Chikako Endo, University of Oxford, The idea of autonomy in liberal democratic citizenship
Autonomy and citizenship in plural societies
Chikako Endo
This paper seeks to offer some thoughts on the relationship between personal autonomy as an ideal of individual self-direction and citizenship as a form of collective life. As Richard
Dagger puts it, ‘autonomy and civic virtue are often taken to be at odds with each other because one has to do with individual liberty, the other with collective responsibility’.
1
The perception of the tension between personal autonomy as an ideal of individual freedom and citizenship as one of collective virtues is particularly significant in a context of pluralism where people have access to many different conceptions of the good. Individuals’ autonomous self-direction may be seen as a centrifugal force that pulls people away from the collective norms and practices of citizenship in favor of their self-chosen ways of life.
According to Eamonn Callan, ‘the liberty of free citizens is the necessary social space for individuals to create meaningful lives for themselves in ways that are often idiosyncratic and sometimes even anti-social’.
2 ‘The moral discipline of civic participation, with its acceptance of shared burdens and deference to collective purposes, is not fulfilling for all, even if the perpetuation of liberal politics depends on no small measure on the willingness of many to submit to it.’ 3
If liberal democracies are to respect individuals’ freedoms as autonomous rational agents to pursue their own ways of life, a central dilemma for contemporary liberal democracies is how to achieve social cohesion and collective agreements while at the same time respecting social diversity.
4 Despite the apparent tensions between the two, in this paper,
I will highlight some the ways in which the reflective aspect of personal autonomy is important for common citizenship in plural societies.
I begin by briefly describing the concept of personal autonomy that I wish to discuss in relation to citizenship. Then, I will consider some of the tensions between the idea of
1 Richard Dagger, Civic Virtues : Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism (New York ; Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997). 13.
2 Eamonn Callan, Creating Citizens : Political Education and Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1997). 10.
3 Ibid. 10.
4 See e.g. Richard Bellamy, Liberalism and Pluralism (London: Routledge, 1999).

personal autonomy and citizenship. Finally, I will argue how personal autonomy is particularly important for common citizenship among diverse individuals.
1.
The concept of personal autonomy
There are various constructions of autonomy as a property of individuals. However, its core concept is the idea of individual self-government in some form, and the various interpretations of autonomy and its conditions relate to this core idea.
5 Self-government is a capacity unique to human beings to desire and to act on higher-order plans of action by subjecting one’s way of life to self-critical evaluation. Different conceptions of autonomy differ in how they construe the content of the higher-order preferences which are to direct individuals’ autonomous actions and the ways in which they are formed.
Personal autonomy is an ideal of self-direction where an individual’s second-order desires can be understood as her conception of the good which is tied to her personal character and situated context. For instance, a person who is brought up in a family and society that value education might reflect on her first-order desire either to pursue a college degree or not in light of the values that she has developed within her social context. It is from her deeper beliefs and values, which are products of her situated experiences, that she reflects on her first-order desires. This idea of personal autonomy is an individualistic ideal in the sense that the second-order reasons for one’s choices are particular to each individual depending on her character and social circumstances. What an individual sees as rational to want is constrained by her past and present situations, and is therefore particular to each individual. In this sense, personal autonomy is distinctly individualistic and allows for plural ways of life.
At the same time, in order to be autonomous, our conception of the good or the second-order reasons for our choices must be subject to habitual reflection from alternative perspectives in relation to our development and encounters with new arguments or experiences. Autonomous individuals must not only be able to evaluate their first-order desires from their second-order preferences, but also to revise their second-order desires, i.e. their conceptions of the good, in light of encounters with new experiences and arguments.
5 For discussions on different interpretations of autonomy, see John Philip Christman (ed.), The Inner Citadel :
Essays on Individual Autonomy (New York Oxford University Press, 1989).

Therefore, one may be moved to alter one’s conception of the good that higher education is necessary for a good life through encountering someone who lives perfectly happily without a college degree and deliberating on the merits of her previous beliefs. Whether or not we choose to alter our beliefs, we can come to reflect on our commitments and potentially revise them through such encounters. Without this capacity to evaluate and potentially revoke our second-order desires, our beliefs according to which we direct our first-order desires could simply become an expression of habit and complacent belief rather than one of conscious selfgovernment and self-direction. Personal autonomy is a process of constant re-affirmation or revision of past commitments in light of new experiences and arguments, employing our capacities for rational deliberation to alter our second-order preferences and to correct any inconsistencies with our first-order preferences that may arise from such revision.
2.
Tensions between personal autonomy and citizenship
We can think of two basic arguments for why such an idea of personal autonomy could conflict with citizenship that involves respecting collective norms and producing collective agreements.
The first is that personal autonomy as an ideal of individual self-direction does not necessarily entail concern for others. The capacity self-critically to direct one’s life may enable us to guide our lives in a way that has personal significance, but may appear to have little to say about how to live together with others in society. Many autonomous citizens may see no fulfilment in public life, which requires them to accept shared burdens and show deference to collective aims. While liberal societies are not justified in promoting a life of active political involvement over ones that prioritize private fulfilments, liberal democratic citizenship demands certain ways of thinking and behaving for upholding liberal political principles. These include relational norms such as reciprocity, equal consideration and mutual respect, all of which require concern for fellow citizens. The question then, is why individuals capable of autonomously pursuing their self-chosen ways of life would be inclined to honour the claims of their fellow citizens equally as one’s own and to consider their political claims in making public decisions in order to arrive at mutually acceptable positions?
Autonomous individuals may well be content to employ their capacities for rational-self-

