rethinking relational autonomy

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Rethinking Relational Autonomy

ANDREA C. WESTLUND

John Christman has argued that constitutively relational accounts of autonomy, asdefended by some feminist theorists, are problematically perfectionist about the human

good. I argue that autonomy is constitutively relational, but not in a way that implies

perfectionism: autonomy depends on a dialogical disposition to hold oneself

answerable to external, critical perspectives on ones action-guiding commitments.

This type of relationality carries no substantive value commitments, yet it does answer

to core feminist concerns about autonomy.

When Catriona MacKenzie and Natalie Stoljar published their anthology

Relational Autonomy in 2000, their aim was to rehabilitate the concept of

autonomy for feminist theory by focusing attention on its social dimensionsand disentangling it from suspect ideals of radical independence and self-

reliance. As they point out, the phrase relational autonomy does not name a

single view, but instead designates a loosely related collection of views thatshare an emphasis on the social embeddedness of the self and on the social

structures and relations that make autonomy possible (MacKenzie and Stoljar

2000, 4).1 This renewed and multifaceted focus on relational concepts has

surely enriched and deepened our thinking about the nature and conditions of

individual agency, and has opened up a point of fruitful contact betweenfeminist philosophy and moral psychology more generally.2

Still, it is not always clear whether relational theorists are offering a

fundamentally new approach to autonomy. After all, many mainstream

accounts of autonomy have turned out to be quite hospitable to the feminist

emphasis on relationality. Most currently influential accounts are procedural in

the sense that they treat some form of reflective endorsement of motivating

desires or values as the key to autonomous choice and action.3 While adherents

of such accounts may not have paid sufficient attention to social factors in thepast, most can accommodate the reality that the capacities needed for reflective

endorsement must be developed during a relatively long period of dependence

on parents and other caregivers. Moreover, procedural accounts of autonomyare, by design, neutral with respect to the content of an autonomous agents

desires, preferences, and values, imposing formal rather than substantive


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constraints on autonomous choice and action.4 Substantive independence is

neither necessary nor sufficient for autonomy on such accounts, nor does

substantive dependence (or interdependence) pose any special problem.5

Finally, procedural accounts do not generally require that the autonomousagents desires or values be developed or endorsed in the absence of social

forces. Difficult as it may be to distinguish between autonomy-undermining

and autonomy-enhancing influences, procedural theorists such as GeraldDworkin have long acknowledged that some such distinction must be made

(see, for example, Dworkin 1988, 18). Some social influences will not

compromise, but instead enhance and improve the capacities we need for

autonomous agency. In short, existing procedural accounts seem well-equipped

to handle a range of important contributions that relationships and, more

generally, social embeddedness make to the development of autonomy.If existing accounts of individual autonomy can happily accommodate so

much of what relational theorists have brought into focus, is there any room

left for an alternative account that is distinctively relational in nature? John

Christman has suggested that it is only views that treat relationality as

conceptually (not just causally) necessary to autonomy that are uniquely

relational. Social or relational factors are conceptually necessary if they playan ineliminable role in the definition of autonomy itself (that is, if they are

partlyconstitutive of autonomy), as opposed just to making a causal contribu-

tion to the development and/or sustenance of the capacity for autonomy. Eventhough Christman is sympathetic to the general emphasis that feminist

theorists place on relational concepts, he argues that we ought to approach

these stronger, constitutively relational views of autonomy with considerable

caution. Such accounts go astray, in his view, by implying a suspect

perfectionism about the human good, requiring that agents stand in idealized,

egalitarian relations with one another in order to count as autonomous. This

departure from the content-neutrality of formal accounts is worrisome: It is

one thing, he writes, to say that models of autonomy must acknowledge how

we are all deeply related; it is another to say that we are autonomous only ifrelated in certain idealized ways (Christman 2004, 158).

I agree with Christman that the latter sort of claim is too strong. Such

egalitarianism is undoubtedly an admirable goal for other reasons.6 But to deny

that individuals can ever autonomously engage in non-ideal relations is boththeoretically problematic and inappropriately patronizing toward at least some

individuals who endorse such lives for themselves. In this paper, however,

I argue that autonomy may be construed as constitutively relational withoutbuilding any such perfectionist ideal into the concept itselfwithout, that is,

giving up on content-neutrality. My focus is, in the first instance, onautonomouschoiceandaction, as opposed to autonomy as a feature of persons

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roughly put, an autonomous person is one who has the capacities that are

exercised in autonomous choice and action, and an autonomous lifeis one led

by an agent who successfully exercises these capacities to a significant extent

over time.8

In my view, autonomy in choice and actionand hence,derivatively, in its other sensesrelies (at least in part) on the disposition to

hold oneself answerable to external critical perspectives on ones action-

guiding commitments. I do not argue that this disposition is sufficient forautonomy, but I do think it is a necessary and key component of autonomy.

Autonomy, on this view, requires an irreducibly dialogical form of reflective-

ness and responsiveness to others. But this type of relationality, while

constitutive, is formal rather than substantive in nature and carries with it no

specific value commitments. I close the paper with some comments on the

significance of this sort of relationality to feminist theory.

THEPERFECTIONISTTHREAT

Christman cites Marina Oshanas account of autonomy as a rare example of a

relational view that is clearly constitutive in nature.9 Oshana positions herself

as a critic of what she calls internalist views of autonomy. These views, whichinclude the procedural, reflective-endorsement-based views mentioned above,

are distinguished by the fact that they treat autonomy as entirely a matter of the

internal, psychological condition of agents. Oshana acknowledges that suchviews are friendly to some of the points that feminist critics have made. Still,

she charges, they run afoul of reasonable intuitions about cases of subservience.

A voluntary slave or other self-subordinating character may count as

autonomous, for the internalist, as long as she endorses her own subservience

in an adequately reflective manner. Oshana finds this result unacceptable

because a persons status as slave or subordinate robs her of the power to

determine how she shall live (Oshana 1998, 82), even if the constraints

under which she lives are self-chosen, and her actions and choices are in accord

with preferences that are, authentically, her own.10

In place of the internalistaccount, she offers an externalist, social conception of autonomy according

to which autonomy is a matter not just of what goes on in an agents head but

also of what goes on in the world around her (Oshana 1998, 81). To be

autonomous, an agent must (among other things) enjoy a significant range ofviable options and retain authority over her social circumstances. Relation-

ships that violate these conditions are by definition incompatible with

autonomy.11

On more than one occasion, Oshana invokes the case of fundamentalist

Muslim women in an effort to marshal our intuitions to her view (see Oshana1998, 2003, 2006). She argues, for example, that a woman who willingly

