Book Reviews
492
Personal Autonomy in Society
Marina Oshana
Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006, 204pp.
ISBN: 0 7546 5670 5.
Contemporary Political Theory (2007) 6, 492–496. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300313
Debates concerning individual autonomy have, it seems, spilled out of the
lecture theatre and entered the legislative assemblies and government
departments of many liberal democratic states throughout the world. Many
of the most pressing political questions currently facing the governments of the
UK and the US, for example, are questions concerning autonomy — its limits,
its importance, how it might be protected, and how and when it might be taken
away. The ‘war on terror’ currently being waged by the US and the UK has
provided the justification for a raft of new measures aimed at protecting
national security which have led citizens, legislators, and academics to confront
difficult questions about the nature of freedom and the responsibilities of
liberal states. While human rights activists criticize the moves made, for
example, in the US Patriot Act and the British Anti-Terrorism Act, defenders
argue that some erosion of autonomy is a necessary and inevitable price to pay
for increased national security. According to the Associated Press, one-third of
Americans currently ‘favour making it easier for authorities to access private
e-mail and phone conversations [and] more than 70 percent favour requiring
US citizens to carry identification cards with fingerprints’ (p. 135). Evidence
such as this would appear to suggest that such measures are not always the
draconian impositions that many rights activists make them out to be, but
instead represent a response to genuinely felt, democratically expressed
sentiments among wide sections of the political community. Should these
democratically expressed concerns pass into laws that undermine individual
autonomy? The answer to this question depends on how (and to what extent)
one values democracy. It also depends on what one means by autonomy.
Marina Oshana says little about democracy in her book, but a lot about
autonomy. Oshana notes the apparent erosion of individual autonomy in many
Western democracies. She encourages us to return to fundamental debates
about the nature and value of autonomy in liberal democratic states, and to
reflect upon the extent to which the autonomy of the individual might be
fostered in a wider climate of political uncertainty. What is autonomy? What is
it not? And how — and to what extent — might social and political institutions
protect autonomy while at the same time protecting other values such as
security?
Oshana confronts these questions head on. In Personal Autonomy in Society
Oshana develops a coherent and persuasive account of personal autonomy,
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and a thoroughgoing defence of why autonomy thus understood should be
valued. Her central question might be said to be a common one in analytical
philosophy and in Anglo-American political theory: how can we be understood
to be autonomous (in the sense that we have de facto control over our lives)
given that ‘our character and our values are, in part, shaped unbidden and that
the processes by which these are shaped begins before we are in a position to
chart the course of our lives’ (p. 158). That is, how can we be understood as
autonomous when so much of our lives are determined for us by relationships
and attachments over which we have little or no control?
Oshana’s account of autonomy is rooted in the idea that social relations
matter, and matter profoundly. Our autonomy will be shaped, constrained and
limited by the relationships in which we are, and have been, engaged.
Autonomy is therefore not merely a condition of psychological authenticity
(as thinkers like Frankfurt and Dworkin have argued); rather it describes
the individual’s capacity to deliberate upon the content of her life and to
‘change her values and motivations and to alter significant relations in her
life if she so chooses’ (p. 159). For Oshana, autonomy does not merely describe
a ‘state of mind’, or an ‘inner citadel’ of core reason, but rather a historically
and socially shaped capacity to achieve ‘substantive independence’ from
persons, values, and roles which are inhospitable to one’s capacity for
self-government.
The account of autonomy Oshana provides, then, is therefore both ‘socialrelational’ and perfectionist. The capacity for an individual to be autonomous
is shaped by the definite social conditions in which she finds herself. But not all
social relationships will be conducive to autonomy. Some may deny or erode
her capacity for self-government, and it is important that she is protected from
such relationships in order that her autonomy is encouraged. An important
normative implication of this claim, of course, is that state institutions have a
responsibility to encourage certain kinds of social relations (and the ways of life
to which they give rise) at the expense of others which are not compatible with
personal autonomy.
Oshana rightly acknowledges that this leads her into controversial territory.
The idea that the state has a responsibility to encourage certain ways of life at
the expense of others represents a fundamental challenge to many liberals who
believe that social and political institutions should seek to be impartial among
different conceptions of the good life. In particular, she argues, her claims put
her at odds with defenders of classical liberalism or libertarianism, for whom
the exercise of free choice is more important than questions concerning the
origins of these choices. Oshana’s theory specifically argues that certain
conditions need to hold in order for an individual’s choices to be understood as
autonomous — conditions internal to the individual (such as rationality,
procedural independence, and self-respect), and social and political conditions
Contemporary Political Theory 2007 6
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external to the individual (such as access to a range of options, financial
security, freedom from misinformation, and a general system of institutions
capable of securing all these things). In doing so, her theory underwrites a
perfectionist account of politics aimed at encouraging those social and political
conditions in which individuals might genuinely take control of their lives with
the help of active state institutions committed to encouraging this substantive
ability in all people.
Oshana presents all this in an engaging and precise manner. In testing her
theory against a number of ‘hard cases’, she successfully outlines her case
against the structuralists and shows the perfectionist nature of autonomy as
rooted in certain autonomy-supportive social conditions. The question that
remains, however, is whether her theory is as controversial or as unique as she
seems to think it is. She is indeed right that many liberal political theorists
would reject her argument for perfectionism, but she neglects to discuss in any
great depth the fact that many others would embrace it as a fundamental
normative foundation for understanding the roles and responsibilities of the
state. Liberals are, of course, split over many things, and the extent to which
liberal principles and institutions should remain impartial with regard to
different conceptions of the good life represents perhaps the most obvious fault
line within the doctrine. While Oshana rightly points out that her theory will be
controversial among impartialists, she seems unwilling to acknowledge that it
will not be all that controversial at all among a growing and influential group
of thinkers who believe that liberalism should actively seek to foster autonomy
supportive conditions in society at the expense of those conditions which are
inimical to autonomy.
