Third Annual Ancient and Modern Conference of the Daniel Webster Project
Personal Autonomy, Political Philosophy, and Democracy
Saturday, November 20th , 2010
1 Rockefeller Center
James Murphy, Faculty Director
Personal autonomy is a prominent value in contemporary democratic societies, looming over people’s quotidian lives and individuals’ roles as democratic citizens. Autonomy holds real and lasting importance to liberals, too, with many liberals giving it pride of place as the quintessential liberal value. Liberal political philosophers often suggest that personal autonomy is at the core of liberalism itself, with some contending that autonomy is in fact a crucial human right.
Personal autonomy also enjoys popularity in pedestrian quarters. A variety of people seem to believe that one should ideally pursue values and aims that one reflectively endorses, agreeing that people ought to be self-critical in order to live good lives. And standards and ideals of personal autonomy are promoted in popular educational schemes, as part of efforts to create people who are critical, self-directed, and capable of participating positively as citizens in democratic public life.
This conference aims to analyze and assess the idea of personal autonomy, in an effort to move forward on a series of difficult philosophical issues that plague discussions of the topic. Whereas autonomy may be manifest in group, national, institutional, or other forms, the panels and discussions focus more narrowly on personal autonomy and its centrality to political philosophy and democracy. The conference has four central and consecutive goals, reflected in the structure and order of its four panels. First, the conference aims to lay bare and assess the major competing conceptions of personal autonomy, to consider whether there might be some particular conception (or conceptions) of autonomy that is (or are) most useful or appropriate to adopt for the purposes of political philosophy. Second, the conference shall address the question of whether personal autonomy is needed, at the individual level, for a good life. Third, the conferees will consider the extent to which personal autonomy may be required for democratic citizenship. Fourth, the discussion will concentrate on the question of whether there may be a new ideal or standard of personality that political philosophers should endorse, to advance philosophical discussion and deliberation. Such a standard might take form as a reworked and revised conception of autonomy; or, a new standard could be different in nature, stemming from a non-autonomous ideal of personal existence.
To accomplish these aims, this conference brings together a group of internationally distinguished political philosophers and political theorists, each of whom has made important contributions to the literature on personal autonomy. While the participants’ views differ considerably, their sustained focus will assist in making headway on the important issues that the conferees shall tackle.
Conference Structure
Each panel will feature one main paper and two or three commentators, each selected from the list of scholars given here.
Panel 1: Personal Autonomy: Competing Conceptions
There exist various different versions and understandings of personal autonomy. Some emphasize critical reflection or mental independence as the sine qua non of autonomy, while others focus more properly on the authenticity of an autonomous person’s desires, beliefs, values and goals. Certain versions of personal autonomy identify procedural neutrality as key to the concept; these differ from more “substantive” conceptions, those demanding that particular conditions, norms, or values be met in order for someone to count as autonomous. Still other views point to the importance of an actor’s personal history, emphasizing that an adequate conception of autonomy must address how an actor came to endorse her various beliefs and commitments. And, among these understandings, some conceptions of autonomy are non-individualistic, as one finds with “relational” views of autonomy that theorists at times endorse.
In what ways are these various senses of personal autonomy distinct from one another, and to what extent do the differences matter? Is there one particular version of personal autonomy that is most conceptually defensible, or especially significant for social and political philosophy?
Susan Shell is Professor and Chair of Political Science at Boston College. She is the author of Kant and the Limits of Autonomy (Harvard University Press, 2009), The Embodiment of Reason: Kant on Spirit, Generation and Community (University of Chicago Press, 1996), The Rights of Reason: A Study of Kant’s Philosophy and Politics (University of Toronto Press, 1980). She is also the co-editor (with Robert Faulkner) of America at Risk: Threats to Liberal Self-Government in an Age of Uncertainty (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009). She has also written on Rousseau, German Idealism, and selected areas of public policy.
