certain way because of how your parents enforce you. Your

upbringing is where your identity comes from, you are made up by pother people and their

personalities, their upbringing is also a reflection on you. Two identities may not always link up,

but they help each other in building ideas and forming personal thoughts on a given subject.

Growing up, you don’t always have a voice, your parents were your voice. You were told what

you liked, who to hang out with and without question you abided by them because there was no

other alternative. The external constraint that others have on oneself is their identity. Gaining an

identity, creating your own is how you self-advocate, it is making your own person but while still

maintaining some attributes of others identities. Many people don’t put into perspective that

other people, are what make yourself, people are the key to identifying each other. These

external constraints are what put pressure on people and cause one to not be autonomous due to

outside facts. We can adjust our understanding of what it means to be autonomous by shifting
how we think about things rationally. Being rational is how we think of ourselves, no one thinks

to call themselves irrational or have that kind of thought process. Kant dismisses any argument

that is thrown against him with reason of how we must have the capability to think for ourselves

and rely on our own mind to refer us back to how we must accept what is given at hand.

Group two: Question four

Linda Alcoff states “First, there is a growing recognition that where one speaks from

affects the meaning and truth of what one says, and thus that one cannot assume an ability to

transcend one's location.” (Alcoff 7) The problem of speaking for others is not only taking away

their voice, but its giving off a wrong impression that there is no establishment of authority and if

one does not have the same superiority as the initial speech giver, it could be taking as a joke and

decrease the significance of how one develops a bias for how the given speech will be. There are

sometimes when it is essential to speak for others, as said in class, when a person is in a state of

vegetation. This person is no longer cognizant of their actions and they are not in any way, able

to articulate or formulate what they want to be done. Life support is a very controversial topic,

some think that it is just lingering on the inevitable and others believe that there is hope to be

seen in cases like this one. There are however, only certain circumstances where this is allowed.

Speaking for others becomes a problem when your intentions are not pure, this inhibits

Finally, to summarize her four recommendations is not only how

she validates the wrong doing, injustice but by bring awareness to

what the problems are at hand. Each aspect is a huge contributor to

what the problem for speaking for others is, there is key factors

brought up and each serve as an indicator to

Bibliography

Kant, Immanuel. An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? by

Immanuel Kant 1784. Accessed March 26, 2018. 

Alcoff, Linda "The Problem of speaking for Others" Cultural Critique,

No. 20 (Winter, 1991-1992).

Beauvoir, S. & Simons, M. A. & Timmermann, M. & Mader, M. B. &

Beauvoir, S. L. B..Philosophical Writings.Champaign: University of
Illinois Press, 2014. Project MUSE,

“Classics of Western Philosophy” "The Humanism of Existentialism" (First

Day), Jean- Paul Sartre