autonomy

Concept found in moral, political, and bioethical philosophy

ConceptconceptQ484105

Instance of: concept
Subclass of: freedom of action

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

In developmental psychology and moral, political, bioethical philosophy, autonomy is the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision. Autonomous organizations or institutions are independent or self-governing. Autonomy can also be defined from a human resources perspective, where it denotes a level of discretion granted to an employee in their work. In such cases, autonomy is known to generally increase job satisfaction. Self-actualized individuals are thought to operate autonomously of external expectations. In a medical context, respect for a patient's personal autonomy is considered one of many fundamental ethical principles in medicine.

Overview

All data

51 statements · 20% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Opposite of: heteronomy
Different from: autonomy (religion)
Members / parts: self-governance
self-determination freedom

On other databases

39 identifiers linking autonomy across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

20%

externally sourced

Source last edited September 30, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). autonomy (Q484105). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/autonomy-Q484105