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Philosophical suspicion of the normative presuppositions of liberalism have often focused on the alleged hyper-individualism of the
conception of autonomy and the autonomous person operating at
its center. Communitarians, feminists, theorists of identity politics,
and others have claimed in different ways that the model of the
autonomous agent upon which liberal principles are built assumes a
conception of human identity, value, and commitment which is blind
to the embeddedness of our self-conceptions, the fundamentally
relational nature of our motivations, and the overall social character
of our being. Feminists have been especially vocal in the claim that
the idea of autonomy central to liberal politics must be reconfigured
so as to be more sensitive to relations of care, interdependence, and
mutual support that define our lives and which have traditionally
marked the realm of the feminine.1
Emerging from this discussion is a view of the autonomous
person that is structured so as to fully embrace this social conception of the self. Relational autonomy is the label that has been
given to an alternative conception of what it means to be a free,
self-governing agent who is also socially constituted and who
possibly defines her basic value commitments in terms of interpersonal relations and mutual dependencies.2 Relational views
of the autonomous person, then, valuably underscore the social
embeddedness of selves while not forsaking the basic value commitments of (for the most part, liberal) justice. These conceptions
underscore the social components of our self-concepts as well as
emphasize the role that background social dynamics and power
structures play in the enjoyment and development of autonomy.
However, when conceptions of relational autonomy are spelled out
in detail, certain difficulties arise which should give us some pause
in the utilization of such notions in the formulation of principles of
Philosophical Studies 117: 143164, 2004.
2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
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over her. This view is in some tension with the idea that persons
should be understood to be constituted by social relations (in some
ways or in some instances), at least when those identity constituting
relations are overly authoritative.
This points to the fact that views like Oshanas actually
combine substantive, perfectionist, conditions for autonomy that
autonomous agents must have certain value commitments and/or
must be treated in certain normatively acceptable ways with sociorelational conditions. Proceduralists defend their views in part in
order to be able to utilize the concept of autonomy in as broad a
value terrain as possible; indeed such views are often called valueneutral accounts in that they attempt to define autonomy without
direct reference to the content of the value systems that define
and motivate agents. What views like Oshanas rest upon is the
claim that certain substantive value commitments such as the view
that I must obey my superiors unconditionally are conceptually
inconsistent with autonomy.
But there is in fact a tension between the perfectionist aspect
of the relational view and its anti-individualism. The latter aspect
shows itself in the need to not only make room for but reify the
social nature of the person, her values, and her psychology. The
perfectionist strain, however, appears in the form of the denial of
purely procedural, that is, content-neutral conceptions of autonomy.
Relational theorists who decry procedural views on the grounds that
they would allow voluntary slavery to masquerade as autonomy are
in fact supporting a conception of autonomy which is an ideal of
individualized self-government, an ideal that those who choose strict
obedience or hierarchical power structures have decided to reject.
Those whose value conceptions manifest relatively blurred lines
between self and other, who downplay the value of individualized
judgments and embrace devotion to an externally defined normative structure (which may include obedience to particular human
authorities) stand in defiance of the normative ideals that relational
views of autonomy put forward. It is one thing to say that models
of autonomy must acknowledge how we are all deeply related; it
is another to say that we are autonomous only if related in certain
idealized ways. I will return to this issue momentarily.
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upon ones values and identity will not be sufficient to secure the
authenticity of those elements of the self. So more must be said
of this requirement to meet the challenge being considered here.
That reflection must be undertaken free from the influence of factors
which we know severely restrict free consideration of ones condition and ones options. The hypothetical self-endorsing reflection
we imagine here must be such that it is not the product of social and
psychological conditions that prevent adequate appraisal of oneself.
