Anderson - Autonomy, Vulnerability and Gender

Feminist Theory
http://fty.sagepub.com Autonomy, Vulnerability and Gender

Pamela Sue Anderson Feminist Theory 2003; 4; 149 DOI: 10.1177/14647001030042004 The online version of this article can be found at: http://fty.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/2/149
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Autonomy, vulnerability and gender
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Feminist Theory Copyright 2003 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) vol. 4(2): 149164. [1464-7001 (200308) 4:2; 149164; 034369] www.sagepublications.com
Pamela Sue Anderson University of Oxford

Abstract This article challenges a prominent claim in moral
philosophy: that autonomy is a personal ideal, according to which individuals are authors of their own lives. This claim is philosophically dubious and ethically pernicious, having excluded women from positions of rational authority. A reading of Ibsens A Dolls House illustrates how this conception of the ideal of autonomy misrepresents the reality of individuals lived experiences and imposes a gendered identity which subordinates women to a masculine narcissism. In Ibsens play the woman, as a doll conned to home, remains dependent on an autonomous man. It would seem that men in modern philosophy could see only their own image as rational agents reected in their ethics; but, in fact, this position is self-defeating. The recognition of our contingencies and so, vulnerability, motivated Kant himself to try to make the moral realm secure with something necessarily common to all human beings: our capacity to reason. The unwitting upshot of Kants ethics has been the restriction of reason to a purely formal function; but this autonomy of reason undermines itself in being unable to guide the writing of the rational agents own life. I propose instead to preserve the capacities of moral rationality, while urging the incorporation of ethical practices previously devalued by their association with vulnerability, such as attention, affection and relationality. My philosophical challenge is, rst, to develop an internal critique of ethics which exposes its authoritative imposition of a gender identity and, next, to propose a revised conception of autonomy, namely, not just writing our own story, but reading the stories in which we nd ourselves.
keywords autonomy, ethical practices, feminist philosophy, Kant, life stories, reason, vulnerability
Introduction
Autonomy holds a privileged place in modern moral philosophy. From Kant to Mill, to Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, Paul Ricoeur and Joseph Raz, and from all of these men to those contemporary philosophers who still play a part in the tradition of political liberalism, we can nd agreement
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on the centrality of autonomy in the assessment of political institutions.1 Autonomy is a good thing for individuals to have and for society to promote. So it appears that autonomy serves as a critical test for what is good; and it is certainly a linchpin for modern liberalism. Yet agreement runs out when we look to the philosophical literature for a denition of autonomy and nd diverse and contradictory accounts. Nevertheless, there is one prominent claim, which has become the object of feminist and postmodern critiques: that autonomy is a personal ideal, according to which individuals are authors of their own lives: to be autonomous is to be able to live out ones plans, projects and aspirations and, in that sense, to write the story of ones own life (Mendus, 2000: 128).2 I intend to focus critically on autonomy as self-authorship, in order to assess the gendered nature of this prominent claim. In recent years, the claim to self-authorship has been the focus of a range of ethical, political and social criticisms. In particular, consider the criticism of Susan Mendus that:
. . . autonomy, so understood, is less important than is commonly believed. By giving centrality to the concept of autonomy as authorship modern political philosophy neglects what is of most signicance to many peoples lives. In particular, it misrepresents the nature of personal relationships and in consequence advocates social and political arrangements which threaten to distort the realities of individuals lived experience. (Mendus, 2000: 129)
My aim is to bring out the lived reality of the relation of autonomy to vulnerability and the signicance of this relation for ethics today. I will suggest that the gendering of autonomy can help us to read and write the narratives which actually shape the lives of men and women, including their personal, material and social relations. To be precise, I will understand the gendering of ethics as an internal process whereby, rst, we become aware of the model of human nature, of identity, which ethics employs; and, second, as feminists we assess whether this identity has been imposed authoritatively in order to subordinate women.3 So gendering is an internal critique (of ethics) rather than a corrective process that operates (on ethics) from outside. As an internal critique, it works from within; which means, in this context, that if masculine narcissism has led to defects in ethical theory, then the problem is not simply descriptive incompleteness. The problem is a failure to respect the presence in moral rationality of capacities such as attention and relationality. These particular capacities are supposedly not those possessed by the autonomous individual yet are apparently (correctly) attributed to women in their roles of wife and mother. For my part I propose that this internal critique of any subordination of women due to the imposition of gender identity should, in addition, be followed by a creativity that initiates a transformation of sexist conditions: a transformation that could be said to constitute a re-gendering. My argument builds upon Kantian discussions of autonomy, including references to critical work by feminists and by some theorists who reject Kant.4 From this grounding, I seek to defend my own view on autonomy,