Oshana seems insufficiently attentive to (or merely unaware of) the
disagreements which rage among liberals on this and other questions, and
too quick to assume that the governments of actually existing liberal states can
be evaluated as exemplars of liberalism as found in academic discourse. For
example, in Chapter 5 (in which she discusses a number of ‘objections from
liberalism’ to her theory), she states that there ‘is good reason to believe that
political liberals value a perfectionist notion of autonomy. In the liberal society
of the US, the government does claim that some ways of life are inherently
superior to others and frequently aims to promote some ways of life over
others’ (p. 105). There are several problems with this. Primarily, it is not
entirely clear what relationship the current US government has with ‘political
liberalism’. It would seem that what Oshana means by ‘political liberalism’ is
merely ‘the project of using liberal theory to inform a set of guiding values for
our social and political institutions’. Consequently, she is not talking about
‘political liberalism’ of the kind that dominates contemporary debates in
Anglo-American political theory (i.e. as defined by thinkers such as John
Rawls and Charles Larmore), and hence, she is using the term in a way that will
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appear slightly alien and confusing to many readers. More importantly, she
seems unaware that this might be significant.
It is significant, however, because it makes locating her work in the wider
literature a little difficult, and also leads her to make certain problematic
claims. This is most obvious when she comes to defend her position ‘against’
liberals. ‘There is nothing inconsistent about holding a perfectionist account of
autonomy in conjunction with political liberalism’, she argues. Indeed,
‘Stephen Wall defends a perfectionist variety of liberalism’ (p. 105). This is
true. But Wall is not a political liberal. His liberalism is rooted in a
perfectionist defence of personal autonomy which specifically stands in
contradiction to political liberalism. Joseph Raz, Will Kymlicka, John Stuart
Mill, and many others have also argued that liberals should seek to root
liberalism in the principle of autonomy rather than a strict impartialism, and
they have done so by drawing a distinct line between themselves and those
defenders of ‘political liberalism’ who are in general sceptical of the
compatibility of personal autonomy with other important liberal values such
as stability and toleration. Political liberalism of the kind that most political
theorists working in this area would recognize has risen in popularity precisely
because it rejects the claim that liberalism should be concerned with the
encouragement of certain ways of life over others.
It is an open and important question whether political liberalism of the
Rawlsian/Larmorean variety might be said to lean more heavily on the
principle of autonomy than its advocates believe. But this issue is not discussed
in the book, and no suggestion is made that different forms of liberalism might
hold really quite divergent views on the structure and ends of liberal political
theory. Consequently, the conclusion that Oshana asks us to accept is that
liberalism — broadly conceived — is not necessarily incompatible with the idea
of personal autonomy. This is true but would not, I suggest, come as news to
many.
Oshana is indeed right in her claims that liberal perfectionism is a
controversial doctrine. It is controversial in the Rawlsian sense (that it
represents a comprehensive account of the good which not everyone will
share), and in the broader sense that it will be rejected by many within and
outside the liberal tradition. Oshana’s book is a work of philosophy rather
than political theory, and so her concern is to work out what autonomy is, not
whether it might be consistent with the kind of value pluralism that
characterizes contemporary liberal democratic states. Indeed, she suggests
that many political theorists who claim to be interested in getting to grips with
the nature of autonomy are not really interested in doing so at all. Oshana
suspects that ‘philosophers who insist upon deciding the merit of an account of
autonomy by seeing what the account would imply for political concerns such
as the shape of liberal principles and the validation of such principles are not
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concerned with autonomy but with political theory and what best comports
with presuppositions embedded in the theory’ (p. 74). Maybe. But for someone
who seems at least partially motivated by a desire to defend not only a
particular definition of autonomy but the value of autonomy in the face of
increased attacks by governments throughout the world, she must be
concerned, surely, whether her account of autonomy is politically attainable,
and what a theory needs to look like in order for it to be a plausible response to
concrete political problems. Political theory does not strike me as an enemy of
philosophical rigour, here. Rather it strikes me as a process of working out
exactly how much of a pure account like this we might hope for in a world in
which (as she rightly points out) individuals seem more and more willing to
give up some of their autonomy in order to feel more secure, more unified as a
society, more inclusive, or simply less afraid.
Philip Parvin
Trinity Hall, Cambridge, UK
Negotiating Diversity: Liberalism, Democracy and Cultural Difference
Matthew Festenstein
Polity Press, Cambridge, 2005, 197pp.
ISBN: 9780 745 624 068.
Contemporary Political Theory (2007) 6, 496–497. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300312
This is a very welcome survey of current debates in political philosophy about
multiculturalism. It is welcome not only for providing an intelligible,
dispassionate and illuminating summary of the very heterogeneous contributions to these debates but also for its timeliness. Now seems a very good
moment indeed to be clear about the politics of cultural difference.
Multiculturalism has been a hot topic in political philosophy since Kymlicka’s
first book in 1989; it is now and for all the self-evident reasons a hot political
topic.
The book is clearly written, is thorough in its treatment of various claims
and displays an impressive familiarity with a wealth of material. At the same
time Festenstein presses his own particular viewpoint without letting that get in
the way of a fair-minded treatment of all the usual suspects: Brian Barry, Will
Kymlicka, Chandran Kukathas and Charles Taylor. Brian Barry in particular
is cut down to size and plausibly exposed as far less of an intellectual threat to
the politics of multiculturalism than his own rhetoric suggests.
Contemporary Political Theory 2007 6