direction only for their private lives, in their choice of life-style, career aspirations or personal gain rather than for respecting the terms of justice owed to others.
The second argument on the tension between personal autonomy and citizenship is that the reflective aspect of personal autonomy can alienate citizens from collective commitments. Personal autonomy may seem to oppose community cohesion and civic solidarity since individuals’ capacities and dispositions to reflect from various alternative perspectives on the ways of life passed down to them by their families, cultural or religious communities, as well as their political community, may appear to weaken their commitments to them. Rational reflection on communal norms and practices could alienate individuals from their political community in favour of their ‘self-chosen’ ways of life which they can handpick from a variety of ways of life and commitments available to them in a context of pluralism.
This paper mainly deals with the second of these tensions between personal autonomy and citizenship. My view is that the first – that personal autonomy does not lead to concern for others – is a problem that cannot be resolved without relying on supplemental conditions such as fostering a sense of moral community and moral identity among citizens in order for them to employ their capacities for autonomous reflection in public-regarding ways. The nature of such a moral community for liberal democratic citizenship requires a separate discussion.
The reflective aspect of personal autonomy can appear to conflict with citizenship in the following ways. First, if the essence of civic virtue lies in commitment to one’s political community, stepping back from public norms and weighing them against others may alienate citizens from these norms rather than strengthen their commitments to them. Personal autonomy requires individuals to take a critical distance from their unreflectively acquired beliefs and values and subject them to critical scrutiny from alternative perspectives.
Communitarian theorists like Michael Sandel have famously argued that an individual’s identity is partly comprised of her unreflectively acquired ends, which cannot be questioned because they are constitutive of her identity.
6
According to this view, certain commitments are so strong and integral to who we are that it is impossible for us to reflect on them from a detached perspective. For Sandel, the liberal conception of the ‘unencumbered self’ is someone who can reflect on her beliefs from a critical distance and see her ends as a matter of
6 Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

choice in much the same way that a consumer would choose one product rather than another.
7
Some liberal theorists such as William Galston and Shelley Burtt have also claimed that the liberal ‘bias’ towards autonomy threatens ways of life characterized by deep beliefs and commitments.
8
Burtt characterizes the process of distancing oneself from the values of one’s community as ‘the informed consumer model of individual action’ 9
where one can freely pick and choose among a variety of good lives. An underlying assumption of these views is that reflective commitments are somehow feeble ones in comparison to unreflective ones. If we apply such autonomous reflection to our political commitments, proponents of these views may hold that reflectively questioning our commitments to the political community could disrupt those very commitments and alienate individuals rather than integrate them.
Second, constantly questioning our beliefs and practices will delay us in coming to political agreements for effectively solving real-life problems which is the essence of politics.
Leading an autonomous life does not require us to question constantly our conceptions of the good. Indeed, many of our commitments are initially adopted non-reflectively as products of our social context and upbringing. However, personal autonomy requires that we come to reflect habitually on our conceptions of the good in accordance with our development, and that we are able to revise them when we encounter new perspectives or undergo new experiences. An autonomous character must therefore exercise rational reflection systematically rather than take any ‘constitutive ends’ for granted. When we apply this to political decision-making, questioning our commitments, reflecting on what is right and wrong and why, may indeed make it difficult for us to come down with conviction on a decisive collective position. Contesting our beliefs and practices in light of plural perspectives may make us less inclined to take definitive positions and less capable of coming to collective agreements, which is an integral part of politics and citizenship.
Both the problems of political alienation and political paralysis due to rational reflection on collective norms have particular significance in diverse societies where plural conceptions of the good compete alongside each other. Access to plural perspectives often instigates critical reflection on one’s beliefs and values, as well as disrupts individuals’
7 Ibid.
8 William A. Galston, Liberal Purposes : Goods, Virtues and Diversity in the Liberal State (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991). Shelley Burtt, 'Comprehensive Educations and the Liberal Understanding of
Autonomy', in Kevin Mcdonough and Walter Feinberg (eds.), Education and Citizenship in Liberal-Democratic
Societies : Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
9 Burtt, 'Comprehensive Educations and the Liberal Understanding of Autonomy'. 182.

