We have traveled over complex terrain in part I in attempting to lay out a map of factors to which models of the self must be faithful. The current chapter will serve as a bridge to part II, where the concept of autonomy will be the focus. Autonomy, in this discussion, however, will be a characteristic of individual persons, rather than groups or relations among people, and it will serve as the fundamental model of the person in the context of democratic political theory, as I will suggest. So to make those two points at all plausible – that autonomy is a central political value and, as such, it attaches fundamentally to individuals – we must summarize the aspects of selves surveyed in part I which pointed toward a much more social conception of the self, indeed a “socio-historical” (and embodied) conception of self. What will be left is to argue that seeing autonomy as a characteristic principally of individuals does no violence to that complex model of selves. It will also be necessary to show that this serves acceptable theoretical aims in the construction of democratic political principles.

I will first discuss what theoretical purpose models of the self serve, or at least serve in the particular context that interests us here.