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Dorothy Lee's Essay One: Individual Autonomy And Social Structure

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Kathryn Virgin 213387808
TA Adam Kingsmith
AP/SOSC 1140 Tutorial 14
3 October 2014
Essay One: Individual Autonomy and Social Structure
The conflict that Dorothy Lee sees in Western culture is that whether consciously or not, we have separated individual autonomy from our social structure. How then can we value individuals for their sheer personal being, or value positive freedom when we exist in a culture that no longer actively applies those tenets? Herein lies the dichotomy which she presents in her chapter: the autonomy of the individual against the limits of society. By selecting one of the examples from the reading, related to child rearing, I will attempt to establish an explanation as to what Dorothy Lee is trying to demonstrate as a …show more content…
We are products of our society, and our society has been framed to respect success instead. In a capitalist society where everything centers on greed and possession even the morphology of English has been formed to reflect this; the structure of a sentence is formed to show possession over the noun or subject. How we have raised our children has also reflected this notion of success. Parents want what is best for the child, but whom is allowed to decide what is best? When do we allow our children to choose for themselves? It is disrespectful in most cultures to assume you have power over someone, but to permit or allow is akin to exactly that. In Western culture when parents are permissive it is seen as being respectful of the child (Lee 6), but in reality it is the exact opposite. Lee writes a natural consequence of the principle of individual integrity is that you cannot give or take orders without it being a violation of personal autonomy (Lee 8) but this is exactly what parents in western culture do – children are told ‘no, you can’t’ or ‘yes, you

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