Richard Dagger is the E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Chair in the Liberal Arts at the University of Richmond, where he teaches in the Political Science Department and the Program in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and Law. He is the author of Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), along with numerous articles in such journals as Ethics, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminal Justice Ethics, Review of Politics, and Law and Philosophy.
Rob Reich is Associate Professor of Political Science and Courtesy Professor in the School of Education at Stanford University. He is the author of Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002) and a contributor to Democracy at Risk: Toward a Political Science of Citizenship (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2005). Reich has also written a series of articles and book chapters, including “Multicultural Accommodations in Education,” in Citizenship and Education in Liberal-Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities, ed. Walter Feinberg and Kevin McDonough (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 299-324; and “Minors Within Minorities: A Problem for Liberal Multiculturalists,” in Minorities Within Minorities: Equality, Rights, and Diversity, ed. Jeff Spinner-Halev and Avigail Eisenberg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 209-26.
Panel 2: Personal Autonomy and the Good for Persons
In what ways, and to what extent, is personal autonomy important for a good life? Should personal autonomy enjoy pride of place as the central source of human dignity, and might its achievement be the highest good for persons? Is autonomy a crucial component of a good existence, or necessary for a good life? Is there something intrinsically valuable about personal autonomy? Could it be that people who are more autonomous as more virtuous, ceteris paribus?
John Kekes is Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York at Albany. He is the author of a number of books in political philosophy and ethics, including: Against Liberalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); A Case for Conservatism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); The Illusions of Egalitarianism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003); The Roots of Evil (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); and The Art of Life (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
George Sher is Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Philosophy at Rice University. His research interests lie in moral psychology, in political philosophy, and, lately, in some of the connections between them. His most recent book, Who Knew? Responsibility Without Awareness (Oxford University Press, 2009) is an attempt to understand how agents can be responsible for acts of whose wrongness or foolishness they are unaware. In that book, he develops some themes that he introduced in my earlier book In Praise of Blame (Oxford, 2006) – – most notably, the idea that blame and responsibility are less closely linked to control than many have imagined. Within political philosophy, George Sher remains interested in the problems about liberalism and perfectionism that he discussed in Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics (Cambridge, 1997). Most recently, he’s been thinking about ideas about responsibility imply about luck egalitarianism–that is, the view that inequalities are only unjust when they arise through no fault or choice of the affected parties.
Panel 3. Personal Autonomy and Healthy Democracy
How important is personal autonomy for democratic citizenship? Ought individual citizens to possess personal autonomy, or work to acquire it, for the sake of their duties and roles as democratic citizens? In political deliberations and society-wide decision making, to what extent are autonomous people helpful or required? Should personal autonomy be promoted by democratic government, and, if so, to what extent?
Lucas Swaine is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. He is the author of The Liberal Conscience: Politics and Principle in a World of Religious Pluralism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), and of two forthcoming articles on personal heteronomy: “Deliberate and Free: Heteronomy in the Public Sphere” (Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2009); and “Heteronomous Citizenship: Civic Virtue and the Chains of Autonomy” (Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2009). Swaine’s publications also include articles in a number of journals, including Contemporary Political Theory, Ethics, Journal of Political Philosophy, Critical Review, and Journal of Church and State.
John Christman is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Political Science, and Women’s Studies at Penn State University. He has written widely on the topic of autonomy. His works include “Relational Autonomy, Liberal Individualism, and the Social Constitution of Selves,” Philosophical Studies, Vol. 117 (2004): 143-164; “Liberty, Autonomy, and Self-Transformation,” Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 27 (2001): 185-206; and “Political Autonomy and Liberal Legitimacy,” in Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and its Role in Contemporary Philosophy, ed. James Taylor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 277-298. Christman has also co-edited a book entitled, Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), and published an edited volume on autonomy called The Inner Citadel: Essays on Individual Autonomy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
Natalie Stoliar is Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, McGill University. Before coming to McGill, she taught at the University of Melbourne, Monash University, and the Australian National University. She is the author of articles in feminist philosophy, moral psychology, and the philosophy law, and is co-editor of Relational Autonomy. Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and the Social Self.