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delicate matter. While I share Oshanas conviction that many relations of

subordination (including this one) are substantively criticizable on feminist

and other grounds, I also share Christmans concerns about building an

egalitarian ideal directly into the definition of personal autonomy. Aconception of autonomy should not imply that certain egalitarian values are,

as he puts it valid for individuals even if they (ex hypothesi) authentically and

freely reject them (Christman 2004, 152).13

Now, I would by no means suggest that all or even many Taliban

women accept their condition freely or authentically (to borrow Christ-

mans terms), and it can be a form of intellectual and moral laziness to

assume that they do. But if (ex hypothesi) a fundamentalist womandoesfreely

and authentically accept a condition of social and personal subordination, it

seems equally problematic to assume that her condition as subordinate, inand of itself, undermines her status as self-governing agent. It may be thatstandard internalist views leave something to be desired in their handling of

such cases. But if we want to construct the most formidable test case for an

internalist view, we need to be more attentive to possible differences

between self-subordinating characters. We should not assume that all

individuals who willingly embrace subordinate roles will be psychologicallysimilar to one another. Even among those who have stood back and

reflected on the preferences they endorse, some may be far more responsive

than others to considerations that (apparently) weigh against those prefer-ences. Responsiveness to critical perspectives on ones action-guiding

commitments is not an externalist condition in Oshanas sense, but it

should, I think, make a difference to our intuitions about relative autonomy.

A Taliban woman who is prepared to take up and respond to the critical

perspectives of others, even if she is unconvinced by their arguments, is

strikingly different from one who is not. We may find the content of her

commitments to be utterly wrong-headed, maybe even in part because we

suspect they will erode her own autonomy competency over time and

irreparably stunt the development of such competency in her daughters.But to treat her as non-autonomous even as she speaks on behalf of her self-

subordinating commitments is to refuse to take the possibility of such

dialogue with her at face value: not only does this woman lack authorityover her social circumstances, our treatment implies, she lacks authority over

her own voice. And this flies in the face of the evidence she gives of such

authority in engaging in just the kind of critical dialogue in which one might

expect reflective, self-governing agents to engage.One difficult feature of the case, of course, is that one might wonder whether

many (if any) Taliban women will be ready or willing to speak up on theirown behalf, since they might regard such self-assertion as at odds with their self-

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take the place of a direct exchange of reasons. But I concede that some self-

subordinators may simply not showany responsiveness to alternative views, or

may just repeat pat responses that have been drilled into them over the years.

I do not mean to deny that some of the women Oshana has in mind may be likethis, nor that autonomy is compromised in such cases. My claim is just that the

examples she gives of fundamentalist women are under described, and that a

view that is externalist (in her sense) may not do the best job of handling ourintuitions about different cases within this broad category. At least some

individuals who accept a subordinate place within a social or personal

hierarchyarequite prepared to answer for their choices (and, indeed, bristle at

the suggestion that they are oppressed in virtue of them). While I cannot cite

examples of women defending such extreme conditions as those imposed by

Taliban rule, Anna Mansson McGinty describes in wonderful detail cases ofwomen converts to Islam who give dialogically sensitive defenses of suchapparently non-egalitarian practices as veiling, modest dress, and obedience to

their husbands (Mansson McGinty 2006).14 Similarly, Uma Narayan presents

us with the perspectives of women who live in purdah and veil in the Sufi

Prazada community of Old Delhi, arguing convincingly that once we attend to

what they actually say about their choices, it becomes clear that these womenare neither simply prisoners nor dupes of patriarchy (Narayan 2002).15

Some of these women may lack control over significant aspects of their social

circumstances, but, in reading their case studies, it is hard to see them as lackingin personal autonomyand it would feel quite wrong to address them in those

terms.

AUTONOMY ANDRESPONSIBILITY FORSELF

Christman seems to suppose that any constitutively relational view of

autonomy will come at the price of perfectionism about the human good and

commit us to paternalistic treatment of those whose values we find objection-

able.16

In this section I argue that autonomy may in fact be constitutivelyrelational in important respects, and yet carry with it no substantive value

commitments.

It is a widely shared starting point among proponents of different views that

personal autonomy is a matter of self-governance of choice and action. What itis tobeself-governing in these matters is a far more vexed question. A currently

dominant answer is that to act autonomously is to act on a desire (or value)

that passes a test of reflective endorsement and thereby counts as truly onesown.17 One way of putting the general thought is that such endorsement

constitutes the agents authorization of the desires by which she is moved. Inthe absence of such authorization, many philosophers speak of agents being

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argues that the idea of autonomy, understood as self-governance, involves the

idea of guidance by what he calls an agents justificatory point of view

(Bratman 2003a, 169, n. 39, my emphasis). This argument begins from the

observation that we are the sort of creatures whose actions often issue fromdeliberation, in which we consult considerations that seem to us to justify

acting in one way or another. Just as it is possible to be in the grip of a desire

that is not ones own, it seems possible to be in the grip of the thought thatsome consideration justifies a particular course of action. The infamous

Milgram experiments, in which subjects persist in administering apparently

painful shocks despite their own discomfort in doing so, provide a stock

example of such a case. These subjects seem to be gripped by the thought that

obedience is required of them in this sort of situation, a thought that

(presumably) they themselves would not, under other circumstances, regard asappropriately action-guiding. Surely, practical reasoning driven by suchthoughts should not count as self-governed, nor should any actions yielded by

such reasoning. In short, self-governance of choice and action seems to require

self-governance of relevant practical reasoning.19 So what does self-governance

of practical reasoning require?

One might think that we could explain the self-governance of practicalreasoning through continued appeal to structural features of the agents

psychology. Bratman himself takes this route, arguing that practical reasoning

is self-governed when it is guided by a known, self-governing policy withwhich the agent is satisfied (Bratman 2003a). A self-governing policy is a

higher-order attitude that concern[s] the significance that is to be given to

certain considerations in our motivationally effective practical reasoning

concerning our own conduct (Bratman 2003a, 160). Satisfaction with a self-

governing policy is also treated as a structural matter on Bratmans view: to be

satisfied with a self-governing policy is for that policy not to be challenged by

ones other self-governing policies (Bratman 2007, 44). On this account, a

person who decides that she should go to the gym because she is overweight

acts autonomously, in so doing, if the reasoning that leads to her action is itselfguided by a known, unchallenged policy that grants considerations of her

weight a justifying role in reasoning about her conduct.

The problem with this sort of approach is that it leaves open thepossibility that an agent may be gripped by a self-governing policy (despite

its name) in the same problematic sense in which she may be gripped by a

desire or a bit of practical reasoning. This objection is similar in form to the

now-familiar regress objection to hierarchical accounts of self-governance,which stems from Gary Watsons early critique of Frankfurt (Watson 1975).

As applied to Bratman, however, the objection may appear to beg thequestion: Bratman argues that unlike the higher-order volitions cited by

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by way of continuities and connections of a sort that are highlighted by

Lockean accounts of personal identity over time (Bratman 2007, 207).

