Consent and the Pursuit of Autonomy

Abstract

Professor Nancy S. Kim's book provides a carefully considered theory of consent and a plethora of specific, useful applications thereof. This response to Professor Kim's valuable contribution will focus on some elements of the former, to the exclusion of the latter. In particular, this response attends to the crucial, but vexed, idea of autonomy and its relation to consent. Professor Kim's project begins with recognizing an uncertainty or ambiguity in the idea of consent. Consent may refer to a subjective state of mind, or to a legal or moral justification for some act. Consent often, but not always, is thought to require some form of communicated manifestation. What, precisely, is being communicated is a bit tricky. Presumably it cannot be the consent itself that is being communicated, as the communicating is often thought to be a constitutive part of the consent. But perhaps one might say, however curiously, that consent is what it is only by virtue of being expressed or communicated, or by being made manifest.