Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Automony, Agency, and the Social Self (review)

Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self. Edited by Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stol-Jar. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Relational Autonomy is a cohesive and beautifully executed anthology in contemporary feminist theory of agency. All the contributions are philosophically substantive and rich with detailed discussion. Many are provocative. The volume is important reading for feminists who theorize about the relational self and could easily form the focus of an upper-level course in feminist theory. A first group of four essays takes up the major options for feminist accounts of autonomy, a second group of four explores complex issues in feminist accounts of agency, and a third group of four situates discussions of autonomy within the applied contexts of feminist bioethics and philosophy of law. This review focuses on the first eight essays

The intent of the volume is to offer a range of theories that move beyond the feminist deconstruction of autonomy as a character virtue historically shaped to valorize false and politically noxious ideals of independence from others. These authors instead re-theorize autonomy to render its value compatible with the facts of social interdependency. They offer accounts of autonomy capable of recognizing and supporting commitments to others. They make clear that the abilities required for appropriately self-reflective and self-directed lives are formed through relationships, can be thwarted or undermined by oppression, and even when developed, require the continuing support of others for their exercise. Finally, many of the authors are concerned with how we can best support the autonomy of those in relationships of dependency that they cannot sever. The previous work of theorists like Marilyn Friedman, Susan Sherwin, Robyn Dillon, Paul Benson, and Diana Meyers has been key to establishing the feminist project of reconceptualizing autonomy, and this volume displays the necessity, possibility, and value of this project.

The introduction is worth the cost of the volume. Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar give an excellent comprehensive review both of feminist critiques of autonomy, and of political and postmodern critiques of the unified and self-transparent subject often required by autonomy theory. They also offer a detailed mapping of contemporary theories of autonomy that sets up one of the book's central discussions: the adequacy of procedural versus substantive accounts of autonomy.

Procedural accounts hold that the contents of an agent's beliefs, desires, attitudes, and values are irrelevant to autonomy—that what matters is whether understandings and decisions are arrived at through an appropriate process of critical reflection. The first two selections, by Marilyn Friedman and Linda Barclay, make clear the feminist appeal of this approach. Because procedural autonomy is content-neutral, there is room to defend an autonomous life of commitment to social relationships. At the same time, content neutrality exposes cultural ideals of extreme independence from others as substantive accounts of the good life neither required nor endorsed by a commitment to autonomy. Friedman's article, however, does raise the interesting suggestion that feminists have been too quick to regard procedural accounts as neutral on the value of relationships. Specifically, they may have underestimated the potential practical disruption to relationships that a cultural commitment to autonomy encourages.

Reflection on oppressive socialization has, on the other hand, formed a strong feminist challenge to procedural theories, since the whole of an agent's motivational structure as well as all her available resources for reflecting on it may be oppressively conditioned. The intuition behind substantive accounts, described by Stoljar as the "feminist intuition," is that no procedural account of autonomy is able to offer conditions of self reflection that block the possibility of acting on false and oppressive internalized norms; and moreover, that such actions are nonautonomous. Stoljar insists that we require more substantive accounts which offer positive conditions for autonomy that restrict (variously) beliefs, desires, values, and attitudes that are autonomy compatible. Paul Benson argues, for example, that responsible agency requires an attitude of self...