That is, these policies have a claim to speak for the agent because they are

among the psychological ties that constitute a person as one and the sameagent over time.

It is not clear, however, that one could not be gripped by (or alienated

from) such a policy in the autonomy-undermining sense, despite its role inorganizing ones agency over time. Bratman himself raises this possibility,

asking whether a case in which satisfaction with a self-governing policy is

grounded in depression counts as a counter-example to his view. The case he

has in mind is not one in which depression actually undermines the

functioning of self-governing policies, preventing one from (say) getting

out of bed in time to make ones planned trip to the gym. This sort of casewould not, as he notes, pose a challenge to his account, since it wouldrecognize such disruptions as compromising autonomy. Instead, the objec-

tion concerns the sort of case in which self-governing-policies continue to

play their Lockean role in organizing agency over time, but do so only

because the agent experiences a depression-based lack of pressure to change

those policies. One might imagine, for example, a case in which the agent issatisfied with a policy of treating her weight as a reason to go to the gym

every morning only because she is depressed over her bodily appearance (or,

perhaps, because her depression distorts her bodily self-image). Bratmansuggests that such a case does not in fact provide a counter-example to his

account, preciselybecausethe policys Lockean role is still intact:

. . . in this case, the self-governing policies remain settled

structures that play these central Lockean roles in temporally

extended, deliberative agency, and they do that in the absence

of relevant pressure for change. So it seems to me that they still

have a presumptive claim to establish the (depressed) agents

standpoint. (Bratman 2007, 211)

This argument does not strike me as decisive. Even if the depressed agents

self-governing policies do contribute to the organization of her agency overtime, it is still, plausibly, a further question as to whether they do so in a way

that renders her self-governing.20 Stable organization over time may be only

one aspect of a more complex set of characteristics that mark out an agential

perspective. Ive noted elsewhere that deeply deferential agents may be satisfiedwith the policies that govern their practical reasoning and yet strike us as being

merely in the grip of the concerns that motivate that reasoning (Westlund2003).21 By deeply deferential agents, I mean those who endorse their

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to interpret the highly responsive converts interviewed by Mansson McGinty

asnon-autonomous, it is hard to construe suchunresponsive, deeply deferential,

agents as fully autonomous. (In virtue of what we might regard their autonomy

as impaired is a question to which I return shortly.) An agent whose exerciseregime is grounded in depression about her weight does not, of course, invoke

the perspective of some other person to whom she defers. But she has

something in common with the deferential agent nonetheless.22 Becausesatisfaction with her reasoning-governing policy is grounded in her depression,

her reasoning on these matters seems likely to be strongly psychologically

insulated from confrontation with contrary considerations. The difficulty we

would face in engaging her in anything like genuine dialogue about her

incessant gym-going would feel very similar to that which we would face in

engaging the deeply deferential agent. It is in precisely such cases, wherenothing we say really seems to make contact, that we want to say somethinglike Thats the depression speaking, not you! (or, in the case of deference,

Thats so-and-so speaking, not you!). These reactions seem to depend on the

idea that one might be in the grip of a reasoning-governing policy that is not

ones own, regardless of the role played by that policy in organizing ones

agency over time.On a structural approach to understanding agency, it may be unclear what

else it could take for an attitude to count as the agents own. This is precisely

where I think an adequate understanding of autonomy must take a rela-tional turn. The alternative approach I want to defend looks not to internal

psychological structure but to how the agent positions herself as one practi-

cal reasoner among manyor, more specifically, to how she is disposed to

respond to the normative pressures placed on her by other agentswho may call

her to account for the commitments that guide her choices and actions.23

There is, then, a sense in which I join Oshana in rejecting what she calls

internalist views of autonomy. But I do not think that one must look outside

the agents psychology to her actual social standing in order to overcome the

problematic kind of internality. Instead, we must consider whether the agent islimited, in her reflective capacities, to essentially monological functions such as

endorsing or rejecting lower-order attitudes from elsewhere within her own

hierarchy of attitudes, or whether she has a dialogical disposition to hold herselfanswerable for elements of that hierarchy in the face of critical challenges

posed by other agents. This distinction does not map onto any straightforward

distinction between what is internal and what is external to the agent. The

disposition to hold oneself answerable to others is, after all, a feature of theagents psychology, and thus internal to the agent. But it is nonetheless a

disposition to beengagedby what is external to the agent, that is, by points ofview other than her own.24

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ment to her own subservient role, she is disposed to answer for that

commitment in the face of critical challenges. Admittedly, what she defends

might (in part) be a commitment notto exercise her own judgment in many

significant practical matters. But even this commitment is one that may or maynot be backed by practical reasoning of the agents own. The responsive agents

readiness to answer for such a commitment in the face of critical challenges sets

her apart from more deeply deferential counterparts who cannot be brought tofeel the normative force of such queries. An agent who lacks the disposition to

answer for herself may be reflectively satisfied with her commitments, but her

practical reasoning will be strangely disconnected from, and insensitive to, any

justificatory pressures to which she, the agent, is subject. Being impervious to

critical challenge in this way is an excellent candidate for what it is to be

gripped by an action-guiding commitment or bit of practical reasoning asopposed to governing it, which is precisely the distinction of which we needour account of autonomy to make sense.

It might, at first blush, seem paradoxical that the status of ones reasoning as

ones own should depend, in part, on ones sensitivity to considerations raised

by others. But again, it helps to remind ourselves that we are the sort of

creatures who engage in practical deliberation, in which we consult considera-tions that count for or against various courses of action. A lack of

responsiveness to considerations that purport to challenge our current sense of

the justificatory landscape constitutes a recognizable form of passivity in theface of ones commitments. By contrast, an agent who holds herself answerable

for her action-guiding commitments effectively shows that, however firmly

committed she is to certain values, she is not just passively in their sway.25

There is an important sense (to which Ill return shortly) in which she instead

takes responsibility for her commitments, and this is a stance that is intuitively

incompatible with being in their grip.

To clarify, my claim is not that the agent must actually have arrivedat all of

her commitments through a process of critical reflection in order to act

autonomously. While other theorists (including, prominently, Dworkin) havestressed the importance of the capacity for critical reflection, I think it is

important to distinguish between different ways in which that capacity might

be invoked. On the one hand, critical reflection might be seen as important toautonomy for itshistoricalrole in the agents endorsement of certain desires or

values as action-guiding. On this construal, a choice or action may be regarded

as autonomous just when it is motivated by a desire or value that has survived a

suitably rigorous process of critical scrutiny. While attractive in some respects,this picture has its drawbacks: though most people spend time deliberating

about their commitments at moments of uncertainty or before major, life-altering decisions, it is simply implausible that most of our commitments have,

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other hand, a merely hypothetical standard of critical reflectionfor example,

one that requires that a desire or value could or would withstand some idealized

process of reflectionseems to leave the agents ability actually to exercise her

critical faculties too far out of the picture, since it doesnt really place anyrequirements onherat all. Invoking the disposition to answer for oneself avoids

both pitfalls. This standard does not require that all commitments on which

the autonomous agent acts have already survived critical scrutiny. But it doesrequire that the autonomous agent actually have a certain kind of self-

relationnamely, one in which she holds herself answerable, for her action-

guiding commitments, to external critical perspectives. This disposition

requires readiness to engage in critical reflection. Indeed, having such a

disposition means positioning oneself as always a potential member of a

reflective or deliberative dyad, which is one aspect of the relationality of theview.

