Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
Summary
This has been a wide-ranging study and many of the points examined were surely glossed over too quickly. The general thrust of the analysis has been to lay out and defend a model of the self that avoids the pitfalls of standard conceptions of the political person, specifically those that inherit the narrow liberal individualism that has dominated political theory since the Enlightenment. My broad goal was to take on as many of the critical observations about selves and social interaction pointed to by critics of that (liberal, Enlightenment) tradition, but to then reconstruct a model of the political self that can play a role in a conception of autonomy that itself is theoretically and politically viable. The rejection of autonomy-based conceptions of justice and democracy from many of these critics was based on the idea that such a view could only rest on a problematically narrow understanding of the person, often reflecting privileged social positions and identities. In many cases, the accusations were correct, in that many traditional models of the citizen and his interests reflected that privileged status. My goal here, however, was to explore as much as possible a conception of the autonomous person that absorbed as much of what was plausible in those critiques but keep alive the view of justice that rested on the ideals of individual and collective self-government.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Politics of PersonsIndividual Autonomy and Socio-historical Selves, pp. 245 - 246Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009