Autonomy

Though it is often said that Kant's conception of autonomy leads to atheism, there is no reason why this has to be so. I can obey God as long as my reason for doing so is that the commandment to obey is morally valid; what I cannot do is obey blindly. The same is true of the government. Rather than urging obedience to legitimate authority, autonomy rejects the claim that legitimacy is irrelevant to authority: "Right or wrong, it's my country, my religion, my family, and so on."

Another objection claims that emphasizing individual sovereignty undermines virtues like trust, friendship, and cooperation. It does—if that means it is possible, in principle, for one person to be right and the rest of society wrong. But it hardly follows that one should go through life disregarding the advice of others and avoiding intimate relationships. To say that I should take responsibility for my actions is not to say that I must become a citadel. To live up to my obligations and fulfill myself as a person, I need the help of family, friends, and a host of institutions. All autonomy demands is that these groups or institutions respect my dignity as a free and rational agent (as well as respecting the dignity of others). At bottom, what autonomy denies is any form of political, religious, or moral tyranny.