ABSTRACT
The overarching task of this chapter is to assemble a set of considered intuitions about personal autonomy. By doing this, we will have at our disposal a yardstick of sorts against which the success or failure of this book in accomplishing its task can be measured. That task is one of providing an account of autonomy that best captures the concept the term is used to express. This concept is concerned with a status an individual can have-the status of being personally autonomous-that is crucial to anyone who is a member of or a participant in a social and political milieu having potentially significant coercive or manipulative influence upon her life. The concept of autonomy has been employed in a variety of other contexts, both theoretical and applied. I will not be addressing the very rich realm of applied usage. There is an abundance of literature, much of it new and quite engaging, on the subject of autonomy in the realms of medicine, consumer rights, privacy, law enforcement, and so forth.1 But one central theoretical task is the conceptual task of providing an account of autonomy, where autonomy is a key status of persons, particularly adult persons, who are interpersonally bound by political, cultural, and moral frameworks. Such an account will be judged by its success in explaining autonomy in light of a realistic view of persons as socially situated. Of the many issues concerning autonomy, this is the one with which this book is concerned.