Anderson: Autonomy, vulnerability and gender

vulnerability and gender. However, before the presentation of my argument, I will follow Mendus example in turning to A Dolls House, a 19th century play by Henrik Ibsen. In particular, I will stress the political nature of Ibsens play, since it can still contribute to feminist discussions of autonomy, especially in breaking down the distinction between the public and private spheres of life. Clearly Ibsens play provoked furious reactions in 187980, when audiences were not yet ready to admit the entrance of women into public life, let alone their autonomy! My initial concern is with the picture of a gendered conception of autonomy and the condition of womens vulnerability found in Ibsens 1879 play (Ibsen, 1981: 188). As A Dolls House opens, Torvald Helmer and his wife, Nora, are at the point in their marriage of nancial success after years of hard work. Torvalds status and success have been achieved by the efforts of both husband and wife. In fact, in the early years of their marriage Torvald was unwell. During that period of time, and unknown to him, Nora borrowed money to pay for his medical treatment. This involved forging her fathers signature because women were not allowed to borrow money. Nora did this out of love and imagined that, if Torvald ever found out he would be proud of her. But it becomes brutally clear that she did not know him. Furthermore, she neither understood the criminal nature of her act of forgery nor anticipated the inevitably harsh response of her husband to this act. The revelation of the mutual failure of husband and wife to know each other comes just after Torvald learns that his wife is not an innocent doll, but a liar, a cheat even a common criminal. His initial reaction is panic, then incomprehension:
. . . people might even suspect me of being an accomplice in these criminal acts of yours. They might even think I was the one behind it all . . . I just cant understand it, its so incredible. (Ibsen, 1981: 76)
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Until he is assured that her criminal act of forgery can be concealed, he seems horried. Ironically, this becomes a moment of potential power for Nora. She is able to recognize the role which has been authoritatively imposed upon her. Here she realizes her failure to read her own life in relation to her husband, family and society:
NORA . . . At home, Daddy used to tell me what he thought, then I thought the same. And if I thought differently, I kept quiet about it, because he wouldnt have liked it. He used to call me his baby doll, and he played with me as I used to play with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house. . . . HELMER What way is that to talk about our marriage? NORA What I mean is: I passed out of Daddys hands into yours. You arranged everything to your tastes, and I acquired the same tastes. Or I pretended to . . . I dont really know . . . I think it was a bit of both, sometimes one thing and sometimes the other. When I look back, it seems to me I have been living here like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by doing tricks for you, Torvald. But thats the way you wanted it. You and Daddy did me a great wrong. Its your fault that Ive never made anything of my life. (Ibsen, 1981: 80)
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Nora is equally horried at this moment; she is shocked by the picture which her husband, like her father, sustained of her. From an external point of view, especially in her husbands eyes, she is a child in acute need of the protection of a practical man to compensate for her inadequacies. Yet, for Nora this is a signicant moment for self-recognition when she nds power in reacting against a destructive, external view of her:
. . . If Im ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. Thats why I cant stay here with you any longer. (Ibsen, 1981: 81) [Now] . . . I believe that rst and foremost I am an individual, just as much as you are or at least Im going to try to be. I know most people agree with you, Torvald, and thats also what it says in books. But Im not content any more with what most people say, or with what it says in books. I have to think things out for myself, and get things clear. (Ibsen, 1981: 82)
In this play, the male and female characters equally fail to read the relational context of their lives, despite each shaping the others story. There are at least two moments when Nora discovers her own power to act, in a certain sense, autonomously. First, there is the earlier moment (implied above). At the death of her father she helps her husband, without his awareness, by borrowing money in her fathers name. Second, there is this decisive moment for her own self-knowledge (above), when her husband is horried by the discovery of her autonomous action and she asserts her new intention, that is, to leave him. I urge that we recognize a Kantian possibility for the female character in Ibsens play. There is, on the one hand, the upshot5 of Kants position that a man has autonomy, while a woman lacks the autonomous capacity to reason for herself; a position that was obviously entrenched in the minds of those who reacted furiously to Ibsens implicit proposal in A Dolls House that a woman has autonomy. Yet I contend that there is also, on the other hand, the Kantian possibility that, in asserting herself as a rational agent, the woman can break with a dolls house. Nora takes a step toward self-authorship, or autonomy, by seeking to know herself, the law and society.
