1

Relational Autonomy
Marina Oshana

“Relational autonomy” (see autonomy) is the term used to designate a variety of

conceptions of personal autonomy, all of which are united in the belief that
­autonomous beings are, of necessity, socially situated and interdependent. They
are persons whose identity‐defining beliefs, values, commitments, and reasons for
action are shaped by – or, more strongly, are constituted by – the societal positions
they occupy and the shared environment they inhabit. Accepting this means that
a plausible account of autonomy must abandon the premise that autonomous
agency is conceived in atomistic or individualistic terms. To embrace autonomy as
an individualistic phenomenon is to allow that autonomy is attainable in separa-
tion from others, that autonomy is a status held despite the presence of others, and
that persons are autonomous when they find the internal resources to speak and
act for themselves, societal conditions notwithstanding. The relational theorist
denies these claims. To be autonomous is to act within a framework of values,
commitments, beliefs, and norms one sets for oneself; it is to have authority over
oneself. Relational theorists recognize that possessing the status that confers this
authority and cultivating the individual skills that furnish a capacity for autonomy
are c­ onditional on the social institutions, norms, and interpersonal relations that
shape, sometimes abet, and sometimes encumber the agent. Relational theorists
are alert to the fact that such phenomena are often inegalitarian, capricious, and
­discriminatory.
Relational theories have evolved along lines that yield varied interpretations of
the condition of being autonomous and of the social circumstances that underwrite,
facilitate, or constitute autonomy. Some philosophers construe autonomy primarily
as a capacity for choice and action, or a disposition to answer for oneself, while oth-
ers insist that autonomy is a characteristic of a person’s social‐relational standing or
status among others. There is disagreement about the extent to which and the man-
ner in which autonomy is constrained by substantive requirements of a normative
and a practical variety. While some proponents of relational autonomy treat external
(social and political) states of affairs as among the conditions that define autonomy,
others argue that the relational character of autonomy is located in the circum-
stances that facilitate its development. Such theories may be labeled “constitutively
relational” and “causally relational,” respectively. Most, but not all, relational theo-
rists who interpret autonomy in the latter fashion also lay stress on the possession of
psychological, emotional, and practical capabilities over a distinctive configuration

International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Edited by Hugh LaFollette.

© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee921
2  rel ational au tonomy

of the interactive social environment. Despite their many differences, all relational
theorists subscribe to the view that environmental and interpersonal circumstances
support personal autonomy in an essential way.

Precursors to Relational Accounts of Autonomy: Ahistorical

Proceduralist Analyses
Relational accounts of autonomy owe their genesis to critical engagement with
nonrelational models of free agency and self‐determination offered by Harry
Frankfurt (1971) and Gerald Dworkin (1970). Both precursors of relational
accounts emphasize the psychological integrity of the agent. Autonomy is attrib-
uted to persons in virtue of the authentic character of the person’s psychological
states or dispositions (see authenticity). A person behaves autonomously when
the person is moved to act in light of values, principles, beliefs, desires, and com-
mitments that she has validated and so made authentic, or her own. Both Frankfurt
and Dworkin emphasize the organizational configuration of the actor’s motiva-
tional profile and claim that authenticity is conferred by the operation of specific
constraints on the procedures a person employs in decision‐making and in acting.
This is authenticity of a “procedural” sort. Because no restrictions are placed upon
the substantive content of an agent’s psychological economy, or upon the external
environment in which procedural authenticity manifests, both accounts interpret
autonomy in a nonrelational fashion.
Nonetheless, the analyses of Frankfurt and Dworkin have set the groundwork for
ensuing proceduralist, relational models of autonomy. Frankfurt offers an account
of free will and moral responsibility that depends entirely on the hierarchical char-
acter of an agent’s psychological states and dispositions, and on an agent’s judg-
ments about these states (see responsibility). Specifically, the responsible (and
autonomous) entity is a person, an individual capable of having “second‐order”
(and higher‐order) volitions – preferences that a particular lower‐order desire to
do some action serves as the actor’s will, directing choice and prompting action.
Persons are said to act freely when, first, the lower‐order desires that move them to
act cohere with and are confirmed by desires of a higher order and, second, they
identify with or are satisfied with these desires. Gary Watson (1975) modifies this
picture, claiming it oversimplifies the motivational psychology of persons by ana-
lyzing autonomy exclusively in terms of a person’s desires. In its place, Watson
offers what has been called a “Platonic” theory of free agency akin to personal
autonomy, according to which a person’s motivational psychology includes the per-
son’s values.
Dworkin presents an account of autonomy as a “theory of internal, psychological
freedom” (1970: 378; 1988: 20); persons “define their nature, and take responsibility
for the kind of person they are” (1988: 29) when they exercise the reflective and
revisionary “capacity to raise the question whether to identify with or reject the rea-
sons for which they now act” (1988: 15). Doing so provides the desired imprimatur
of authenticity.
 rel ati ona l au ton o m y  3

