Autonomy, Freedom and Rights A Critique of Liberal Subjectivity [Paperback]

For the author freedom is not a fixed measure. It is not the container of powers and rights defining an individual's role and identity. It is rather the outcome of a process whereby individuals continuously re-define the shape of their individuality. Freedom is everything that each of us manages to be in his or her active and uncertain opposition to external 'pressures'.

Autonomy, viewed as a subject's autonomous designing of her own distinctive 'individuality', is not a constitutive problem for liberal theory. Since its earliest formulations, liberalism has taken it for granted that protecting rights is a sufficient guarantee for the primacy of individual subjectivity. The most dangerous legacy of the 'hierarchical-dualist' representation of the subject is the primacy given to reason in defining an individual's identity. For Santoro freedom is not a fixed measure. It is not the container of powers and rights defining an individual's role and identity. It is rather the outcome of a process whereby individuals continuously re-define the shape of their individuality. Freedom is everything that each of us manages to be in his or her active and uncertain opposition to external 'pressures'.Introduction1. Individual Autonomy and Freedom1.1. Problem: Contemporary Liberal Theory and Subjectivity1.1.1. The Elision of the Subject: Neo-positivism and the Dominance of Political Science1.1.2. The Emerging of Subjectivity as the Foundation of Rights: Neo-positivism and Utilitarianism versus Neo-contractarianism1.2. Individual Autonomy: A Conceptual Chimera?1.2.1. Kants Notion of Autonomy1.2.2. Autonomy as Substantive Independence: Problems with the Facts-Values Division1.2.3. The theory of moral muscle and Millian personality1.3. Individual Autonomy and Freedom: Positive versus Negative Freedom1.3.1. False Consciousness and the Problem of Manipulation Real Interests, Ideal Choice and Weak Paternalism1.3.2. External Constraints, Internal Constraints and thlcL