Abstract

Recent philosophy has developed an overblown concept of autonomy. In fact we do not have moral autonomy, and personal autonomy we only have in the sense of being able to decide some things that affect the course of our lives, not in the sense of shaping these lives and being master over them; nor ought we to have autonomy in the latter sense, or come closer to having it. As for our political institutions, they do not presuppose, as prevailing doctrines claim they do, citizens’ autonomy in a more demanding sense. Freedom and democracy as understood for instance in the German constitution only assume subordinates capable of deciding some matters on their own. Current talk of autonomy is just gilding people’s real dependence