Relational Autonomy: Historical Proceduralist Analyses

Following Frankfurt and Dworkin, a group of relational theorists offer conceptions
of autonomy that focus upon the authentic psychological profile of the agent. These
philosophers argue that the authentic character of a person’s motivational states or
dispositions is located in the critically reflective procedures the agent deploys. But
they criticize the early accounts of authentic agency, notably on the grounds that
they overlook the social context in which reflection and authenticity transpire. Mar-
ilyn Friedman, for example (1986), argues that earlier accounts fail to explain how a
person’s highest‐order values possess the authority to serve as definitive of the per-
son’s authentic will. The “authority problem” arises for hierarchical models because
akratic or incontinent desires, values, and principles can be the catalyst for a coher-
ent hierarchical structure. If autonomy follows from the coherence of psychological
states and nothing more, then autonomy can be induced by manipulation and
oppressive socialization, or can reinforce prevalent repressive stereotypes, ideals,
and predilections that the agent has unwittingly internalized as part of her psycho-
logical economy. Rather than treat the hierarchical supremacy of some desires over
others as the locus of autonomy, critics such as Friedman have urged us to locate
autonomy in the successful holistic integration of a variety of elements of a person’s
psychology. We might look to a person’s first‐order longings and anxieties, and the
incentive to change one’s life that derives from them, as providing the most accurate
representation of what is important to the individual.
It is not clear, however, that one can avoid the problems that beset hierarchical
views simply by assuming a more holistic and inclusive approach to the psycho-
logical economy of the autonomous person. A holistic configuration of desires,
beliefs, values, emotional commitments, and the like might be produced by inau-
thentic means, thus leaving the authority problem intact. There is no reason why
a person’s inclination to embrace one rather than another arrangement of desires,
beliefs, values, and emotional commitments offers a stronger case for represent-
ing the authentic motivations of the individual than does endorsement by desires
or values at the apex of the hierarchy. Perhaps what is missing from the holistic
model is attention to the genesis of a person’s motivationally vital commitments.
The proceduralist accounts offered by Frankfurt and Dworkin are ahistorical.
Autonomous choice and action are conditional on the individual’s attitude toward
her motivations, quite independently of the developmental circumstances,
including social and relational circumstances, under which that attitude had
arisen. But it is possible that “the choice of the type of person [one] wants to be
may have itself been influenced by other persons in such a fashion that we do not
view [it] as being the person’s own” (Dworkin 1981: 61). The ahistorical approach
fails to ensure that the procedures a person deploys in animating her will are
independent in a manner that licenses authenticity. This is because the ahistori-
cal approach overlooks the influence of socialization and conditioning upon an
individual’s acquisition of preferences and values, operative motives, and choice
of lifestyle.
4  rel ational au tonomy

