In the last half-century appeals to autonomy have played a larger and larger part in ethical and political debate, as well as in popular and professional culture. It is fair to say that autonomy is seen as one of the dominant values of our times. Yet the advocates of autonomy still disagree about what it is, and why it matters. At times it seems that they agree only that autonomy has a noble, Kantian pedigree, and that it is somehow linked to morality.

They are certainly right that Kant linked autonomy to morality. For example, he claimed both that ‘Morality is thus the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will’ (G 4:439) and that ‘Autonomy of the will is the sole principle of all moral laws and of duties in keeping with them’ (CPrR 5:33). However, it is far from clear that there are strong connections between morality and contemporary conceptions of autonomy, or that so close a connection between morality and autonomy has survived radical transformations in conceptions of autonomy. When protagonists of contemporary views on autonomy claim Kantian ancestry they may exaggerate, and venerate a naked Emperor of questionable legitimacy.

These negative points tell us nothing about Kantian autonomy, or about its supposed links to morality. However, before trying to set out what Kantian autonomy is, I shall offer a brief account of contemporary views of autonomy. I will then try to set out the connection that Kant saw between his conception of autonomy and morality, which will require a short canter through some Kantian texts. This will, I hope, reveal a more interesting landscape than the limited terrain so energetically charted by protagonists of sundry conceptions of individual autonomy that became prominent in the post-WWII world.

Autonomy as individual independence

I first realised quite how bewildering the array of differing conceptions of autonomy in contemporary debates had become when I read Gerald Dworkin's The Theory and Practice of Autonomy. Dworkin listed about a dozen different conceptions of autonomy, which, he claimed, has variously been equated with