Placing answerability at the core of autonomy also offers a relational way

of understanding the idea of responsibility for self, an idea that has often

been treated as central to the concept of autonomy. On structural views in

the Frankfurtian or Dworkinian molds, responsibility for self is fundamen-

tally about marking the boundaries of the self through the endorsement ofsome motives and the rejection of others (see Dworkin 1988; Frankfurt

1988). The view of autonomy I defend here also concerns ones relation to

ones motivating desires or values, but treats that relation as having aninterpersonal or dialogical dimension. One who is disposed to hold herself

answerable to others treats her commitments as something for which she

herself is interpersonally accountable: they are neither simply brute facts

about her, nor, ultimately, assignable to anyone else. She purports to speak

on her own behalf, or to represent herself in interpersonal dialogue.

Because the autonomous agent holds herself responsible for her endorsement

of certain values and desires, and for her treatment of them as justifying

reasons for action, it makes sense to describe her as manifesting responsi-

bility for self or self-responsibility.26

In comparison with the structuralconstruals mentioned above, this construal of responsibility for self draws

more directly on important conceptual links among responsibility, account-

ability, and answerability.

In sum, Ive argued that self-governance of choice and action requires self-governance of the practical reasoning that issues in choice and action, and that

self-governance of practical reasoning requires a disposition for dialogical

answerability.27 In order to count as governing ones practical reasoning, ratherthan being in the grip of the considerations that drive it, one must be open to

engagement with the critical perspectives of others. Autonomy, on this view, isconstitutively relational. It does not require that one stand in idealized,

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guiding commitments to be ones own, one must be disposed to answer for

those commitments in the face of external, critical challenges. The critics to

whom the agent answers may sometimes inhabit her own moral imagination

rather than her real social environment. Either way, responsibility for selfdepends on the internalization of a very basic sort of interpersonal relation

namely, a form of justificatory dialogue that (presumably) we begin to learn in

our early interactions with parents and other caregivers and continue todevelop throughout the process of maturation.

Relations of care are causal contributors to the developed capacity for

autonomy on this view. But the conceptof autonomy itself also turns out to

have a relational dimension, since self-governance of choice and action

requires a form of reflectiveness that is irreducibly dialogical in form.

Dialogue, as I use the term, is to be understood broadly. Although theexplicit citation of reasons in a conversational context is one paradigm formthat the required answerability may take, it is not the only possible form, and

perhaps not even the dominant one outside of certain special contexts. (I will

remark further on this possibility in the section Formal versus Substantive

Conditions.) But self-governance is dialogical in the sense that it requires

more than one perspective to be in play, even in its internalized forms. It isprecisely insofar as one is responsive to perspectives that arenot ones ownthat

one demonstrates that one is not simply in the grip of ones own commitments,

but responsive to normative pressures to which those commitments aresubject.

FORMAL VERSUSSUBSTANTIVECONDITIONS

Now, this view of autonomy may appear to smuggle in certain substantive

value commitments, and so lead to a suspect perfectionism after all. In fact,

Paul Benson has defended a somewhat similar view under the banner of a

weakly substantive conception of autonomy. On his view, taking ownership

of ones actions and will is a matter of claiming authority to speak for [ones]intentions and conduct (Benson 2005a, 102), and ones authority to speak for

ones intentions and conduct depends on having a certain sort of regard for

oneself: autonomous agents must treat themselves as sufficiently competentand worthy to speak for their actions (Benson 2005a, 117). Whereas strongly

substantive views of autonomy directly impose restraints on the contents of

agents desires or preferences, Benson describes his view as one on which

normative constraints enter indirectly, by way of the attitudes toward theirown competence and worth through which agents claim such authority

(Benson 2005b, 136).Though recognizing its differences from Oshanas account, Christman treats

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view might, at least at first blush, appear to invite this charge. It requires

autonomous agents to have a certain sort of positive regard for themselves

as agents, and positive regard for ones own agential status certainly sounds

like a substantive value commitment. Benson argues that the autonomous agentmay invest authority in herself implicitly, rather than in a conscious or explicit

way. This may help to defuse the perfectionist charge, if implicit treatment falls

short of a full-blown value commitment. At the same time, however, Bensonrequires that the agent understand that she wouldnotpossess authority to answer

for herself did she not treat herself as possessing it, which seems a rather strong

condition.

The question of whether Bensons view really is susceptible to Christmans

critique would require more discussion than I can give it here. On my own

view, however, we neednt encumber the autonomous agent with anyparticular value judgments about herself. Answerability for oneself is a formalrelation, constituted by a disposition to respond to normative pressures on ones

commitments, not by any particular beliefs about or attitudes toward oneself.

When one holds oneself answerable for a self-subordinating commitment, ones

explicit values and beliefs about oneself may even manifest alackof self-respect.

What marks an agent out as self-answerable is how receptive she is to thecritical perspectives of others. The autonomous agent experiences those

challenges (when they meet conditions of legitimacy that I will sketch out) as

having normative standing in her deliberations, and reacts as though she owesa response.28 If the autonomous agent can be said to display any special sort ofself-regard at all, it should not be thought of as an independently identifiable

attitude on which autonomy depends, but rather, as a sui generis sort of self-

regard that justconsists inbeing disposed to hold oneself answerable to external,

critical perspectives. But again, being so disposed is a formal condition on

autonomous agency, akin in that respect to other conditions that reflective-

endorsement theorists place on our self-relations.