Kantian ethics and Kant on autonomy

There has never been much dispute that Kant seeks the limits to what we can know. Yet in the past this limitation has rarely been related to the autonomous use of reason in Kantian ethics. In fact, the postmodern critique of autonomy has assumed just the opposite: that the Kantian subject has a fully transparent knowledge of itself as a rational agent. However, I maintain that this is not the (best) way to read Kant. The postmodern assumption is incorrect, tending to derive from formalist readings of the Kantian autonomous subject as disembodied and disembedded. This subject is especially prominent in works by 20th century Anglo-American ethicists. In contrast, if we accept the necessarily partial nature of selfknowledge and the need to read our lives in the context of the stories in which we already play a part even before we begin to write our own6 then

the autonomy and reason of a Kantian agent are vulnerable to circumstances, to the contingencies of nature and of concrete relationships with other agents. We can be wrong not only about what we know and what is right action, but wrong about who we are in relation to the constraints of our personal, social and material world. In this light, our ethics need to be based upon revisable, rational principles. I maintain that this revisability opens up the possibility of recognizing the gendered nature of our contemporary conception of autonomy. Moreover, if, in giving a more adequate account of Kants assumptions about embodiment, his autonomous subject cannot be separated from the fundamental source of our vulnerability, then there is ground, even in Kant, for an account of agency and ethics which includes the variables of gender. My own, Kantian, view is that an account of autonomy as self-authorship can only be partially true. Inevitably the self is vulnerable also to the demands of time and variables of gender in shaping the stories of our lives. If this view were accepted more widely, it would challenge decisively the still dominant, liberal idea of autonomy as, straightforwardly, the ability to write my story. Moreover it would equally challenge a supercial reading of Kant. For Kant, temporal events render us vulnerable to change. More generally, what happens to us is contingent upon the vagaries of everyday circumstances. In fact, it is Kants recognition of our contingency that led him to try to make the moral realm secure with the reliability and consistency of what is necessarily common to all human beings: our capacity to reason. Autonomous reason aims to achieve reliability and consistency, but this is always in the face of our inevitable vulnerability. Yet the issue is whether such an ethical ideal of autonomy could allow for differences between men and women at the level of concrete, material and social life. To address this critical issue in the rest of this article I will argue, roughly, as follows. First, I will contend that the lack of rational authority suffered by socially marginalized or subordinated persons (for example, women) can be remedied by a practical principle of inclusion; that is, the inclusion of concrete differences. As a feminist principle this would have to be read at the interface of autonomy and vulnerability where women have been excluded by their vulnerability. Second, I will demonstrate that, practically speaking, rational authority should be able to account for the social and material specicities of our vulnerability, as men and women, in both reading and writing our own lives. In the face of vulnerability due to our neediness and contingency, we seek a common humanity in aspiring to be autonomous selves, while nevertheless remaining dependent on others to a certain degree. This dialectic of autonomy and vulnerability, I suggest, can nd coherence only in making narrative sense of life. In Ricoeurs terms, narrative identity seeks the fragile coherence of a story which, nevertheless, contains variability, diversity and even discontinuity. Here narrative identity gives the self a unity, but this is a dynamic unity, allowing change through time as in the context of a story.7 In particular, the moral thread of the story can unite the characters, their actions and temporal
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events. For example, a thread might be maintained by the promise kept by one character to another. Third, to conclude, I will advocate the gendering of autonomy; but by this I mean maintaining a regulative principle of autonomy whereby a partial self-authorship is possible in a larger, historical context and in a personal awareness of our various relations with others. I would like to advocate, in terms recently worked out by Kantian philosopher, Onora ONeill, a principled autonomy. This means, crucially, to legislate principles, including the support and assistance of others, that all could adopt (see ONeill, 2002: 7399).
Kantian reason: before and after Foucault

An exclusive conception of autonomy as strictly formal and, in this sense, disembodied can be found represented by Ibsens character, Torvald, who nds autonomy in the law and political life. Feminist critics have rightly rejected any such ideal of autonomy, which is exclusively the norm of a privileged man who seems to deny (at least theoretically) the vulnerable nature of concrete life, including his relations with others (see Mendus, 2000: 139). This is self-contradictory (as Torvald discovers): no human self can deny his or her personal, material and social relations without facing contradiction, even horror. So this ideal is clearly unsuitable for an ethics, especially an ethics seeking gender inclusivity. For an alternative conception of an ideal which intends to represent perfect inclusivity, let us consider ONeills constructivist vindication of the political authority of reason (ONeill, 1986: 52351; ONeill, 1989: 2850). ONeill conceives Kantian reason as autonomous in acting on principles that all could follow, reliably and consistently. The response of the postmodern, Foucauldian philosopher to this Kantian construction might still be to assert a total lack of condence in reason, especially in the authority of reason.8 In a rather complex argument, Miranda Fricker suggests that the postmodern philosopher moved too quickly in response to Kant. Frickers suggestion is roughly as follows:9 Accept a constructivist vindication of reason as being able to act on principle; this construction intends a historical progression towards an ideal discursive practice which is governed entirely by principles of reason that everyone could accept. Accept that reasons authority depends upon autonomy that has been freely reached by communication with others in dissent. Autonomous reasoning would then (ideally) allow us to agree discursively to dissent from any alien authority or any circumstances which constrain (us) materially and socially. This achievement assumes an absence of power. Think that this conception of autonomy provides the conditions for historical progress towards the idea of perfect inclusiveness. Reect that the path to the postmodern distrust of reason may not, after all, be blocked by this constructivism. In Frickers words:
. . . the appropriateness of the ideal of a perfectly autonomous and inclusive discursive situation in which no alien authorities are present to impugn the spontaneity of critical thought is dubious. (Fricker, 2000: 154)

In particular, a Foucauldian conceives discursive relations precisely as constraining: such relations are constituted by power as a productive force, not by an absence of power. Conclude that a Kantian ideal of a discursive situation in which power is absent is a false conception. After Foucault, we cannot make sense of a discursive situation in which the suppression of critical thought is overcome by the absence of power (Foucault, 1984). In short, a decisive problem for the Foucauldian (ethicist) with a constructivist vindication of reasons authority is the Kantian ideal of an ethical situation in which we could exclude the workings of power from discursive relations per se. If we follow this postmodern line we will have to reject the conception of autonomy as a regulative ideal for the perfect inclusion of all men and all women in ethical thinking. But the problem here is not with reason itself and, I would say, not with autonomy itself. Instead, the loss of condence is in a commitment to a peculiarly unreachable standard, namely, the absence of power, for the vindication of rational authority. In other words, the postmodern thinker, as Fricker explains, despairs of the possibility of distinguishing authoritative from authoritarian uses of reason (Fricker, 2000: 156). To overcome the postmodern loss of condence in rational authority we might, as Fricker does, shift the focus for feminists to the ethics of our epistemic practices: how we should conduct ourselves as reasoners as participants in discursive or epistemic practices (Fricker, 2000: 159; italics added). Frickers move is worth more consideration. Here I only have space to insist upon considering the discursive practices of a feminist ethics of autonomy. In particular, our practices should be aware of, and so reect, the limited role of self-authorship. In other words, feminist ethicists should read womens lives carefully in the context of the stories in which we nd ourselves. Feminist ethicists can enhance a practical ideal of autonomy by raising questions of power, gender and social identity. This sensitivity to context would, in turn, support a constructivist vindication of the political authority of reason. What would these questions say about Nora? her power? her gender? her social identity? In ways similar to this reading of Nora, we would each have to read our own discursive practices in specic concrete situations. But this would also imply reading new possibilities in the ideas of past thinkers. For instance, we might read the possibility that Nora will gain knowledge of herself, the law and society, not by learning to stand alone (Ibsen, 1981: 81), but by recognizing her rational capacities as well as her needs in relation to others.
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A feminist conception of autonomy

I am not convinced by the postmodern philosophers critique of rational authority. In particular, I do not accept that ONeills Kantian ideal of perfect inclusivity for all men and all women as ethical reasoners is necessarily undermined by a general, even pervasive, loss of condence in the authority of reason. What seems to be wrong, at least with ONeills early account of a constructivist vindication of autonomys political basis as the ground for perfect inclusivity, is a failure to address adequately the issue
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of social identity and power. Yet a practical ideal of inclusion not unlike certain feminist proposals for relational autonomy10 could still be employed to interpret autonomy as a regulative, revisable principle of reason. This is revisable in precisely the sense of taking on board our vulnerabilities as men and women. The principle of inclusion would, then, be inseparable from our concern with how we should conduct ourselves as rational readers and writers of our lives, attentive to each other. But can a Kantian
. . . adjust her conception of the conditions under which we can say that no critical thought is suppressed, so that only the absence of certain, corrupting operations of power is required? (Fricker, 2000: 156)
For the Foucauldian it may be that all power is corrupting, or both corrupting and enabling.11 Nevertheless, I maintain that, as vulnerable, the autonomous self would be able to become aware of the power in all relations as both enabling and corrupting. Judith Butlers The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection goes some distance to support this position (Butler, 1997: 12). However, I move in a different direction from Butler. As a Kantian philosopher, I propose that an ethics which genders autonomy would involve two sides: recognition and imagination. On the one hand, one needs to recognize the exclusive, self-contradictory conception of a strictly formal autonomy. Notice, for instance, the contradictory relationship of Torvalds autonomy to Noras sense of identity. And, on the other hand, one must imagine a critically gendered conception of autonomy as necessarily in relation to vulnerability (for example, to love): think, for instance, about the possibility of a principled autonomy for Nora. I seek the latter conception as a middle ground between a strictly formal autonomy and a complete rejection of autonomy as necessarily subordinating material relations. I doubt that Nora can understand, or become, herself by completely rejecting, in her terms, Daddy, husband, the law and society (see Ibsen, 1981: 806). Here, in our process of gendering, autonomys relation to vulnerability is exposed in its specicity for individual men and women. This process enables our becoming aware of the model of identity which ethics employs, as well as enabling us to assess whether this gendered identity has been imposed authoritatively. As soon as we recognize ourselves as embodied agents we must admit the partial nature of our rational knowledge of ourselves. This is reinforced by the contingency of our actual relationships and our dependence on other reasoners as agents and recipients of action (Anderson, 1993). The relevant, Foucauldian point is that we must be alert to the corrupting forces of power in the uses of reason by ethical agents, namely, by ourselves and by others. But we do not learn this today only from Foucault. The corrupting forces of power have a Kantian version in Kants account of the inscrutable origin of radical evil that corrupts the underlying maxims of our action (Kant, 1998b: 4573). My point is that vulnerability as a condition for exclusion and corruption is bound up with the partiality of self-knowledge and this vulnerability is evident in the dialectical nature of the enabling and corrupting, or creating and resisting, power of subjects.

