ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the single ideal of individual autonomy which appears to inspire all modern and humanist perspectives, while it is explicitly rejected by postmodernism and recent continental thought in general. It shows what is at stake, by suggesting some ways in which the imperative of autonomy underlies the whole project of modern philosophy, so that it may become apparent that to call such an ideal into question is to effect the most decisive break with tradition. The chapter offers a reading of Kant as the representative thinker of the modern age, and shows that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philosophy is largely bound by the Kantian "problematic" which gives priority to the project of autonomy. It considers several powerful critiques of autonomy that are embodied in the work of the later Martin Heidegger, Derrida, and Foucault, respectively. The chapter discusses Foucauit expressly considers the need for short-circuiting the reliance upon conscious experience as the ultimate reference and truth.
