The notion of heteronomy is used in the field of philosophy . This is the name given to the condition that the will adopts when it is governed by rules that are imposed on it from the outside .
Heteronomy, therefore, appears when someone develops their life according to the imperatives imposed on them . These obligations bend his own will: the subject cannot do what he wants, but rather acts according to the rules imputed to him.
It can be said that heteronomy is inevitable to live in society . According to some thinkers, all individuals must submit, at least to a certain degree, to social, political, religious, etc. conditioning , losing their freedom. The opposite of heteronomy, in this framework, is autonomy, which assumes that the subject acts according to its own rules.
For Immanuel Kant , heteronomy emerges when the will receives the influence of a force external to the individual. This action is defined by the philosopher as non-moral, since it is not moral but not immoral either. With heteronomy, the will is not determined by the person's reason, but by external factors (such as the will of another human being or the will of God).
The decisions that human beings make according to heteronomous will, in short, are not entirely their own: they are intervened. They are decisions under the submission of a foreign power that makes free (autonomous) development impossible.
It is important to emphasize that, for Kant , when someone sets out to act according to their own appetites or desires , their actions are not free. This is because the realization of one's purpose requires submission to demands imposed from outside the will.
In the field of law, this concept is very important: heteronomy is defined as a strange power that subjects an individual and does not allow them to develop their nature freely. From the perspective of law, conduct can be autonomous or heteronomous. In the latter case, intersubjective relationships are generated in the agreement of those who relate, while in autonomy it is power that gives rise to and maintains the relationships.
In the relationships that different social groups have with authorities, such as the State , heteronomy is a concept that arises very frequently. Although there are certain nuances that allow us to talk about autonomy within the context of a country, generally it is a certain degree of freedom that, in any case, is limited by the impositions to which the judicial system subjects us.
Continuing with this dynamic between the State and the citizen, let us not forget that the legal norm applies to everyone equally, regardless of whether we support it or oppose it. This can become more complex when morality comes into play: although the law is heteronomous, morality can be considered autonomous since its strength and validity depend on the person recognizing them in this way and respecting them, even if the norms that they make it up do not lose their value .
Another of the great experts who dedicated part of his work to the study of heteronomy was the Swiss pedagogue and psychologist Jean Piaget . In his extensive theory about moral judgments, in the way in which each individual learns moral norms and then applies them in his daily life, he maintains that there is a strong link between ethical and intellectual development, which should lead us in the right direction. moral dependence on independence, while still respecting the freedom of others in the process.