Dworkin subsequently offers a minimally historically informed account of auton-

omy by coupling authenticity with a condition of procedural independence. The lat-
ter requires that a person’s identification with or embrace of the preferences, values,
and commitments that move her to act has taken place under conditions that do not
destabilize the person’s reflective and critical faculties, but rather support and
develop them. Together, authenticity and procedural independence yield “the full
formula for autonomy” (Dworkin 1988: 61).
Concern about the developmental trajectory of a person’s authentic motivational
psychology and the role of exogenous influences upon the person prompted greater
scrutiny of the idea of procedural independence, and moved autonomy theorists to
adopt explicitly relational considerations into the accounts they offer. John
Christman (1991) interprets relational autonomy as enjoining a certain etiology of
the motivational and practical identity of the actor. Christman characterizes auton-
omy of choice and of action as functions of the development of a person’s psycho-
logical states, of the person’s participation in that process, and of the person’s
occurrent, albeit hypothetical, approval of these. A person is self‐governing, and her
stance is authentic, when she is not alienated from the features that define her iden-
tity and the pro‐attitudes and affective states that motivate her. Authenticity is con-
ditional: were critical reflection upon the formation of one’s identifying traits and
motives for action to produce feelings of alienation, the person would lack auton-
omy relative to those aspects of herself (Christman 2005). Christman’s relational
account foregrounds the psychological profile of the agent as decisive for autonomy,
while the historical requirements he incorporates acknowledge the inescapable role
of the agent’s social milieu upon her capacity for autonomy.
Relational theorists recognize that the capacities and skills needed for the success-
ful exercise of autonomy are cultivated and sustained  –  or are hindered  –  by the
social environment of which the agent is an active part. A capacity for autonomy
consists of the minimum of qualities a person must possess in order to lead a self‐
directed life. These capacities are necessary for both actual self‐government and for
the moral and legal rights of self‐government. Diana Meyers, for example, focuses
attention on the skills and competencies exhibited by the autonomous agent. In her
view, autonomy depends on whether a person possesses and successfully employs a
“repertory of coordinated skills that make up autonomy competency” (1989: 92).
Competencies inhabit three broad categories  –  communicative, imaginative, and
volitional. Meyers focuses on a triad of tasks – those of self‐discovery, self‐defini-
tion, and self‐direction – whose competent performance enables a person to engage
in the enterprise of becoming her own person by defining and redefining her per-
sonality into an integrated, dynamic whole. These skills include an ability to criti-
cally comprehend the social circumstances in which one functions, to tailor one’s
activity as the situation necessitates, and to appreciate which activities are significant
to the course of one’s life. Autonomy is in evidence when “action spring[s] from the
depths of the individual’s being”; when the agent “does what makes sense in terms
of  his or her own identity”; when the agent is “not so influenced by others that
[her] choices seem a committee project”; and when she lives in harmony with her
 rel ati ona l au ton o m y  5

convictions and inclinations (1989: 8). As does Christman, so too does Meyers
emphasize the procedures persons must follow in order to exhibit autonomy:

[W]hat makes the difference between autonomous and heteronomous decisions is the
way in which people arrive at them  –  the procedures they follow or fail to follow.
Autonomous people must be able to pose and answer the question “What do I really want,
need, care about, value, etcetera?”; they must be able to act on the answer; and they must
be able to correct themselves when they get the answer wrong. The skills that enable peo-
ple to make this inquiry and to carry out their decisions constitute what I shall call auton-
omy competency. (1989: 52–3)

Relational Autonomy: Non‐substantive Analyses

Relational accounts can be classified as broadly proceduralist when they highlight
the relationship a person’s pro‐attitudes bear to one another, the critical attitude a
person takes to the genesis of these pro‐attitudes, and the competencies of the per-
son. The accounts offered by Friedman, Christman, and Meyers are broadly proce-
duralist. In contrast to the early analyses offered by Frankfurt, Dworkin, and Watson,
these accounts are clearly relational: autonomy is concerned with a key status of
persons who are shaped by political, cultural, and moral interpersonal frameworks.
But the relational dimension of the more recent proceduralist accounts is distinctive
in the following way. Relational accounts of this variety do not specify the substance
or content of the pro‐attitudes, social norms, and interpersonal relations and insti-
tutional arrangements procedurally authentic agency necessitates. The arguable
advantage of doing so is an account of autonomy that is inclusive and accommodat-
ing of a wide range of lifestyles. Such accounts may be labeled non‐substantive or
content‐neutral.
In addition, some non‐substantive accounts (Friedman, Meyers, Christman)
deny that social relations constitute autonomy. Rather, the social environment plays
a causal role in building the capacities that undergird autonomous agency. Social
relations and institutional structure facilitate the circumstances in which authentic
agency can transpire, but are not among the conditions that define autonomy.
Other recent incarnations of proceduralist relational theory agree that substantive
requirements are problematic, but deny that the relational conditions for autonomy
are merely causal. Andrea Westlund (2003, 2009) draws attention to the idea that
autonomy is a function of responsibility for self and of ownership of one’s actions.
Autonomous agency is primarily bound up with the internal, psychological disposi-
tion or “readiness” of the agent to hold herself answerable to external, critical stand-
points that seek justification on the commitments that direct the agent’s actions.
Westlund contends that the account is constitutively relational because it “requires an
irreducibly dialogical form of reflectiveness and responsiveness to others” (2009: 28).
By contrast, “[the] dialogically unresponsive agent, who cannot be brought to feel the
normative force of external critical perspectives, does appear to lack an important sort
of proprietary authority over the commitments that guide her practical reasoning and
6  rel ational au tonomy