complacent acceptance of unreflectively acquired commitments, including their commitments to their political community.
3.
Common citizenship in a context of diversity
Nevertheless, autonomous reflection on the part of citizens is crucially important for common life, especially in a context of diversity. Autonomous reflection on one’s own commitments in light of those of others’ is necessary for finding mutually acceptable terms of coexistence that cannot be supported simply by unreflectively asserting one’s own preferences.
Moreover, rational reflection on one’s commitments from the perspectives of others is important for respecting the plural claims to justice in a diverse society, which may be repressed or marginalized where prevailing social conventions defy critical scrutiny.
First, personal autonomy is necessary for the liberal norms of public justification and reciprocal justice. Giving public justification requires reflecting on the claims of others in order to provide reasons that are potentially acceptable to your fellow citizens with whom you may not converge on your conceptions of the good but nevertheless share the implications of public decisions as free and equal citizens. This requires the capacity to distance oneself from one’s accepted beliefs and imaginatively to enter into the minds of people with different beliefs and backgrounds. Through taking on the perspective of others, citizens can come to see what is acceptable from others’ points of view and evaluate one’s own claims in light of them. Similarly, respecting others’ claims to justice also requires the capacity to evaluate one’s own claims from the perspective of others in order to reach mutually acceptable terms of social cooperation. The process of self-critical reflection from various political positions is likely to lead to the development of individuals’ personal autonomy, which involves evaluating one’s unreflectively acquired commitments in light of alternative views.
10
Conversely, individuals who are incapable of self-critical reflection for their personal selfdirection would not be able to reflect critically on their political claims in light of those of their fellow citizens. The reflective aspect of autonomy has particular importance for sharing a political community with diverse citizens whose conflicting moral and political claims exist alongside each other.
10 See Gutmann’s view of how education for liberal democratic citizenship leads to the promotion of autonomy.
Amy Gutmann, 'Citizenship and Social Diversity', Ethics, 105/3 (1995), 557-79.

Second, in a context of pluralism it is important that citizens’ commitments are revocable according to encounters with new perspectives. This is because plural and often conflicting claims to justice that may challenge our assumptions exist within a diverse society.
A relatively homogeneous society may be held together by uniform commitments to a particular interpretation of historical and cultural events and the moral and political claims that arise in relation to them. However, in diverse societies events and symbols of historical and cultural significance may vary according to the particular backgrounds and experiences of each individual or group within a particular society. For instance, in a plural society, a history of conquest and progress for some, could be for others in the same society, a history of exploitation and oppression. The point of reflection for liberal autonomy is not that we can easily abandon our convictions, but that we can revise them if and when we encounter new reasons to do so: ‘Liberal theory invites us to conceive of the self as revocably encumbered in the sense that we can reject ends currently constitutive of identity should we come to see them as worthless.’ 11
Rather than complacently following socially inherited beliefs, autonomous self-reflection enables individuals to give carefully considered reasons on the value of the ends with which one currently identifies. Deliberation on whether one’s commitments to socially accepted beliefs are worthy of choice in light of such alternative perspectives, evidence and rational argumentation is important for sharing a political community with diverse citizens. Without an attitude and disposition to engage in such reflection, the result would simply be conflict among individuals’ diverse claims. The qualities necessary for personal autonomy – of subjecting one’s complacent beliefs and commitments to critical scrutiny from alternative perspectives – is crucially important for building cooperative relationships and respecting plural claims to justice. Being autonomous, therefore, should not be confused with sheer choice based on desire or taste in the way that the consumerist analogy suggests. A flexible approach to one’s commitments and the willingness to revoke some of one’s past commitments in light of careful deliberation can be a virtue rather than a weakness in contemporary plural societies.
Conclusion
11 Callan, Creating Citizens : Political Education and Liberal Democracy .

In this paper, I argued that the reflective aspect of autonomy is important for common citizenship among diverse individuals in a way that respects their plural commitments. Rather than seeing personal autonomy as a potential problem for citizenship for its potential to pull people away from civic life, we should see it as an important civic quality that is crucial for coexistence among diverse individuals. Public-mindedness in pluralistic liberal democracies does not necessarily entail active or direct political participation, but rather the disposition among all citizens to engage in reciprocal reflection on one another’s beliefs and values. In contemporary societies where diverse moral and political claims compete alongside each other, autonomous reflection has practical significance for common citizenship. Autonomous reflection, both in individuals’ public and personal lives, need not be seen as a source of alienation, or the ability to distance oneself from one’s unreflectively acquired commitments an expression of a consumerist attitude towards different ways of life, but as an important quality for citizens to find a way to live together.