A second and perhaps more challenging objection is that this dialogical

conception of autonomy imports a substantive commitment not to ones ownself-worth but to justificatory dialogue itself. Ingra Schellenberg describes a

case, drawn from her experience as a clinical ethicist, in which a woman she

calls Betty confounds her doctors by refusing potentially life-saving skin-graftsurgery (Schellenberg, unpublished comments). Betty could not be drawn into

direct discussion of her refusal, but instead simply shut down when pressed

to give reasons. Bettys refusal to engage, Schellenberg suspects, was in part due

to her limited intellectual abilities. (Betty had a lower than average IQ andlittle formal education, and may not have been capable of articulating her

underlying values or the role they played in her practical reasoning.) But inpart, Schellenberg suggests, Bettys refusal was based on something else: she

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choice, was resolute in that choice, and preferred to be left alone about it. This

preference, Schellenberg reports, appeared to be consistent with a broader

pattern of voluntary solitude and ferocious independence expressed in Bettys

life-narrative.On the basis of Bettys independence and resolve, Schellenberg is reluctant

to conclude that she was not autonomous. Without more intimate knowledge

of the case, I must reserve judgment about the status of the individual inquestion. I would not, however, regard further evidence of independence or

resolve as decisive. If (subject to qualifications I spell out below) Betty does not

give some form of genuine reflective or deliberative response to the considera-

tions raised by her doctor and other caregivers, then, however brave she seems,

I would argue that Betty isnotself-governing with respect to her decision but,

rather, in the grip of considerations concerning (for example) the value ofsubstantive independence or of standing up to the authority figures in her life.29

To decide autonomously Betty must hold herself answerable for the role such

considerations play in her practical reasoning, which (subject to the important

qualifications discussed below) involves being moved by the feeling that she

owes a response to the counter-considerations raised by others.

Certain details of Bettys case suggest to me that perhaps she was notin factas unresponsive as she seemed at first blush: even though she never changed her

mind about the surgery, Betty did, according to Schellenberg, begin to make

some concessions to the medical staff once she came to see that they wereconcerned for her well-being. These concessions suggest that Betty did give

proper consideration to at least some of their arguments, adjusting her own

stance where she found she could no longer justify it. (Proper consideration

does not, after all, entail being convinced to change ones mind on all points,

nor, as I stress below, does it require a high degree of articulacy about ones

position.) But the broader point, of course, concerns not just Betty herself, but

all those who experience attempts at deliberative engagement not as a sign of

respect but as a threat or as a form of manipulationnot to mention those who

simply do not enjoy argumentation or do not feel obliged to cite their reasonsto all comers. Just as there were surely those who took cover when they saw

Socrates coming around the corner, there must be those who grit their teeth

and fantasize escape when they find themselves in a room with a philosophi-cally trained clinical ethicisthowever sensitive and constructive that

clinician may be. Must one positively value (or at least not disvalue)

engagement in the exchange of reasons in order to count as autonomous? Does

anyone who finds the demand for reasons threatening or tedious or presump-tuous, and thus refuses to engage, thereby fall short of autonomy? This is a

serious question, especially since, as Schellenberg suggests, the sociallyvulnerable may fall disproportionately into the group of those who feel

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practice. It does not, in particular, rely on a willingness or ability to cite reasons

on demand. It does, by definition, involve the adjudication of reasons in

dialogue (of some form) with real or imagined others. But the form that both

adjudication and dialogue may take is sufficiently broad that it does notcommit the self-responsible agent to anything other than a formal condition

that may be expressed in any number of substantive ways.

As a start, it is worth re-emphasizing that one may respond to externalcritical perspectives internally rather than in face-to-face conversation. Many

agents who feel threatened by a more articulate interlocutor may prefer to

consider the matter in private where they will not be disadvantaged or

disempowered by an imbalance in sheer argumentative skill. But of course this

does not fully answer the objection, for an agent like Betty may not engage in

an internal give and take of reasons of the sort her doctors hoped for, either.Moreover, even more articulate agents than Betty are likely to rebuff dialogicalengagement in certain settings, without committing themselves to revisiting

the issues at hand on their own. When the proselytizers come to your door, or

the telemarketers call, it is probably not just that youre too busy to talk to them

now. We sometimes do not think that we owe a responseand sometimes we

are perfectly right about that. The disposition to hold oneself answerable toexternal, critical challenges is not in fact a disposition to defend ones choices

and actions to all comers, but to respond (in one of a range appropriate ways) to

legitimatechallenges. So what is a legitimate challenge?I will not here embark on the task of providing a set of necessary and

sufficient conditions for legitimacy, but will instead focus on two necessary

conditions that may address the objection at hand. First, a legitimate challenge

must be situated in a way that makes relational sense of the intervention. That

is, it must be situated in a relationship that gives context and content to the

concern expressed by the critic. Some sense-giving relationships are broad: one

is a member of the moral community, citizen of the nation, inhabitant of a

community. Others are more narrow: one is a mother, husband, neighbor, or

club member. It would take me beyond the scope of this paper to specify fullywhat constitutes a sense-imparting relationship. But at very least, it must be

clear why itmattersto my critic why I think and act the way I do, and it must

matter to her in a way that she can reasonably expect to matter to me.Challenges that fail to meet this conditioncall it the condition ofrelational

situatednessmay indeed strike the agent as inappropriate or even, in some

cases, as outrageous. If the proselytizers and the telemarketers purport to address

you under the rubric of any sense-imparting relationship at all, it is typically notone that you acceptand in some cases it is a transparently phony one. But

even in more intuitively sense-giving relationships like the doctorpatientrelationship, highly open-ended challenges (Why are you refusing to do X?)

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their choices and actions (or, more precisely, as among those entitled to

answers) when it comes to their own life-and-death preferences.30 Part of the

burden of facilitating justificatory dialogue thus falls on the shoulders of

the would-be critic, who must position herself appropriately with respect tothe agent in question.

The condition of relational situatedness addresses the worry that a self-

responsible agent must (implausibly) be prepared to cite her reasonson demand,regardless of the relationship in which she stands to her critics. A second aspect

of Bettys case, however, concerns the very idea that an autonomous agent

must be prepared to cite her reasons at all. Even in legitimate contexts, the

demand for reasons may seem to place an unreasonable burden on agents who

are relatively inarticulate or otherwise disinclined to engage in argument with

others. This concern points to a second condition of legitimacy, to which Illrefer as the condition of context-sensitivity: a legitimate challenge must becontext-sensitive with respect to the kind of response it invites and tolerates. In

any form of justificatory dialogue, as Ive already acknowledged, reasons are in

some sense up for adjudication. But the direct citation of reasons in response to

questioning may, for some otherwise competent agents, be an alien practice in

which they do not know quite how to engage. (For others, it may feel alien onlyin some contexts, such as the more personal ones.) But there are certainly other

ways of demonstrating that one holds oneself answerable to appropriately

situated critical challenges. Within the realm of the broadly conversational,one might do any of the following: provide a life-narrative that manifests ones

reasons; provide an interpretation of relevant experiences, putting them in the

context of a wider pattern of meaning; describe the actions of an admired other

in a similar situation; tell parables or other stories that are chosen and

recounted in a way that demonstrates responsiveness to the question; and

probably much more besides. Outside the realm of the conversational, an agent

may give explicit or implicit signals that she intends to reflect on what has been

said, signs that she has re-deliberated in relevant ways or sought more

information as a result of the challenge, or that she is attempting to repair,restructure, or terminate a relationship or practice that has come into question.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but merely to give a sampling of the

array of possible responses that manifest a disposition to hold oneselfanswerable to external critical perspectives.