action” (2003: 502). Westlund is cognizant of the fact that unjust social practices and
institutions may undermine the foundation of self‐confidence and of recognition
respect needed for genuine dialogical answerability. However, Westlund explicitly
notes that “this type of relationality, while constitutive, is formal rather than substan-
tive in nature and carries with it no specific value commitments” (2009: 28).

Relational Autonomy: Substantive Analyses

Relational theorists drawn to a substantive approach agree that portraits of personal
autonomy must include reference to the structure of the agent’s psychology, the
agent’s competencies, and the nature and origin of the psychological states of the
agent, yet think this emphasis is insufficient to explain personal autonomy. These
theorists question whether relational autonomy can be adequately explained with-
out incorporating requirements of a content‐laden variety. However, the inclusion of
substantive conditions may occur in weaker or stronger ways, with the effect that
proponents of substantive accounts of relational autonomy divide into two broad
groups. One is sympathetic to the idea that the conditions for autonomy must be
drawn with as wide a brush as possible, congruent with the aims of accommodating
a wide range of authentically embraced ways of life. Accounts of this sort are weakly
substantive. The second group of substantive theorists are strongly substantive. These
theorists argue that autonomy is defined in terms of the presence of certain types of
socio‐relational circumstances in the world and the absence of others. Though the
distinctions cannot be drawn precisely, and conceptual overlaps occur, weakly sub-
stantive accounts tend to be congenial to causally relational approaches, by treating
the presence of particular conditions as causally necessary for autonomy, while
strongly substantive accounts may be classified as treating certain social relations
and institutions as constitutive of autonomy.

Weakly substantive relational autonomy

Catriona Mackenzie has advanced a “weak substantive, recognition‐based, rela-
tional account of personal autonomy,” according to which autonomy is a function of
possessing normative authority over one’s decisions and actions. For such authority
to be forthcoming, “it is not sufficient that [the agent’s] reasons for action express
her practical identity. In addition, she must also regard herself as the legitimate
source of that authority – as able, and authorized, to speak for herself. [Such] atti-
tudes toward oneself can only be sustained in relations of intersubjective recogni-
tion” (2008: 514). Mackenzie does not specify the design particular relations must
adopt; intersubjective recognition may transpire in various arrays of relationships.
Paul Benson (2005a, 2014) has also defended a weak substantive approach accord-
ing to which persons are autonomous when they “take ownership” of their choices
and actions. Taking ownership amounts to treating oneself as rightly authorized
to  and qualified to answer for one’s choices, actions, and identity‐defining values
and commitments in the face of challenges from others (see self‐respect and
 rel ati ona l au ton o m y  7

self‐esteem). Benson’s account is relational, since he is sensitive to the fact that

social and institutionalized environments of domination and injustice mean mem-
bers of vulnerable and marginalized groups may be less equipped to marshal the
support and the recognition needed to take ownership of one’s agency.

