'Defending Relational Autonomy'

Relational theories of autonomy, whether causal or constitutive, are live (particularly feminist) concerns about the individualism and undue valourisation of rationality of traditional 'internalist' views. Rather than thinking of autonomy as a matter of unhindered choosing, or of psychological endorsement of desires, relational theories suggest that autonomy is an ineliminably social matter: to be autonomous is (in part) to relate to others in particular ways, and to inhabit certain social structures, and so the autonomy of one is strongly linked to the autonomy of all - we are not, to borrow from Malatesta and Lorde, autonomous so long as one member of our society is embedded in heteronomous relations. Further, to be autonomous in such a way blurs the lines between the personal and the political: autonomy requires more than "merely" the pursuit of individual conceptions of the good, but also the ability to participate in collective discussions and decision-making about the public good. Such accounts face multiple challenges: those (among others) of over-demandingness, of paternalism, and of redundancy. I argue in defence of the constitutively relational account that the problem of demandingness is a social failing rather than a theoretical flaw; that although the account is thinly perfectionist it is not objectionably paternalist, and that it is a distinctive and plausible account that cannot be replaced by a suitably massaged authentic desire-satisfaction account or similar. In sum, I suggest, the relational account is best placed to explain autonomy as a social rather than individual phenomenon, one that takes particular heed of republican notions of non-domination, and one that should be the focus of autonomy within the personal and political spheres.