Abstract

This thesis argues for a radical understanding of personal autonomy as constitutively social-relational. Standard conceptualisations in liberalism construe autonomy broadly in line with Frankfurt and Dworkin’s accounts, which rely on the idea of an inner self as the authenticator of personal commitments. These conceptualisations suffer from serious theoretical limitations including problems of regress, manipulation and authority. I argue that attempts to address these problems from within the standard paradigm, for example by building in conditions of procedural independence to prevent commitments from being manipulated, help to an extent. However, they remain reliant on an insufficiently explained idea of an inner self as the source of an autonomous agent’s motives, so they do not go far enough to capture what we want from autonomy: that it explains how a person can have the power to shape her life. I explore two sets of criticisms of the standard paradigm, from communitarianism and feminism; both argue that standard autonomy is excessively individualistic and fails to pay enough attention to the role of social factors. I enter the debate about how far, if at all, autonomy might be either causally (weakly) or constitutively (strongly) social-relational. I show that the liberal can accommodate the idea that autonomy is enabled by social relations, but is severely challenged by more strongly relational, constitutive claims. I make the original point that standard views cannot explain how individuals can be sure which of their motives are authentic and which should be endorsed. This is a significant gap in autonomy theory. I propose a methodological shift from analysing autonomous actions to analysing autonomous agency. Drawing on dialogical accounts of critical reflection, Axel Honneth’s inter-subjectivity, and Bernard Williams’ notion of ‘trustful conversation’ I contribute a constitutively social-relational condition for autonomous agency. From this I argue for a constitutive condition for autonomous actions. (PhD, 2014. Supervisors: Miranda Fricker and Susan James.)