Strongly substantive relational autonomy

Proponents of strongly substantive relational autonomy incorporate substantive cri-
teria concerning the state of the agent’s external environment and interpersonal rela-
tionships into the very definition of autonomy (see personal relationships). Such
accounts may be labeled “constitutively relational” (Christman 2009: 166), and stand
in contrast with accounts of the sort that locate autonomy exclusively within the
configuration of a person’s motivational psychology, the reflective procedures a per-
son employs, and the authenticity of the person’s values, commitments, and disposi-
tional states without regard to the particular pro‐attitudes a person holds or the
practical relations she embraces. Proponents of strongly substantive accounts con-
tend that non‐substantive, content‐neutral analyses of autonomy, as well as accounts
that limit social relations and exogenous circumstances to a causal or enabling role,
fail to address the degree to which relations and circumstances of an inegalitarian
and oppressive sort imbue the very meaning of self‐determined agency.
Marina Oshana (1998, 2006), for example, offers a constitutively relational
­analysis of autonomy, according to which social relations do not just causally facili-
tate (or impair) the exercise of autonomy, but constitute an essential part of what
self‐determination involves. On Oshana’s view, persons lack autonomy when they
are subject to social relations that deprive them of effective practical control over
significant domains of their life. Autonomy is decided by the normative weight of
these domains, and by whether or not a person possesses authority sufficient for her
to oversee undertakings in domains that are of import to her agency. Accordingly,
autonomy mandates that certain substantive social arrangements and social roles be
present, and relations of subordination and subservience, and economic or psycho-
logical insecurity, must be absent. Whether a person is autonomous rests on the
areas of life within which the person experiences insecurity or subordination or
wherein a loss of authority is threatened, the level of exertion that must be expended
to recover security or authority, and the cost that the agent incurs in resisting the
insecurity and regaining authority.
Other relational theorists agree that broadly procedural, non‐substantive accounts
cannot offer an adequate analysis of autonomy, though for different reasons than
those pressed by Oshana. Natalie Stoljar (2000, 2014) and Paul Benson (1991,
2005b), for instance, have explored the impact of oppressive conditioning and ste-
reotyping on a person’s autonomy. Both have argued that the internalization of
oppressive norms and social narratives undermines the attitudes of self‐worth and
self‐trust that are necessary for autonomy (see narrative ethics). Stoljar has noted
that, even if agents reject the norms that are implied by oppressive stereotypes or
narratives, psychological freedom is compromised because agents must adjust their
8  rel ational au tonomy

behavior to the implicit expectations the narratives impose. If one’s social location
compels one to minimize interference in one’s life by surrendering to oppressive
stereotypes or to incessantly challenging these, one likely suffers from impaired
autonomy. Stoljar embraces a “strong substantive theory” according to which auton-
omous agency depends on the possession and exercise of certain qualities of charac-
ter and critical abilities. Specifically, autonomy is founded on an agent’s competence
to critically assess the norms that underwrite the preferences, values, and commit-
ments that motivate and define her. The fact that a person’s desires are formed under
conditions that favor procedural authenticity cannot decide autonomy, since these
conditions may be shaped by oppressive norms, cultural practices, and pernicious
stereotypes.
Theorists who defend strongly substantive or constitutive interpretations of rela-
tional autonomy (or both) look for assurance that agents possess power (see power)
or authority resistant to efforts by other, more dominant, persons (and, perhaps,
institutions) in the agent’s social‐relational environs to gain dominion over the agent
where choices and actions salient to the agent’s self‐directed agency and practical
identity are at stake. The general idea is that persons are autonomous when they
retain the capability to superintend decisions, activities, and personal associations
that are central to certain expressions of agency, the warrant to do so, and the muscle
to act on that capability. Oppression and, more broadly, unjust and inegalitarian
environments threaten these capabilities and thus, by definition, compromise
autonomy (see oppression). Lives in which a person’s status and circumstances are
marked by oppression, injustice, and inequality are typically lives marked by con-
straint. Such lives, these theorists argue, will be irreconcilable with autonomy.
Strongly substantive, constitutively relational accounts of autonomy have attracted
criticism. Detractors (Narayan 2002; Christman 2004, 2009; Noggle 2011; Khader
2011) worry that demanding a particular configuration of the agent’s practical rela-
tions or normative competence on the part of the actor will make it easier to dismiss
as inauthentic certain agential perspectives and the authority that accompanies
them. Rather than respecting autonomy and supporting the comprehensive range of
desires, values, and commitments that inform individual choice and action, strongly
substantivist conceptions of what is normatively congruent with autonomy may
impose upon the actor conditions antithetical to those she would authorize and
embrace. Worse, strongly substantive accounts may compel us to deny the evident,
and commendable, agential status of social reformers such as Martin Luther King
Jr. – agents who defy subjugation and challenge the inegalitarian circumstances that
rob them of their self‐determination. Such accounts might also demean the agential
standing of persons who report no alienation in their practical identity and suffer no
fragmentation of their self‐conception despite the relentlessly constraining external
circumstances to which they are subject. Uma Narayan, for example, decries the
tendency to dismiss women living in non‐Western societies as “dupes of patriarchy”
incapable of exercising agency simply because they accept (often for plausible rea-
sons) inequitable interpersonal status and subservient social traditions and practices
(2002: 422). An account of autonomy that “requires a specific normative character
 rel ati ona l au ton o m y  9