There is, no doubt, more to be said about the forms that legitimate

challenges and responses may take. But I hope it will already be evident that

neither responsibility for self nor autonomy in fact requires agents to value anyspecific justificatory practice. Autonomous agents will, in one way or another,

manifest responsiveness to justificatory challenges, and their disposition to doso is partly constitutive of their status as self-governing. But they can manifest

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Having said all of this, however, it is a striking fact that we sometimes find

external challenges discomfiting even when they are appropriately situated and

context-sensitive. This is not surprising, since we do not always know how or

whether we can answer for ourselves. But insofar as it marks a practical concernabout our own apparent shortcomings, such a response actually demonstrates

real sensitivity to the normative pressures imposed on us by others. A self-

responsible agent who finds herself unable to answer will not be able to restcontent with her commitments just as they are, and the prospect of having to

confront this predicament is not always a pleasing one. Now, if discomfort in

the face of external critical challenges leads to self-deception or avoidance

instead of responsiveness, it becomes a pathology of autonomy rather than a

mark of its healthy functioning. By a pathology of autonomy, I mean a

disorder that is intimately linked to the conditions required by autonomyonethat is triggered, in the first place, by the agentssensitivityto the requirementsof autonomy, even if that sensitivity is subsequently suppressed. The aversive

response I have just described is one that would not be possible in an agent who

does not at some level understand what autonomy requires of her. But

discomfort in itself is not always pathological, nor is it necessarily a sign of

compromised autonomy. Indeed, that we are capable of feeling discomfited (oreven threatened) in this way teaches us something important about the nature

of human agency: it does matter to us, sometimes very intensely, whether we

can respond appropriately to legitimate critical challenges.

FEMINISM, FORMALITY, ANDAUTONOMY

Many feminist critiques of autonomy have targeted procedural or formal views

of autonomy, and some have argued that only a substantive account of

autonomy will answer to feminist concerns about the concept.31 Substantive

accounts that have been developed by feminist philosophers thus far tend to be

constitutively relational, while formal accounts tend to point at most to

causally relational conditions. As Christman has noted, accounts that arerelational in the causal sense may still be fundamentally individualistic about

autonomy itself: the fact that a capacity has social conditions does not imply

that it is itself a social capacity.32 It can thus appear that the formal/substantive

distinction and the individualistic/relational distinction go together, such thatonly substantive accounts of autonomy can be constitutively relational in

nature. If I am right, however, it is important to keep these two distinctions

separate and to recognize that a constitutively relational account of autonomymay in fact be formal.33 But does a formal account of relational autonomy

adequately meet feminist concerns?I argue that conceiving of autonomy as relational in a constitutive but

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committed to masculine ideals of substantive independence or self-reliance.

Being self-responsible is compatible with human interdependence and, indeed,

with most forms of outright dependence on others.34 Autonomy as self-

responsibility makes room forand in fact demandsattention to caringrelations in which the capacity for autonomy is developed and sustained.

Moreover, the account highlights an important aspect of what it is to be

socially embedded: our identities and commitments are not inflexiblydetermined by our social positioning, but are instead worked out on an ongoing

basis in dialogue with real or imagined others.

One form of particularly deep cognitive dependence on otherswhat I

referred to earlier as deep deferenceis admittedly incompatible with

autonomy on this view: where an agent cannot be brought to feel answerable

to external, critical perspectives on her commitments, but seems uniformly toexperience justificatory demands as aimed through her at someone else towhom she defers, we ought to consider her autonomy impaired.35 But this is not

an exception that feminists should be worried about. Indeed, acknowledging

the incompatibility of autonomy with deep deference provides a way of

expressing a legitimate feminist worry about certain cases of self-subordination

without defining away the very possibility of autonomous adherence to non-liberal, non-egalitarian values and norms. In cases of genuinely impaired

autonomy, the question of what explains the impairment is often a morally

and politically important one, and features of the agents social environmentmay be directly implicated as causal factors. But this should not lead us to think

that substantive ideals of independence, egalitarianism, and the like cannot be

rejected by autonomous agents. In defending such ideals, we ought to proceed

by treating their detractors as autonomous interlocutorsunless compelled, by

their imperviousness to critical challenge, to conclude otherwise. The

disrespectful nature of any other treatment has, in effect, been roundly

recognized within the global feminist literature, even if it is typically stated in

different terms.36 The view defended here thus accommodates two feminist

intuitions that have sometimes been hard to reconcile: first, that some cases ofself-subordination are genuinely at odds with autonomy, but second, that it is

problematic to make any general assumption to the effect that non-liberal

values are incompatible with autonomy.

CONCLUSION

I have argued that, contrary to what Christman suggests, it is possible toconstrue autonomy as constitutively and thus distinctively relational without

building any troubling perfectionist ideals into our account of autonomy itself.An account of autonomy based on responsibility for self is relational in both

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self-subordination. Recognizing this, perhaps paradoxically, frees us to engage

in more constructive forms of moral and political critique, treating those

who endorse values we find objectionable as autonomous interlocutors who

deserve to be listened to, understood, and, in the case of persistent dis-agreement,arguedwithrather than as non-autonomous agents who cannot

speak for themselves.

The account of autonomy I defend is in fact well-suited to accommodate thepolitical concerns that motivate Christmans critique. Christman suggests that

autonomy is the characteristic of persons who are candidates for full

participation in . . . collective decision-making processes (Christman 2004,

156), and he worries that relational accounts like Oshanas risk re-victimizing

the victim by excluding many among the oppressed (but not their oppressors)

from public deliberation about their own status. The self-responsibility accountrisks no such perverse result: the capacity it treats as central to autonomy is, if Iam right, one that may be shared even by those enmeshed in problematic social

relations that they themselves endorse. Not only that, but it is precisely in virtue

of therelationalityof the account that it addresses Christmans concern as well as

it does: the relational capacity required for autonomynamely, the disposition

to hold oneself answerable to external critical perspectiveswould seem to becentral among those capacities required to engage in collective deliberation.

Interpreted broadly, as Ive interpreted it in this paper, the criterion of dialogical

answerability is not unduly exclusive but treats a wide range of agents, with awide range of skills and deliberative styles, as capable of participation. I hope,

then, that the formal but constitutively relational conception of autonomy I

defend will be appealing both on feminist and on more general grounds, and

that it will help us to make sense of strong intuitions about oppression and

autonomy that have often seemed maddeningly at odds with one another.

NOTES

I would like to thank Carla Bagnoli, Ted Hinchman, Jules Holroyd, Nate Jezzi, Ingra Schellenberg,Anita Superson, and three anonymous referees for their comments on earlier drafts. I would also

like to thank audiences at Cornell University, Northwestern University, the 2007 Central Division

Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, and the 2nd Conference of the Society for

Analytic Feminism, held in April 2008, for helpful discussion.

