Reading Emerson in Neoliberal Times

Contesting the Abandonment of Autonomy

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6351462
AutoresMark E Button (0000-0001-9315-5615, University of Utah, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen43
Número3
Páginas312-333
Fecha de publicación2015-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPolitical Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0090591714523622
OpenAlexW2065730564
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6

Nineteenth-century American political thinkers like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman advocated for and sought to exemplify a life of self-direction and critical self-reflection, or personal autonomy, as a means of contesting entrenched routines of democratic-capitalist normalization and as a way of resisting a host of institutional disciplinary pressures. Today, the ideal of personal autonomy within a diverse liberal society is branded by many as a form of “comprehensive” disciplinary normalization in its own right. In this essay I offer a reconsideration of this reversal in the appraisal of the value of autonomy within pluralistic democratic societies and argue that the abandonment of autonomy is a symptom of a mistaken understanding of the personal-ethical qualities upon which a democratic culture depends and a maladaptive concession to neoliberal norms. To confront these challenges, I draw upon a range of Emerson’s writings to offer some ideas about how a reconstructed ideal of aspirational autonomy might inform contemporary politics without unduly constraining moral pluralism or undermining toleration

Autonomy · Democracy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Pluralism (philosophy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Toleration · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Thoreau and American Literature

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