This includes ability to assess the various aspects of ones being,
and the freedom from those factors and conditions that we know
independently effectively prevent minimal self-understanding. A
person who endorses his decisions while in an uncontrollable rage,
or while on heavy doses of hallucinogenic drugs, or having been
denied minimal education and exposure to alternatives does not
adequately reflect in this way. A general test for such a requirement might be this: a person reflects adequately if she is able to
realistically imagine choosing otherwise were she in a position to
value sincerely that alternative position.31 That is, her reflective
abilities must contain sufficient flexibility that she could imagine
responding appropriately to alternative reasons (where appropriately and reasons are understood from her own point of view).
Adequate reflection requires that a person can see herself doing
otherwise, under at least some imaginable conditions; otherwise
she is not manifesting a true capacity to consider her own internal
states.32 Such a requirement needs much more description and
defense of course, but a fully worked out notion of adequate reflectiveness could, in principle, be worked out which (a) did not rest
on specific contents concerning the values and norms a persons is
moved by in her reflections, but which (b) rules out cases where
reflective self-endorsement simply replicates the oppressive social
conditions that autonomous living is meant to stand against.
In this way, the person who engages in subservient devotion to
external authorities (or who leads a lifestyle of the sort described
in the critiques of proceduralist autonomy being considered) is
only autonomous if she would not reject those conditions while
reflecting adequately (in the way just described). The contention
being defended here is that one is autonomous in a way worth
valuing even if one exhibits this autonomy in conditions and rela-
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NOTES
1
See, for example, Allison Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa,
NJ: Rowman and Allenheld, 1983), p. 29.
2 The most often cited source for the call for a new notion is Jennifer Nedelsky,
Reconceiving Autonomy: Sources, Thoughts and Possibilities, Yale Journal
of Law and Feminism 1 (1989), pp. 736. See also Marina Oshana Personal
Autonomy and Society, Journal of Social Philosophy 29(1) (Spring, 1998),
pp. 81102. For an overview, see the essays in Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie
Stoljar (eds.), Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency,
and the Social Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). For an excellent
survey of the critical issues, see especially Mackenzie and Stoljar Introduction:
Autonomy Reconfigured, same volume, pp. 331.
3 The dimensions along which a self can be seen as non-individualized are
numerous, and calling the self simply relational suggests merely a dyadic
dynamic constituting the self. But theorists in the tradition I am describing, of
course, accept multiform elements as constitutive parts of the person (not merely
relations with some particular being). That said, however, I will use the term
relational and social more or less interchangeably in this context to refer to
the non-individualized conceptions I am considering.
4 Naomi Scheman claims, for example, that certain affective states, and many
mental states in general, that partially define individuals can only be specified in
social terms. To be in love is to be in love with someone, she writes. See
Individualism and the Objects of Psychology, in S. Harding and M. Hintika
(eds.), Discovering Reality (Boston, MA: D. Reidel, 1983), p. 232; see also
Scheman, Engenderings: Constructions of Knowledge, Authority, and Privilege
(New York: Routledge, 1993). For discussion of this issue, see Louise Antony, Is
Psychological Individualism a Piece of Ideology?, Hypatia 10 (1995), pp. 157
174. For a response to Antony, see Scheman, Reply to Louise Antony, Hypatia
11(3) (1996), pp. 150153.
5 For an excellent survey of points parallel to this, see Stoljar and Mackenzie,
Introduction: Autonomy Reconfigured. Also, see Linda Barclay, Autonomy
and the Social Self, in Mackenzie and Stoljar (eds.), Relational Autonomy,
pp. 5271, George Sher, Three Stages of Social Involvement, in Beyond
Neutrality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Chap. 7, David
Wong, On Flourishing and Finding Ones Identity in Community, in Peter
French et al. (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XIII (South Bend, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 324341, and Jack Crittenden, Beyond
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Also, while non-autonomous persons will not be candidates for the fully functioning citizen described here, it should not be seen as following that their interests
and the interests connected with the networks of dependence and interaction of
which they are a part, should not play a crucial role in the fashioning of just
principles. But the non-autonomous agent will not represent those interests herself
in the various fora which constitute the derivation and application of social principles by which basic institutions are constructed. For discussion of the role of
dependency in theories of justice (and the limitations of traditional liberalism in
this regard) see Eva Feder Kitay, Loves Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and
Dependency (London: Routledge, 1999).