The obvious question is: why would a feminist want to hold on to a practical ideal of autonomy in the shape of a gendered reconstruction (of Kantian reason), especially if this goal is unrealizable? My argument is roughly that, if we recognize ourselves just as Kant did as never fully autonomous, since we are always vulnerable agents; then we can make sense of a regulative ideal of perfect inclusion as the ground for solidarity across differences. Admittedly, this regulative ideal must serve to make a distinction between the ideal and its translation in our ethical practices, whether as a principle or a goal. In this instance, the ideal is autonomy without the exclusion of certain material differences. Its translation in our ethical practice takes on autonomys relation to the variables of gender such as the vulnerability of inconstant love between, say, husband and wife. In this way, a critical distance is created. So, in the formulation of an ethical concept such as autonomy, a certain sort of exclusion is inevitable. The most basic exclusion is the result of differentiating between one attribution or action and another. Whether the action be called good and not evil, or autonomous and not heteronomous, the ethical concept must be given a denite value. Thus the critical distance between ideal and ethical practice is necessary both conceptually and practically for us to make any endeavour to conduct ourselves according to the good, the right, the true, or any other norm (see Huntington, 1995: 3755). Another way of explaining the necessary role for an unachievable ideal of autonomy, with its relation to vulnerability, is that the partial nature of our knowledge of ourselves forces an indirect process of readingwriting our actions and lives. We have no direct knowledge of a perfectly ethical act; we have no fully adequate self-knowledge. Instead we have only the continual process of endeavouring to make intelligible what remains unintelligible. In the case of our lived experiences, knowledge is always potentially possible in so far as we have phenomenological access to our lived body. For example, a particular womans experience of sexual desire for another woman may not be a matter of explicit self-knowledge because it may be obscured by certain norms and heterosexual codes of practice. Yet this woman would have certain ways to access her bodily life: that is, critical self-reection could give access to the difference between the lived body (as experienced by her) and the interpreted body (as, say, heterosexual). Such reection could, in this case, enable her own recognition of an as-yet-opaque, lived experience of lesbian desire. If the gendering of autonomy rejects the identity of a disembodied subject, then we need to admit access to our lived, bodily experiences phenomenologically. In this way, we recognize that an accessible, yet often unintelligible body can and should be part of an ongoing, hermeneutic process of exposing the imposition of a certain gendered identity.12 Going back to Ibsen; Nora may have thought that she acted out of love for her husband; but the imposed image of a doll rendered her act of love virtually unintelligible to both her and her husband once it was seen in the light of the dominant, patriarchal norms of interpretation. What sort of knowledge does Nora have of her innermost motivations and desires? In fact, Ibsen himself gives no narrative of love as a reliable motivation or as
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a possible source of knowledge. Yet a reading of the story of Noras life (or, indeed, of ones own life) as a critically engaged process of self-recognition renders intelligible the knowledge necessary for an ethics of gender, incorporating vulnerability and autonomy.13
Reading and writing the stories of our lives

To support further my argument for the gendering of autonomy by feminists I suggest that the limited, rational authority of autonomy has to do with the partial nature of self-authorship and its relation to reading our lives (Cooke, 1999: 2589). Within the terms of Kants What is Enlightenment? the autonomous selfs authority is called self-governance pure and simple, as opposed to obedience to an alien authority (Kant, 1991: 5460).14 Yet a qualication on self-governance for any contemporary, gendered reconstruction of autonomy will reveal the distortions of self-authorship: these are distortions resulting from a failure to read the stories in which we nd ourselves, even before we act. I take the fundamental capacity to understand the relation of autonomy to vulnerability (of time and circumstance) to be an equally necessary element for gendering derivative capacities such as responsibility, accountability, purposive rationality and evaluative interpretation. These derivative capacities would undergo an internal critique similar to the following: the gendering of the conception of autonomy nds, in reading and writing the narratives that shape our lives, a dialectic between the coherent and unied and the opaque and conicted aspects of the self. Jean Grimshaw describes this dialectic well as follows:
. . . we are often faced with the experienced need to make sense of our lives and our feelings and goals, to relate confused fragments of ourselves into something that seems more coherent and of which we feel more in control. We are often also faced, however, with the need to tolerate contradictions, not to strive for an illusory or impossible ideal, and to avoid self-punishing forms of anxiety, defence and guilt (and feminist guilt can be as punishing as any other kind). The dialectic of autonomy is one in which a constant (but never static or nal) search for control and coherence needs balancing against a realism and tolerance born out of efforts to understand ourselves (and others) better. (Grimshaw, 1988: 106)15
In response to the above account I stress that autonomy is not wholly unconditioned. Instead it is, as Grimshaw says above, a constant search for coherence balanced against a realism born out of efforts to understand ourselves and others better. So autonomy must be a regulative principle. In other words, a practical ideal autonomy balances self-authorship with the efforts to read our lives and those of others. Women have traditionally been in situations of subordination (of power) and dependency, lacking identity and rights. I have proposed here that we have been most vulnerable in our difculty with a fundamental sort of coherence: a coherence that depends upon making narrative sense of our lives; in both reading and writing our lives in the context of personal, material and social relations. Ricoeur has argued that autonomy presupposes the capacities for creating a narrative identity that encompasses alterity. Alterity includes temporal changes and uctuations in our

