The Politics of Persons: Individual Autonomy and Socio-historical Selves (review)

After so much scholarship has been devoted to the dispute between the defenders and critics of liberalism, it is reasonable to ask whether the topic has been exhausted or, at the very least, if the rival and incommensurable options have been so thoroughly defined that one simply has to pick a side. John Christman's new book, The Politics of Persons, demonstrates that this intuition is flawed. The central concern of this compelling work is to outline an alternative conception of autonomy that incorporates a wide range of insights provided by the critics of liberalism. What emerges is not only a plausible philosophical compromise but also a politically relevant model for understanding how the policies and institutions of a pluralistic democratic society can be made legitimate.

Christman's project is ambitious in one sense and modest in another. Rescuing and reforming the idea of autonomy are surely bold endeavors. Yet his conception of autonomy is "highly deflationary" (245) in the sense that it requires no judgment about the content of a person's belief. The focus here is on the nature of the person's commitment. So the account is "proceduralist" rather than "perfectionist." Squarely in the liberal tradition, Christman rejects the idea that one can specify a particular conception of the good life independently of what an individual understands the good life to be. In order to be considered autonomous, democratic citizens must be sufficiently self-reflective, and (as the crucial condition) they cannot be deeply "alienated" from the policies and institutions of their government. Autonomy, then, is a central political value, since the legitimacy of these institutions depends upon their authentic acceptance by democratic citizens. This "agent-based" account of autonomy captures the sense in which "self-government" is both an individual and a collective process, one whose result cannot be specified in advance of the process itself.

In developing his account, Christman displays an impressive grasp of a wide variety of philosophical traditions. Insofar as the distinction is still useful, both Anglo-American and Continental philosophers will find this book appealing. The Politics of Persons is also a truly interdisciplinary work: Christman examines a variety of empirical sources, including sociological and psychological research. The insights of these other disciplines are seamlessly incorporated into his philosophical framework, ensuring that his book is not a grab bag of theoretical and empirical claims. Likewise, Christman's "middle way" between liberalism and its critics distills the salient observations of each tradition while deftly avoiding the theoretical excesses of each. For instance, even though the self is socially constituted, it does not follow that autonomy is a "relational" property. The idea that the self is formed under social, historical, and political conditions does not mean that it is determined by any specific arrangement. Only if autonomy is considered a central value will we pay attention to an individual's self-interpretation and recognize that his or her practical identity is fluid rather than fixed. In other words, we should not trade the "unencumbered self" of liberalism for the "fully encumbered" self of some of its critics.

Christman's modified liberal philosophy requires putting special weight on the concerns of historically marginalized groups. This makes sense given the need to cultivate the conditions that make individual autonomy possible. Yet this shows the tension between the two aspects of self-government in ways that could be more explicitly acknowledged in the text. It is important to recognize that the attempts to correct the structural inequalities that exist as a result of a history of oppression can have unintended consequences. They might, in fact, produce the kind of alienation that they try to forestall. One can imagine a member of a minority group feeling disrespected and alienated as a result of the very sort of affirmative action policy designed to protect him or her. It is not that Christman fails to recognize this. Still, an emphasis on the complicated, and sometimes even tragic, trade...