Abstract

Autonomy is almost certainly the most important value “discovered” in bioethics after its birth in 1960s. It is sometimes said that autonomy is a specific kind of freedom – one that can be enjoyed only by rational beings; the most difficult problem connected with its definition is that we can easily define this notion in such a way that autonomy could not be treated as a kind of freedom at all. Among other possibilities, especially interesting definition of autonomy refers not to the autonomous agent oneself but to its action: we can say that patient’s action is autonomous only when it is done: 1. intentionally, 2. with understanding and 3. without any controlling influences.