relationships with others (Ricoeur 1992a: 35, 14068, 2906).16 Seeking autonomy in the face of vulnerability due to time and to variables of gender is a serious challenge for women who, like Nora in A Dolls House, confront a distinctive history of oppression. If we follow Ricoeurs argument, the success of this search would depend upon the capacity for making sense of our narrative context and for creating new narratives.17 A feminist ethics of autonomy would, in this light, have the epistemological task of informing and guiding the unending negotiation of two extremes. On the one hand, the female selfs personal search for singularity, or in Adriana Cavareros terms uniqueness18 is necessary for autonomous action with and for others.19 On the other hand, the social structures of power constitute a womans condition of marginality and lack of self-authorship and so subordination. In particular, a sophisticated ability is necessary to create a minimal amount of narrative coherence, making possible autonomy, or self-authorship, in the face of the forms of power which subordinate. This ability to achieve narrative coherence would be creative, going beyond the power of (only) resisting the imposition of social structures. This ability also assumes the recognition of the dialectics of autonomy. That is, the gendering of autonomy must begin with recognizing the dialectic of seeking coherence and accepting differences as bound up with an unavoidable personal opaqueness. Two extremes constitute the tension between autonomy and vulnerability which is tied up with the partial nature of our knowledge of ourselves. There is, on the one hand, a womans unacknowledged ability to resist the imposition of an identity, while simultaneously creating a narrative identity as the heart of self-authorship and, on the other hand, a failure to see her own moral capacities, as well as her weaknesses, fragmentation and oppression. Ironically, the complex conditions of vulnerability which have historically rendered impossible (often by concealing it) womens autonomy, indicate both the need and the possibility for revision of our ethical principles. I propose steering between the total rejection of autonomy as a masculine ideal and the (mistaken) acceptance of a wholly autonomous reason. For me, the crucial step in gendering autonomy is recognizing our capacity to render intelligible the sexed/gendered nature of human agency as evident in the material specicities of our vulnerability.20 We need to make sense of ourselves as agents who are female, male, heterosexual, homosexual; that is, although alike as agents, we are in various ways different from each other. Finally, my argument can be summarized in the following, rather complex, steps. Accept the ideal of autonomy as the ethical basis for inclusion of every man and woman in discursive practices. Accept that this Kantian ideal of autonomy becomes a revisable (normative) principle of reason for gendered agents who, as embodied, are vulnerable yet seek to read and write their own lives. Reect that the practical ideal of perfect inclusion as the basis for an ethics of gender, and for the gendering of autonomy, is inseparable from how we actually conduct ourselves as vulnerable reasoners who exclude, and are excluded by, others. Conclude that we can adjust the conditions under which we can say that a discursive
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practice is autonomous. At a minimum no corrupting power decisively obstructs the critical reasoning of vulnerable agents who seek to distinguish the actual from the ideal norm. They distinguish their weaknesses from their capacity to render intelligible the sexed/gendered nature of their own autonomy as ironically dependent upon their relations to others. Furthermore, both women and men, as vulnerable, can be included in the discursive practices of autonomous reasoning. This reasoning is gendered by way of a regulative principle which limits self-authorship. The dialectic of autonomy emerges here at the interface of our reading and writing of lifes narratives.
Conclusion
To conclude, a feminist ethics should take seriously a re-reading of modern moral philosophy and a gendering of autonomy. The revised conception of autonomy is not primarily self-authorship. It is autonomous authorship as regulated by reading and writing our relations with the world. So conceived, autonomy becomes, in practical terms, a regulative and always revisable principle. In so far as we achieve a limited authorship, autonomy is necessarily bound up with the partial nature of our knowledge of ourselves, especially knowledge of the contingencies of our lives as sexed/gendered agents in relation to other sexed/gendered agents. Alternatively, we can say, with Butler, that the vulnerability, which is a necessary dimension of ourselves as gendered, reproduces the conditions of our own subordination. To endeavour to account for the material specicities of our vulnerability as men and women with distinctive personal and social identities due to racial, sexual, ethnic and class differences, a feminist ethics of autonomy would have to admit a twofold epistemological task. The rst part of the feminist task is descriptive: we must become critical readers of our own lives in relationship to other actors or agents and this description includes re-reading the way in which our western history of ideas has represented womens lives. Coming after Kant, Ibsens assumptions concerning women and autonomy reect a sense of the upshot of Kantian autonomy. Now feminist philosophers need to describe the upshot of this history of the representations of ideas such as autonomy. The second part of the task is constructive: as nite authors of our own acts and principles, we would have to gain new knowledge by creating narratives out of the phenomenologically accessible, yet never fully intelligible dimensions of our bodily and relational lives. These dimensions include our physical condition, marital or other relational dependencies, emotional health and rational capacities. The constructive part of our epistemological task rests, crucially, on the possibilities inherent in transforming the upshot of the ideas of past philosophers, as well as on our own ideas and ideals. Well before Foucault, Kant laid the ground for the possibility of recognizing our vulnerability, even while seeking to achieve autonomy. Our new knowledge will depend upon the creativity and not

mere resistance accompanying the re-gendering of autonomy, as the collaborative part of our subject formation as moral agents.
