Kant and Relational Autonomy. Subservience, Respect for Oneself, and Respect for Others

Recent decades have witnessed the emergence of new, ‘relational’ approaches to autonomy (eg, Mackenzie and Stoljar 2000, Stoljar and Voigt 2022). Although these approaches are very varied, one feature they share in common is a willingness to mitigate the individualistic character of liberal approaches, by taking into account the social embeddedness of our identities and the way this embeddedness may affect our status and capacities as autonomous agents. Yet, some of these approaches have also been the subject of severe criticism (eg, Christman 2004, Khader 2020). This is especially the case for so-called ‘strong substantive’ (and often Kantian-inspired) relational approaches, which take certain social conditions or value commitments to be inconsistent with autonomy (eg, Hill 1991, Oshana 2006, Superson 2005). By presenting persons who accept servile roles or opt for a lifestyle of strict obedience (paradigmatic examples are the subservient housewife and the religious devotee) as being by definition non-autonomous, these approaches would fail to respect their agency and would even justify paternalistic incursions in their lives. My main objective in this paper will be to shed new light on the contribution of Kant’s practical philosophy in this debate. I will start by showing that, although he is a great defender of individual autonomy, Kant also explicitly acknowledges the inevitability and the rightfulness of a wide range of relations of dependence (especially political and labour relations, but also, and more controversially, marital relations). This is evidenced by his theorisation of “rights to persons akin to rights to things” (MM 6:276-284) and by his particular understanding of the “equality” and “independence” of every member of the state (OCS 8:290-7). I will then present the different constraints that Kant places on the moral acceptability of relations of dependence and assess the threat these constraints may pose to persons’ autonomy and to the respect owed to them. To this end, I will examine two Kantian duties to oneself — the juridical duty of ‘rightful honor’ (MM 6:236) and the ethical duty to avoid ‘servility’ or ‘false humility’ (MM 6:434-7) — and two Kantian duties to others — the juridical duty ‘not to wrong anyone’ (MM 6:236) and the ethical duty not to be ‘contemptuous of others’ (MM 6:462-8). I will show how the articulation of these four duties allows Kant to place direct constraints on the content of the preferences and values permitted for autonomous agents, while at the same time forcefully rejecting paternalism and prescribing unconditional respect for human agency. Or to put it differently, I will show how Kant can consistently affirm the existence of a duty of self-respect and the existence of a duty to respect those who fail to respect themselves.