14 Mackenzie and Stoljar, Introduction, p. 4.
15 The terms relational and social do not mean the same thing, and it would
be instructive to examine their different connotations and implications, given
the variety of motivations for such non-individualized accounts. For example,
relational views seem to express more thoroughly the need to underscore
interpersonal dynamics as components of autonomy, dynamics such as caring
relations, interpersonal dependence, and intimacy. Social accounts imply, I
think, a broader view, where various other kinds of social factors institutional
settings, cultural patterns, political factors might all come into play.
16 The most often cited source for the call for a new notion is Jennifer Nedelsky:
see, e.g., Reconceiving Autonomy: Sources, Thoughts and Possibilities. For
an argument that autonomy may well not be able to shed its atomistic baggage,
see Lorraine Code, The Perversion of Autonomy and the Subjection of Women:
Discourses of Social Advocacy at Centurys End, in Mackenzie and Stoljar
(eds.), Relational Autonomy, pp. 181212.
17 For discussion, see the Introduction to The Inner Citadel: Essays on Individual
Autonomy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); for a more recent discussion, see my Autonomy, in Christopher B. Gray (ed.), The Philosophy of Law:
An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999), pp. 7273.
18 See, for example, Gerald Dworkin, The Theory and Practice of Autonomy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Chapter 1, Lawrence Haworth,
Autonomy: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology and Ethics (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986). Cf. Bernard Berofsky Liberation from Self: A Theory
of Personal Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Chapter
6, and Diana Meyers, Self, Society and Personal Choice (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1989), Part II. Also, see my Autonomy and Personal History,
Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (1991), pp. 124.
19 I refer to elements of the self rather than simply desires for reasons
Richard Double and others have put forward, namely that conceptions of
autonomy that see only desires as the focal point will be too narrow, as people
can exhibit autonomy relative to a wide variety of personal characteristics, such
as values, physical traits, relations to others, and so on; any element of body,
personality, or circumstance that figures centrally in reflection and action should
be open to appraisal in terms of autonomy. See Double, Two Types of Autonomy
Accounts, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22(1) (March, 1992).
162
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Nedelsky, p. 12.
For a similar distinction, see Marilyn Friedman, Autonomy and Social Relationships, in Diana T. Meyers (ed.), Feminists Rethink the Self (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1997), pp. 4061, esp. 5758. Notice also that, despite the label,
relational autonomy is still meant as a characteristic of individuals, not the groups,
relationships, or social collectivities in relation to which autonomy is enjoyed. To
pursue the latter route would mean that only we are autonomous, not I in
relation to you and them.
22 Personal Autonomy and Society. Parenthetical page numbers in the text
refer to this article.
23 This is a condition that Joseph Raz makes central to his conception of
autonomy, see The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986),
pp. 372377.
24 While my purpose here is not to criticize Oshanas view directly, there are
elements of it that need to be reconsidered I think. For example, the condition
that autonomy obtains only when the person is protected from physical threat is
too strong, as most women in most societies cannot be fully protected in this way;
moreover, many people such as firefighters, police officers, and military personnel
take on roles that subject them to extreme danger, yet we would not call them nonautonomous.
25 In making this point, I am sensitive to the claim that definitions of autonomy
are not at fault for robbing oppressed individuals of their voices, rather the social
conditions that put such people in a position of strict obedience accomplished
this. But the question of what counts as oppressive social conditions, as distinguished from lives of devotion to sacred authority or unquestioned tradition, must
be answered in light of all authentic voices; and the purpose of an account of
autonomy is to determine such authentic agency in order to proceed to conduct
that very inquiry.
