Self-Determination

Self-Determination: The specifically human capability to consciously structure our social environment such that individual life is not mechanically determined by external forces, but by the decisions of individuals living in that society.

Source: ‘What is Good? What is Bad? The Value of All Values across Time, Place and Theories’ by John McMurtry, Philosophy and World Problems, Volume I-III, UNESCO in partnership with Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems: Oxford, 2004-11.