of the social role the individual must assume if she is to count as autonomous”
(Sarajlic 2014) may withhold from certain beings recognition and respect as agents
(see recognition). This yields the “agency dilemma” (Mackenzie 2015): “on the
one hand, oppression undermines autonomy; on the other, claiming that people are
non‐autonomous just in virtue of oppression erases their agency and disrespects
their evaluative commitments” (Stoljar 2018: 233). The challenge is to recognize the
vulnerabilities of persons subject to social oppression or deprivation while also
acknowledging and respecting their agency. Efforts to explain the impact of social
oppression on autonomy must guard against advocating intrusively paternalistic
and, perhaps, coercive forms of autonomy‐enhancing intervention in the lives of
agents where such intervention is patently at odds with their sincerely held values –
values that operate at the center of their practical identity (see paternalism).
In response to the agency dilemma, it has been argued that agency tout court is
not obliterated merely because autonomous agency is absent (Oshana 2002, 2004;
Stoljar 2018). Stoljar distinguishes various expressions of authentic agency and the
requirements for each. Most significantly, morally responsible agency may be
affirmed where a person engages in dialogical answerability for choices and actions
that flow from her authentic, identity‐defining values and allegiances, even while
autonomous agency is denied as a result of systemic social oppression or internal-
ized oppressive norms. People may well remain political agents, and morally respon-
sible agents, even if they fail to be self‐determining, autonomous agents given their
inability to oversee the external phenomena that structure their lives. A classic illus-
tration of persons whose moral autonomy is undamaged while their personal auton-
omy is vanquished is that of the Jehovah’s Witnesses confined in Nazi concentration
camps during World War II. Despite their internment, they maintained remarkable
moral integrity, integrity of identity, and “retain[ed] some form of moral agency
because they continue to govern themselves in accordance with their own moral
code. But on the externalist [strongly substantive, constitutively relational] concep-
tion of autonomy, the fact that they are imprisoned, forced into a servile position,
and subjected to the continuous domination of the SS officers, generates a paradigm
case of non‐autonomy by definition” (Stoljar 2018: 232; see also moral agency). By
disentangling varieties of agency, or agency exercised in distinct domains, the con-
centration camp internee who exhibits moral fortitude can be deemed a responsible
agent. Distinguishing various expressions of authentic agency makes it plausible to
credit the social reformer who works to combat social inequalities that compromise
self‐determination with agency worthy and deserving of recognition, even as we
decry her lack of autonomy.

Three Dimensions of Relational Autonomy

Some of the disagreement about how best to conceptualize relational autonomy
might be settled if we treat autonomy as a multidimensional phenomenon. Catriona
Mackenzie has suggested that autonomy encompasses three discrete but associ-
ated  (and possibly overlapping) axes of self‐governance, self‐determination, and
10  rel ational au tonomy

self‐authorization. Theorists such as Meyers, Friedman, and Christman, who prior-

itize “the skills and capacities necessary to make choices and enact decisions that
express, or cohere with, one’s reflectively constituted diachronic practical identity”
(Mackenzie 2014: 17), may be described as offering analyses of self‐governance.
­Relational accounts of the sort Oshana and Stoljar advance might be said to regard
self‐determination as the essential dimension of autonomy. Such accounts focus on
the absence of domination, particularly where the source of dominance is oppres-
sive interpersonal relationships, external structural conditions, and inegalitarian
normative expectations. Self‐determination calls for the possession of “the freedom
and opportunities to make and enact choices of practical import to one’s life”
(­Mackenzie 2014: 17). Finally, personal autonomy may also mean that a person is
self‐authorizing. Self‐authorization speaks to the idea that “one regards oneself as
having the normative authority to … exercise practical control over one’s life, to
determine one’s own reasons for action, and to define one’s values and identity‐
shaping ­practical commitments” (Mackenzie 2014: 19). The work of Westlund
(2003, 2009) and that of Benson (2005a, 2005b) are paradigmatic of an emphasis on
the self‐authorization axis of the concept of autonomy.

