Concept
Heteronomy
Overview
Heteronomy refers to action that is influenced by a force outside the individual, in other words the state or condition of being ruled, governed, or under the sway of another, as in a military occupation. It is the counter/opposite of autonomy.
Philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis contrasted heteronomy with autonomy by noting that while all societies create their own institutions (laws, traditions and behaviors), autonomous societies are those in which their members are aware of this fact, and explicitly self-institute (αυτονομούνται). In contrast, the members of heteronomous societies (hetero- 'other') attribute their imaginaries to some extra-social authority (e.g., God, the state, ancestors, historical necessity, etc.). Immanuel Kant, drawing on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, considered such an action nonmoral.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Classification of all Principles of Morality which can be founded on the Conception of Heteronomy Here as elsewhere human reason in its pure use, so long as it was not critically examined, has first tried all possible wrong ways before it succeeded in finding the one true way. All principles which can be taken from this point of view are either empirical or rational.
Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
The author is tied to Heteronomy in the knowledge graph; opens on Heteronomy.
Whether this interest was private or otherwise, in any case the imperative must be conditional, and could not by any means be capable of being a moral command. I will therefore call this the principle of Autonomy of the will, in contrast with every other which I accordingly reckon as Heteronomy? [Footnote: Cp. "Critical Examination of Practical Reason," p. 184.]
Michel de Montaigne, Literary and Philosophical Essays
Names Heteronomy.
If therefore the matter of the volition, which can be nothing else than the object of a desire that is connected with the law, enters into the practical law, as the condition of its possibility, there results heteronomy of the elective will, namely, dependence on the physical law that we should follow some impulse or inclination. In that case the will does not give itself the law, but only the precept how rationally…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
The author is tied to Heteronomy in the knowledge graph; names Heteronomy twice.
Philosophers who discussed Heteronomy
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Divine command theory.