Intellectual autonomy within the school of choice model

Abstract

Through a bibliographic analysis, this study sought to understand the concept of intellectual autonomy within the field of philosophy and to compare it with the notion of autonomy used in the “school of choice” model. To do so, it first distinguished the concept of intellectual autonomy from the more common uses of the term, as well as from the philosophical conceptions of moral and political autonomy, in order to later define it. Once this was established, texts provided by the Institute for Social Co-responsibility (ICE) were analyzed in search of a definition of autonomy within the “school of choice” model. From this analysis, a possible understanding of what the model advocates as autonomy was constructed. It was observed that the term was used in different senses within the documents — at times referring to autonomy in a general sense, and at others in an intellectual or moral sense. This demonstrates either a lack of precision in the use of the term or the model’s intention to develop all senses of autonomy.