Episodic Autonomy and Programmatic Autonomy

Most relational accounts focus on autonomy as manifest in choice or action. The
focus is episodic or local, treating autonomy as a property of a person’s acts or desires
or choices considered individually, and pertaining to the manner in which a person
conducts herself in particular situations. Other relational accounts focus on global
autonomy, treating it as a characteristic of lives, extended over a period of time. The
latter take seriously the fact that personal autonomy is a matter of living in a particu-
lar way, a way that exemplifies management of one’s agency in an extended fashion.
Diana Meyers describes the contrast as between episodic autonomy and program-
matic autonomy:

Autonomous episodic self‐direction occurs when a person confronts a situation, asks

what he or she can do with respect to it … and what he or she really wants to do with
respect to it, and then executes the decision this deliberation yields. Autonomous pro-
grammatic self‐direction has a broad sweep. Instead of posing the question “What do I
really want to do now?” this form of autonomy addresses a question like “How do I really
want to live my life?” To answer this latter question, people must consider what qualities
they want to have, what sorts of interpersonal relationships they want to be involved in,
what talents they want to develop, what interests they want to pursue, what goals they
want to achieve, and so forth. Their decisions about these matters together with their
ideas about how to effect these results add up to a life plan. (1989: 48)

Whether the focus is on expressions of autonomy in discrete choices and actions,

or on autonomy over expanses of a person’s life, relational theorists maintain that
manifestations of autonomy are found within domains that are of significance to the
person’s identity as an agent. These are domains of practical import – the areas of
 rel ati ona l au ton o m y  11

programmatic concern that include familial and intimate relationships, informa-

tional and bodily privacy, occupational and professional pursuits, religious practice,
and embodiment, all phenomena that impart a unique configuration to a person’s
life. A person who manages matters of such fundamental importance to her life, who
does so authentically, within a framework of values, principles, beliefs, and pro‐­
attitudes that she treats as definitive for herself, and who can do so given the inter-
personal circumstances in which she operates, is autonomous.

Summary
Because self‐governance, self‐authorization, and self‐determination are socially
established capacities and socially constituted states, a plausible account of auton-
omy and of the practical, moral, and legal authority it carries cannot overlook the
dependence of autonomous actors upon the dynamic social milieu in which they
are embedded. Theories of relational autonomy acknowledge the fact that autono-
mous beings inhabit shared social spaces and offer a rich array of conceptual
resources by which we can better appreciate the complex ways in which autono-
mous agency transpires.

See also:  authenticity; autonomy; moral agency; narrative ethics;

oppression; paternalism; personal relationships; power; recognition;
responsibility; self‐respect and self‐esteem

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 rel ati ona l au ton o m y  13

FURTHER READINGS
Anderson, Joel, and John Christman (eds.) 2005. Autonomy and the Challenges of Liberalism:
New Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Friedman, Marilyn 1997. “Autonomy and Social Relationships: Rethinking the Feminist
Critique,” in Diana Tietjens Meyers (ed.), Feminists Rethink the Self. Boulder,
CO: Westview, pp. 40–61.
Govier, Trudy 1993. “Self‐Trust, Autonomy, and Self‐Esteem,” Hypatia, vol. 8, pp. 99–120.
Hill, Thomas, Jr. 1991. Autonomy and Self‐Respect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Holroyd, Jules 2009. “Relational Autonomy and Paternalistic Interventions,” Res Publica,
vol. 15, pp. 321–36.
Hutchison, Katrina, Catriona Mackenzie, and Marina Oshana (eds.) 2018. The Social
Dimensions of Moral Responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mackenzie, Catriona, and Natalie Stoljar (eds.) 2000. Relational Autonomy: Feminist
Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and the Social Self. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Meyers, Diana Tietjens 1987. “Personal Autonomy and the Paradox of Feminine Socialization,”
Journal of Philosophy, vol. 84, pp. 619–28.
Oshana, Marina (ed.) 2015. Personal Autonomy and Social Oppression: Philosophical
Perspectives. New York: Routledge.
Superson, Anita 2005. “Deformed Desires and Informed Desire Tests,” Hypatia, vol. 20,
pp. 109–26.
Taylor, James Stacey (ed.) 2005. Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and
Its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Veltman, Andrea, and Mark Piper (eds.) 2014. Autonomy, Oppression, and Gender. New York:
Oxford University Press.