26 This account is, I think, largely co-extensive with the view of perfectionism
put forth by Thomas Hurka, though it is not equivalent to it. See his Perfectionism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 3. Note also that according to the
sense of perfectionism I define, Will Kymlickas liberalism is not perfectionist
in its conception of the autonomous person, since he includes an endorsement
constraint on all values valid for free citizens. See Liberalism, Community and
Culture, pp. 913.
27 See Charles Taylor, What is Human Agency?, in Human Agency and
Language: Philosophical Papers Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985).
28 I am grateful to Catriona Mackenzie for comments which induced this clarification. For a discussion of autonomy in a political context which touches on this
issue, see my Autonomy, Self-Knowledge and Liberal Legitimacy in Autonomy
and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays.
29 This interesting point was made by Marina Oshana in commentary on this
paper.
21
163
For an argument for the relation between autonomy and respect, though
one that relies on a conception of autonomy different from mine, see Christine
Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995).
31 A development of an idea similar to this (though not couched in the context
of a proceduralist conception of autonomy) can be found in Catriona Mackenzie
Imagining Oneself Otherwise, in Stoljar and Mackenzie, Relational Autonomy,
pp. 124150.
32 Cf. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom, pp. 372377, where he argues
that autonomy requires an adequate range of options. Notice, however, that the
requirement I am proposing is importantly different: I am not claiming that an
autonomous person must face actual open options but only that, in order to be able
to reflect adequately she be able to imagine alternative choices under (counterfactually) optimal conditions. Moreover, these alternative are defined subjectively,
on my view, not, as with Raz, from a purely philosophical, external, viewpoint.
For discussion of a similar point, see my Liberalism, Autonomy, and SelfTransformation, Social Theory and Practice 27(2) (2001).
33 See, for example, Mackenzie and Stoljar, Introduction: Autonomy
Refigured, pp. 1317.
34 For discussion of this condition, see my Liberalism, Autonomy, and SelfTransformation.
35 See Self, Society, and Personal Choice.
36 As Virginia Held has said in a different context, we should view maturity
. . . as competence in creating and sustaining relations of empathy and intersubjectivity Held, Feminist Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993),
p. 60.
37 For a discussion of the way that some poverty-related welfare policies
systematically undercut the provision of such conditions, see John Christman,
Autonomy, Independence, and Poverty-Related Welfare Policies, Public Affairs
Quarterly 12(4) (October, 1998), pp. 383406.
38 Paradoxically, use of a substantive conception of autonomy in order to exclude
those participants living under (arguably) oppressive value systems such as
women under some versions of religious fundamentalism for example implies
that the victims of oppression have lower moral status, are less morally responsible
for their choices, and (depending on ones view) less eligible for participation
in democratic deliberation (if autonomy is necessary for all these) than their
oppressors. For the latter will presumably enjoy the freedom from restrictions,
abilities to resist authority, and the like which merit the label autonomy in a
substantive, relational sense (depending on the details of those views).
39 This is a complex and controversial process of course. For discussion, see, for
example, Gerald Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996).
40 For discussion of whether it is really possible to freely choose slavery,
see Oshana, Personal Autonomy and Society, pp. 8990 and Thomas
Hill, Servility and Self-Respect, in Autonomy and Self-Respect (Cambridge:
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Cambridge University Press, 1991). For an elaboration of this view of the role
of autonomy in conceptions of democratic deliberation, see my Autonomy,
Self-Knowledge, and Liberal Legitimacy, in Autonomy and the Challenges to
Liberalism.
41 For a deconstructive account of the motivations and perspectives of conservative women, see Andrea Dworkin, Right Wing Women (New York: Perigee
Books, 1983).
42 An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the Pacific Division APA, San
Francisco, April, 2003. The present version has benefitted from commentary by
Catriona Mackenzie and Marina Oshana as well as helpful comments by Diana T.
Meyers, for all of which I am very grateful.
Department of Philosophy
Penn State University
University Park, PA 16802
E-mail: jchristman@psu.edu