Autonomy and Consent

Autonomy and Consent
Book Chapter
Neil C. Manson
The Routledge Handbook of Autonomy, 2022 [Routledge]
Abstract
In the philosophy of consent, the notion of autonomy is widely appealed to for a number of reasons. The philosophy of consent has tended to focus on certain types of consent, in certain domains where consent plays an important normative role. But consent is also a key part of everyday social interactions beyond the special domains of interest of the philosophy of consent. Because the relationship between autonomy and consent in the philosophy of consent has been discussed by others (Dworkin 1988; Beauchamp and Childress 2001; O’Neill 2002; Beauchamp 2010; Walker 2018), the aim here is to take a slightly different approach and to consider what kinds of autonomy might be relevant to a proper characterization of everyday consent. We will then briefly return to consider the significance of autonomy in the philosophy of consent.