ABSTRACT
Within the interpretative horizons of Western modernity, individual autonomy has generally been prized as a valuable attribute of personal identity and hence as a condition of human good. Feminism, however, has taught us to look suspiciously at many of the core values that are part of our modern Western interpretative horizons and to interrogate them from the point of view of their ‘masculine bias’. In the first section of this essay, I identify two broad strands of feminist critique of the notion of individual autonomy.1 I argue that although each of these strands makes an important contribution to debates on self-identity, neither offers compelling reasons for abandoning autonomy as an ideal. Rather, taken together they suggest the need to rethink the notion of autonomy in light of feminist objections. Since these are primarily objections to the normative conceptions of self that underlie traditional interpretations of autonomy, the first challenge for feminism is to provide an account of self-identity that avoids the shortcomings of traditional interpretations.