161
Notes
1. This consists of a considerable array of representative primary texts which should be read and re-read (Kant, 1998a [1788]; Mill, 1974 [1859]; Berlin, 1969; Rawls, 1971; Ricoeur, 1992a [1990]; Raz, 1986). For two signicant collections of relevant essays on autonomy, see Christman (1989) and MacKenzie and Stoljar (2000). 2. The philosophical literature on the role of narrative, or stories, in constituting self-identity has been signicantly inuenced by the philosophical work of Paul Ricoeur (see Ricoeur, 1992a: 15868, 288; and Kearney, 2002). 3. I am appropriating the terms of gendering as an ethical concept from Sabina Lovibond (see Lovibond, 2001: 1518). 4. Background on my own Kantian position and its defence can be found elsewhere (see Anderson, 1993, 2002, 2003). 5. My use of the upshot and the possibility in the reading of philosophers from the past has a technical signicance derived from recent work in feminist readings of the history of western philosophy. I am indebted to Alix Langley for her work on, and our discussion of, these two terms in particular: Langleys own understanding builds upon, but also goes beyond, the ideas of both Michle Le Doeuff and Genevieve Lloyd (see Langley, forthcoming; compare with Le Doeuff, 1989: 1668; Lloyd, 2000a: 3344 and 2000b: 24563, especially pages 245, 2569). 6. Consider an original account of the way in which action produces life stories, thus affecting other life stories, so that nobody is the (sole) author or producer of her own life story (see Arendt, 1998: 97, 1848, 1919; Beiner and Nedelsky, 2001). 7. Again, Ricoeurs work is signicant (see Ricoeur, 1988: 2419; Ricoeur, 1992a: 11618, 1248, 1608; compare with McNay, 2000: 747, 85116). 8. Foucault has decisively inuenced many feminist readings of Kant (see Code, 1995; Code, 2000: 1834; compare with Foucault, 1984). 9. I appropriate the idea of delineating the steps toward postmodern disillusionment from Miranda Fricker (see Fricker, 2000: 14665). According to Fricker, postmodern scepticism about this authority reects despair over the possibility of distinguishing authoritative and authoritarian uses of reason (Fricker, 2000: 156). 10. Nancy Chodorow made the conception of relational individualism popular for feminist theory generally. Subsequent feminist theorists have developed this in the context of ethical debates (see Chodorow, 1986; Code, 2000: 10320 and 22956). 11. Judith Butler provides a timely discussion of Foucault on power (see Butler, 1997: 1218, 83105). 12. The distinction between the lived and the interpreted body can be read in terms of a dialectical relation (see Vasterling, 1999: 1738). In addition, we might seek to expose the role of social identity in epistemic practices, in order to make intelligible the variables of gender and race which render the differences between the lived and the interpreted body (see Alcoff, 2000: 23562; McNay, 2000: 778).
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13. Again I assume, and roughly appropriate, Lovibonds notion of gendering as an internal, ethical process (see Lovibond, 2001). 14. Some excellent Kant scholars provide an important background to debates on the signicance of Kants distinctive conception of autonomy (for example, see ONeill, 1992: 280308; Wood, 1999: 1578, 374 n. 4, 375 n. 5, 376 n. 7). 15. Grimshaws account continues to be important for challenging the philosophical assumptions that self-awareness is a straightforward achievement and that opaqueness of self is not a problem. 16. Further background on this includes Ricoeur, 1992b: 10320; Ricoeur, 1998: 71, 802, 8994. 17. I myself have built upon Ricoeurs work in this way (see Anderson, 2002: 1531; and Anderson, 2003). Another way to approach this question of the selfs capacities is offered in terms of relating narratives (see Cavarero, 2000). Cavarero stresses the uniqueness of beings whose lifestories are narratable. 18. Cavarero has a relevant and insightful discussion of the uniqueness of a narratable self, especially in the narratable selfs relation to another (see Cavarero, 2000: 3245). A valuable discussion could be developed here between Cavarero and Ricoeur on the self and narrative. Cavarero herself makes only a passing (and potentially misleading) reference to Ricoeur. 19. This is a phrase appropriated from Ricoeur (see Ricoeur, 1992a: 172, 18094). 20. Further consideration could be given to the sexed/gendered distinction (see Vasterling, 1999: 1738).