1. See also Christman 2004, 147.

2. Relational autonomy is a concept that seems, in recent years, to have bridged feminist and

non-feminist literatures in moral psychology. While MacKenzie and Stoljars anthology was

explicitly feminist in orientation, relational theories of autonomy advanced by feminist

philosophers have also been featured prominently in collections that are not specifically feminist

in orientation. See, for example, Christman and Anderson (2005) and Taylor (2005). I do not

advance this as a criterion of success for relational theories, but merely to mark a point of fruitful

contact and conversation between feminist and mainstream contributors to the literature on



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2007), and Meyers (2004, 2005) would all count as procedural or formal in the sense at issue here,

though of course they differ in their details.

4. MacKenzie and Stoljar offer the following concise characterization of procedural accounts:

On procedural, or content-neutral, accounts, the contentof a persons desires, values, beliefs, and

emotional attitudes is irrelevant to the issue of whether the person is autonomous with respect to

those aspects of her motivational structure and the actions that flow from them. What matters for

autonomy is whether the agent has subjected her motivations and actions to the appropriate kind of

critical reflection (MacKenzie and Stoljar 2000, 1314). Marilyn Friedman also offers a useful

summary of this distinction in Friedman (2003, 1925). Friedman prefers the term content-

neutral to procedural. I use the terms procedural, content-neutral, and formal

interchangeably in this paper, though I have a slight preference for formal (and tend to use it in

describing my own view) because of the perspicuity of the contrast between form and

substance.

5. This fact cuts both ways for feminist theorists. On the one hand, procedural accounts are

attractive insofar as they dispense with popular ideals of radical independence and self-reliance andmake room for social embeddedness and deep interpersonal commitment. On the other hand, they

are unattractive insofar as they appear to miss the fact that some forms of dependence do seem to

undermine autonomy. My own aim (which takes me beyond the bounds of this particular paper) is

to carve out a procedural account of autonomy that gives us tools for distinguishing between forms

of dependence that are compatible with autonomy and forms that are not, and for explaining whats

at stake, at the level of individual agency, between these cases.

6. Indeed, its importance may even have to do with the causal contributions that such

relations are likely to make to the development and sustenance of individual autonomy.

7. On the distinction between global and local autonomy, see Dworkin (1988, 1516).

Meyers (1987) draws a similar but more nuanced distinction among episodic, programmatic, and

narrowly programmatic autonomy.

8. The phrase autonomous person is, I think, actually ambiguous. It might simply refer to a

creature of a certain sort, who may be owed certain kinds of treatment simply in virtue of her

agential capacities. It may also be used more strongly to indicate that an agent not only has but

regularly and successfully exercises a capacity for autonomy. In the latter usage, the idea of an

autonomous person begins to shade into the idea of one who leads an autonomous life.

9. Paul Bensons view is also constitutively relational, though in a different way from

Oshanas (see Benson 2005a). Elsewhere Christman argues that the perfectionist threat arises in

Bensons case, too (see Christman 2005). I discuss this charge in relation to my own view in the

section Formal versus Substantive Conditions.

10. Oshana takes it to be a widely shared intuition that an autonomous person must be incontrol of her choices, actions, and will. But she disagrees with internalist theorists over how to

construe this control. Whereas internalists such as Harry Frankfurt have argued that one may be in

control, in the sense relevant to self-government, even while lacking alternative possibilities

(Frankfurt 1988), Oshana thinks that the concept of personal autonomy includes the power to

choose and act other than one does. How best to construe control seems to be a matter of

achieving reflective equilibrium between our intuitions about various cases (including those of self-

subservience) and other, equally strong, intuitions and considered views with which those

intuitions may be in tension. While I share some of Oshanas intuitions about cases of self-

subordination, I also share Christmans worry about her positive account of control. I think we need

a different way of understanding what can go wrong in such cases.

11. Oshana is concerned, in the first instance, with autonomy as a feature of persons.

Nonetheless, I do not think we are talking past each other. Oshana seems, like me, to regard the

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not necessarily add up to a globally autonomous life if one lacks control in a more global way (for

more on this possibility, see note 12). But this is a point one can accept in principle whether or not

one agrees with Oshanas further arguments about what it is to havethe relevant sort of control. In

other words, where Oshana really differs from the theorists she criticizes is not in discussing global

rather thanlocal autonomy, but rather, in rethinking, in externalist terms, the notion of control that

figures in both.

12. More precisely, Oshana argues that a woman might make an occurrently or locally

autonomous decision to embrace such a lifestyle in the first place, but that she cannot then count

as globally autonomous (Oshana 2003). To count as occurrently autonomous, I take it that the

woman must, at the time of choice, satisfy Oshanas criteria for control and hence self-governance.

(Oshana imagines her as a successful physician who opts to give up her former independence in

favor of a life of utter dependence.) But after her choice is made, the Taliban woman no longer

satisfies these criteria, for the life she has chosen requires her to give up precisely the sort of day-to-

day (that is, occurrent) control over her social circumstances that is, on Oshanas view, required for

autonomy. In sum, Oshana argues that one might, through an occurrently autonomous act,undermine ones global autonomy by undercutting ones ability to be in (occurrent) control of her

actions, choices, and will in the future.

13. Oshana responds to Christmans critique with the suggestion that he is conflating personal

with political autonomy (Oshana 2006): he wants to represent the Taliban woman as politically

autonomous, and as having a moral right to a voice in the political process, but fails to recognize that

one might satisfy these criteria even while lacking personal autonomy in Oshanas sense. Whether or

not this is true of Christman, my own concern is squarely with agential authority over choice and

actionand agential authority is, in the first instance, a matter of personal rather than political

autonomy, even if there is ultimately some relation between the two. (Some comments in the

conclusion to this paper bear on their relation, but only speculatively.) In her response to Christman,

Oshana rightly points out that the Taliban woman in fact lacks a socially and politically authoritativevoice. But whether agential authority (and thus personal autonomy) requires social or political

authority is precisely the question at issue. While Oshana argues that it does, I offer an argument,

which differs from those she rejects, that it does not.

14. I say apparently non-egalitarian practices because these women do not themselves

describe the practices as non-egalitarian. Some (like the woman Mansson McGinty refers to as

Cecilia) offer their own, alternative interpretations of equality between men and women, which

in their views may be compatible with different rights and responsibilities linked to biological and

religiously ordained roles (Mansson McGinty 2006, 98).

15. While I share Narayans view that these women should be considered autonomous, I do

not share the very thin conception of autonomy that she defends, which does not include anyanswerability requirement of the sort I discuss in this paper. Oshana also rejects Narayans thin

conception of autonomy, though for different reasons. See Oshana (2006, 1024).

