ABSTRACT
The process of choosing the best alternative of oneself is also the exercise of autonomous agency: of becoming the person one really considers worth being, and so, of realizing a good life. The value of autonomy lies in the contribution it makes to the realization of the ethical aim. In this chapter I want to focus on a specifi c skills set essential to autonomous agency: skills in self-discovery, self-defi nition, and self-direction. These are the skills or competencies one uses to identify the normatively signifi cant features of one’s situation, to articulate alternatives of oneself, to judge the relative attunement of alternatives of oneself, to constrain one’s imagined self-conception appropriately, and to act on the basis of normative reasons. These are skills that promote the narrative coherence of one’s life. While they are not meant to be exhaustive, these competencies and checks articulate the space in which one exercises one’s initiative in the decisive act of choosing a course of action which is uniquely self-defi ning in seeking to live well with and for others in just institutions.
