Kantian-Sadean ethics vs. Utilitarian anti-autonomy ethics.
The psychoanalytic name for autonomy is death drive. Death drive is not something manipulated by circumstances. Death drive just is this non-functional thrust of our libido, or will, that cannot be explained in objective terms. It means that there is in human beings an aspect of behaviour that persists beyond any instrumental activity towards achieving certain goals (pleasure, reproduction, wealth, power). It’s a kind of self-sabotaging drive. Against the usual inscription of psychoanalysis into the naturalistic determinism framework where the human being is controlled by unconscious desires, I think that paradoxically psychoanalysis is the strongest assertion of autonomy. Death drive is a name for autonomy.
