Muguerza, Javier - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values

122 <strong>The</strong> <strong>Tanner</strong> <strong>Lectures</strong> on Human ValuesAnd what is even more important, they will discover occasionsto exercise this dissent, not only by and for themselves, but by andfor other moral subjects, inasmuch as the imperative of dissidence- which did not need to presuppose the principle of universalization- is capable, in contrast, of incorporating it intoitself. Sartre’s version of this last principle read, “when I choose,I choose for all mankind,” since individual acts already carrywithin them a potential universality (l’act individuel engage toutel'humanité). 101But equally when I dissent I can dissent for allmankind, even for those who cannot dissent, either because theyare biologically or psychologically unable to do so (as with childrenor mental patients, for example), or because they are unableto do so for sociopolitical reasons (that is, because they suffer astate of subjection that at the moment cannot be removed). 102And, of course, when I dissent I can, by the same token, dissentwith others (but without such dissension causing us to lose sightof the fact that, although often exercised by “groups of individuals,”it is still exercised by “groups of indiuiduals”). 103 <strong>The</strong>dissenter is always an individual subject and-no matter howmuch solidarity there is in his decision to dissent - his dissidenceis ultimately solitary, that is to say, the result of a decision takenin the solitude of an individual conscience.If we now correlate the categories of moral and empirical subjectswith those of ends and means, considered before, we could101 Jean-Paul Sartre, L’existencialisme est un humanisme (Paris, 1946), 17ff.102 Despite the “negativeness” of dissent, we must not forget that it too may bethreatened by the shadow of “paternalism” and no one ought “to be forced todissent” anymore than they should be forced to consent (for an examination ofpaternalism, see Paternalism, ed. Rolf Sartorius (Minneapolis, 1983) and ErnestoGarzonValdCs, “¿Es éticamente justificable el paternalismo?” in Actas del I IEncuentro Hispano-Mexican0 de Filosofía (Filosofia Moral y Political, ed. J. A.Gimbernat and J. M. González García (Madrid, in press).103 In any case, ethical individualism, not to be confused with the so-called“methodological individualism,” vindicates only the autonomy of the moral subjectand not its autarchy (for the difference, see Domingo Blanco, “Autonomia yautarquia,” in Kant después de Kant, and also my paper “¿Qué es el individualismoetico?" in EIogio del disenso).