ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a historical and philosophical genealogy of the concept of personal autonomy, asserting that the nineteenth-century philosophical tradition of idealism (influenced by Kant and Hegel) pushed for the recognition of autonomy as an organizing principle of Western law. As a philosophical ideal and a foundational principle of the law, autonomy was first conceived to expand personal freedom, but made it dependent on the freedom of other human beings. This social aspect implies that autonomy grows together with the capacity for communication and interaction, which is an essential, primeval constituent of social life. Autonomy, therefore, belongs to the social nature of human beings.