16. Oshana claims that paternalismjust is that which offends against autonomy (Oshana

2003, 116), and elaborates that Paternalism usurps autonomy because it substitutes one persons

judgment for anothers (Oshana 2003, 116). This point is an important one to keep in mind in

assessing Oshanas claim that the Taliban woman is no longer autonomous once she gives up her

substantive independence. If a person has no autonomy to usurp or offend, she cannot (properly

speaking) be treated paternalistically. My intuitions about the highly answerable women I describe

in section 2 run strongly against the idea that they cannotbe treated paternalisticallythat is, that

paternalism does not describe a way in which these women can be wronged. Whether

paternalism is ever justified is, of course, a separate question, which Oshana also treats in Oshana(2003, 2006).

17 H F kf hi hi l f (1988 1999) i h h



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Christman (1987, 1991, 2004, 2005) also accord a central role to reflective endorsement, and for

Diana Meyers (2004, 2005), critical reflection is among those capacities required for autonomy

competency. See MacKenzie and Stoljar (2000) and Westlund (2003) for detailed discussion of

various reflective-endorsement accounts and the differences among them.

18. I borrow the language of being gripped by a desire from Gibbard (1990), and follow

Bratman (2003a) in applying it to the discussion of autonomy. The concept of alienation appears

frequently in the work of Frankfurt, Bratman, and others.

19. See Bratman (2003a) and Westlund (2003) for further discussion of this point.

20. Immediately following his discussion of the depressed agent, Bratman does consider the

idea that some further endorsement of self-governing policies functioning might be required for

full-blown self-governance (Bratman 2007, 211). Bratman argues that a hierarchical theorist can

address this worry without falling into a familiar regress. On his view, nofurtherendorsing attitude is

needed because self-governing policies already reflexively endorse their own functioning. He

emphasizes, however, that Lockean role and satisfaction, not reflexivity, are the primary ingredients

in agential authority. The appeal to reflexivity does not seem designed to address the sort of worry Iraise about agential authority in depressed and deferential agents, which is not, in any case,

motivated by an intuition that furtherendorsementis required.

21. Henceforth I will refer to policies concerning the appropriate functioning of various

considerations in ones practical reasoning as reasoning-governing policies rather than as self-

governing policies in order to leave open the possibility that acting on a reasoning-governing policy

with which one is satisfied may nonetheless not add up to full self-governance.

22. The fact that the deferential agent inherits her policies from someone else is not

ultimately crucial to the case. Mansson McGintys converts to Islam may well in some sense be

taking their reasons from other sources, as well. But, I will argue, they enjoy a form of self-relation

that both the deeply deferential and the depressed agent seem to lack.23. I develop this account at greater length in Westlund (2003). Paul Benson has defended a

similar approach, on which I comment briefly below.

24. I have been tempted to describe the disposition to hold oneself answerable to others as

outward-looking, in contrast to inward-looking, reflective dispositions that are central to

hierarchical, or structural, views of autonomy. An anonymous referee points out, however, that the

distinction between inward- and outward-looking dispositions is hardly a straightforward one, since

on some views (notably, Kantian ones), answerability to others is grounded in the authority of the

agents own will. I agree that an unqualified contrast between inward- and outward- looking

dispositions is overly simple, and for this reason I no longer think that the contrast between my

account and the structural accounts I criticize is best captured in those terms. In light of this point,

however, a few words about how my argument relates to the Kantian project may be in order:Kantian views derive our moral accountability to one another from the autonomy of the will, which

is in turn grounded in the reflective structure of our own consciousness. What Im arguing is that the

autonomy of the will must itselfbe understood in terms of a disposition to hold oneself answerable to

others, and not in purely structural terms.

25. It may be difficult to tell, in some cases, the extent to which an agent really is dialogically

responsive. Some rather articulate agents might be utterly impervious to dialogical engagement,

shielding themselves with pat answers designed to deflect further questioning rather than respond

to it. Less articulate agents may be receptive to external critical perspectives in ways that are harder

to detect. I consider this possibility further in the section Formal versus Substantive Conditions.

For this reason it may be advisable to employ a healthy principle of charity in assessing an agent asautonomous or not.

26. For more on both self-representation and self-responsibility, see Westlund (2003).

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28. Reacting as one who owes a response may take various forms, some of which I discuss

below. Also, as indicated in note 25 above, in some cases it may be difficult for an observer to be

certain whether an agent is being receptive to external critical perspectives or not. But this is,

perhaps, just as we should expect: after all, it is not always easy to tell whether an agent is acting

autonomously or not. One might be tempted to think that a philosophical account of autonomy

should make it easier for us to tell. But it may simply be a fact of life that the characteristics upon

which autonomy depends are themselves sometimes hard to identify with confidence. As suggested

in note 25, this is one reason for employing a principle of charity in assessing the autonomy of

others.

29. Later in this section I argue that genuine reflective or deliberative response may take

more than one form, and I give several examples of forms it may take.

30. I suspect that Betty at first took the medical staff to fail to meet this condition. She did

begin to make some concessions to them once she began to see that they were genuinely concerned

for her well-being (though she never did change her mind about the surgery).

31. These feminists include not only Benson and Oshana, whom I discuss in this paper, butalso Natalie Stoljar (2000) and Sigurdur Kristinsson (2000). Christman describes Diana Meyerss

competency view of autonomy as non-procedural (Christman 2004, 155), but following

MacKenzie and Stoljar, I would instead categorize it as procedural. As I understand Meyerss view,

however, it is one on which autonomy is causally, but not constitutively, relationalso it is a

formal but non-intrinsically relational account.

32. See Christman (2004, 148). Christman cites Friedman (1997) as making a similar point.

33. It is also worth reminding ourselves that a substantive account of autonomy may be

individualistic in nature, as were the popular notions of autonomy initially rejected by feminists.

These conceptions of autonomy required substantive independence and non-conformity of the

autonomous agent. As Christman points out, Oshanas own account is somewhat paradoxical inthis respect. Though constitutively relational in the sense that it treats autonomy as dependent on

the existence of certain idealized social relations, these idealized relations are in fact ones in which

each party enjoys a significant degree of substantive independence from the other(s).

34. See the next paragraph for one important exception.

35. I argue elsewhere that cases of deference or self-subordination are not theonlycases in

which such an impairment may arise (Westlund 2003). Some apparently independent characters

may likewise fail to be responsive in the right way to justificatory pressures.

36. Chandra Talpade Mohantys influential paper Under Western Eyes (Mohanty 1991),

for example, charges Western feminists with othering third-world women and treating them (in

virtue of their cultural, religious, or familial commitments) as generally less in control of their

bodies and decisions than Western feminists presume themselves to be. Her paper offers a forceful

critique of such treatment. Similarly, Uma Narayan offers a powerful critique of the tendency to

treat third-world or other women as either prisoners or dupes of patriarchy (Narayan 2002).

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