ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a classical theme of political philosophy, taken up however in the framework of political sociology. It analyses the concept of autonomy as well as its relation to authority and freedom. Autonomy and freedom are clearly analytically separated. After brief reflexions on evolution and cross-cultural conceptualisations, the chapter discusses how modernity was and largely remains concerned with self-ownership in its definition of autonomy. For that, it analyses its classical discursive development from Locke through Kant to Marx. Authoritarian collectivism did not develop a concept of autonomy. The chapter ends by considering whether there has been a radicalisation of autonomy, as desire and reality, in the last decades and the consequences of this for political modernity.
