Autonomy, Freedom and Rights: A Critique of Liberal Subjectivity (Law and Philosophy Library)

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'.

Introduction 1. Individual Autonomy and Freedom 1.1. Problem: Contemporary Liberal Theory and Subjectivity 1.1.1. The Elision of the Subject: Neo-positivism and the Dominance of Political Science 1.1.2. The Emerging of Subjectivity as the Foundation of Rights: Neo-positivism and Utilitarianism versus Neo-contractarianism 1.2. Individual Autonomy: A Conceptual Chimera? 1.2.1. Kant’s Notion of Autonomy 1.2.2. Autonomy as Substantive Independence: Problems with the Facts-Values Division 1.2.3. The theory of ‘moral muscle’ and Millian personality 1.3. Individual Autonomy and Freedom: Positive versus Negative Freedom 1.3.1. ‘False Consciousness’ and the Problem of Manipulation ‘Real Interests’, Ideal Choice and Weak Paternalism 1.3.2. External Constraints, Internal Constraints and the Anthropological Model 1.3.3. Negative and Positive Freedom: The Issue of the Anthropological Model -Republican Freedom according to Quentin Skinner n -The ‘Hierarchical-Dualist’ Anthropological Model -Freedom, Autonomy and Consent 2. A Genealogical Approach 2.1. The Hierarchical-dualist Model and the Genealogy of the Liberal Subject 2.2. The Annihilation of Worldly Identity: Scholasticism and the Medieval Order 2.2.1. The Individual as a Prisoner of the Group: The Lack of Political Subjectivity 2.22. The Individual as a Prisoner of Things 2.3. Franciscan Theology: Voluntarism and Dominium Sui 2.3.1. Nominalism and the Contingency of the World 2.3.2. The Dominant Individual: Dominium Sui as a Constituent of Subjectivity 2.4. Modernity and the Emergence of the Individual without Individuality 2.4.1 Classical Episteme: ‘Man’ and ‘Representation’ in Michel Foucault’s Analysis -The Cogito between ‘Representation’ and Reflexivity -‘Representation’ and Self-assertion 2.4.2. The ‘Representation’ of the Individualas ‘Owner’ -The Owning Individual and the Liberal Order 2.5. Liberalism’s Broken Promises 2.5.1. The Liberal-Democratic Identity: Constitutive Problems 2.5.2. The Consent Theory of Political Obligation: Individual Autonomy as the Foundation of Liberal Order 2.5.3. The Theory of Political Obligation in English Contractarianism 2.5.4. The Central Place of the Hierarchical-dualist Model -A Contrario Proof of the Central Place of the Hierarchical-dualist Model: Hume and Rousseau 2.5.5. The Contract Theory of the Neutralisation of Individuality: Locke versus Hobbes -Reason and the Will in Hobbes and Locke -Autonomy and Freedom in English Contractarianism -The Metaphor of the State of Nature and Self-condemnation to Atomism 2.6. The Invisible Panopticon: The Naturalisation of Lockean Anthropology 3. Neo-Contractarianism and the Double Order of Desires 3.1. Henry Frankfurt and the Double Order of Desires 3.1.1. Double Order of Desires and Freedom 3.1.2. Limitations and Ambiguities of the Double Order of Desires -Autonomy and Self-Evaluation -Autonomy versus authenticity and coherence -Theory and Practice of Autonomy 3.1.3. Critical Reflection and Grounding Decision 3.1.4. A New Version of Millian Personality 3.2. The Reflective Construction of Identity as the Hinge of Contemporary Liberal Democratic Theory 3.2.1. The Importance of Being ‘Autonomous’ 3.3. Individual Autonomy and the Theory of Justice: The Views of John Rawls 3.3.1. Autonomy and Political Order in Rawls’s Earlier Thought -Interests, Freedom, and Rights -Autonomy and Objectivity 3.3.2. The Later Rawls: The Priority of Reasonableness over Individuality -Autonomy versus Individuality -Liberalism as Civil Religion -The Limits of Rawls’s Constructivism: the Grounding Role of the Normative Model of Personality -The Notion of Autonomy and Rawls’s