References
Alcoff, L. (2000) On Judging Epistemic Credibility: Is Social Identity Relevant?, pp. 23562 in Naomi Zack (ed.) Women of Color and Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell. Anderson, P.S. (1993) Ricoeur and Kant: A Philosophy of the Will. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Anderson, P.S. (2002) Ricoeurs Reclamation of Autonomy: Unity, Plurality and Totality, pp. 1531 in John Wall, William Schweiker and W. David Hall (eds) Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought. New York: Routledge. Anderson, P.S. (2003 forthcoming) Ethics Within the Limits of PostRicoeurian Kantian Hermeneutics, in Jeffrey F. Keuss (ed.) The Sacred and the Profane: Contemporary Demands on Hermeneutics. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Arendt, H. (1998) Human Condition, with an Introduction by Margaret Canovan, second edition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Beiner, R. and J. Nedelsky, eds (2001) Judgment, Imagination and Politics: Themes from Kant and Arendt. Oxford: Rowan and Litteeld Publishers. Berlin, I. (1969) Two Concepts of Liberty, in I. Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Butler, J. (1997) The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cavarero, A. (2000) Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (trans. Paul A. Kottman). London: Routledge.

Chodorow, N. (1986) Toward a Relational Individualism: The Mediation of Self through Psychoanalysis, in T.C. Heller, M. Sosna and D.E. Wellberry (eds) Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Christman, J., ed. (1989) The Inner Citadel: Essays on Individual Autonomy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Code, L. (1995) Critiques of Pure Reason, chapter 10 in L. Code, Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations. New York: Routledge. Code, L. (2000) The Perversion of Autonomy and the Subjection of Women: Discourses of Social Advocacy, pp. 181209, in C. MacKenze and N. Stoljar (eds) Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and the Social Self. New York: Oxford University Press. Cooke, M. (1999) Questioning Autonomy: The Feminist Challenge and the Challenge for Feminism, pp. 2589 in Richard Kearney and Mark Dooley (eds) Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy. London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1984) What is Enlightenment? (trans. Catherine Porter), in Paul Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books. Fricker, M. (2000) Feminism in Epistemology: Pluralism without Postmodernism, pp. 14665 in Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grimshaw, J. (1988) Autonomy and Identity in Feminist Thinking, pp. 90108 in Morwenna Grifths and Margaret Whitford (eds) Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Huntington, P. (1995) Toward A Dialectical Concept of Autonomy: Revisiting the Feminist Alliance with Post-Structuralism, Philosophy and Social Criticism 21(1): 3755. Ibsen, H. (1981) A Dolls House (trans. James McFarlane 1961), in Henrik Ibsen: Four Major Plays, Oxford Worlds Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kant, I. (1991) An Answer to the Question, What is Enlightenment? , pp. 5460 in Hans Reiss (ed.) Kants Political Writings (trans. H.B. Nisbet). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1997) Critique of Practical Reason (trans. and ed. Mary Gregor), with an Introduction by Andrews Reath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1998a [1788]) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (trans. and ed. by Mary Gregor), with an Introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1998b) Concerning the Indwelling of the Evil Principle Alongside the Good, or, Of Radical Evil in Human Nature, pp. 4573 in I. Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (trans. and ed. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kearney, R. (2002) On Stories. London: Routledge. Langley, A. (forthcoming 2003) A Feminist Critique of Feminist Philosophy: Dualisms, Equality and Difference. Ph.D dissertation in feminist philosophy, submitted to the University of Sunderland. Le Doeuff, M. (1989) Hipparchias Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, etc. (trans. T. Selous). Oxford: Blackwell. Lloyd, G. (2000a) Le Doeuff and the History of Philosophy, pp. 3344 in Max
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Deutscher (ed.) Operative Philosophy and Imaginary Practice. Amherst, New York: Humanity Books. Lloyd, G. (2000b) Feminism in the History of Philosophy: Appropriating the Past, pp. 24563 in Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lovibond, S. (2001) Gendering as an Ethical Concept, Feminist Theory 2(2): 1518. MacKenzie, C. and N. Stoljar, eds (2000) Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and the Social Self. New York: Oxford University Press. McNay, L. (2000) Gender and Agency: Reconguring the Subject in Feminist and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mendus, S. (2000) Out of the Dolls House: Reections on Autonomy and Political Philosophy, in S. Mendus, Feminism and Emotion. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. Mill, J.S. (1974 [1859]) On Liberty. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ONeill, O. (1986) The Public Use of Reason, Political Theory 14: 52351; reprinted in O. ONeill (1989: 2850) and in Beiner and Nedelsky, eds (2001: 6590). ONeill, O. (1989) Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kants Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ONeill, O. (1992) Vindicating Reason, pp. 280308 in Paul Guyer (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ONeill, O. (2002) Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Raz, J. (1986) The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ricoeur, P. (1988) Time and Narrative, 3 (trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. (1992a [1990]) Oneself As Another (trans. Kathleen Blamey). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. (1992b) Self as Ipse, pp. 10320 in Barbara Johnson (ed.) Oxford Amnesty Lectures. New York: Basic Books. Ricoeur, P. (1998) Critique and Conviction (trans. Kathleen Blamey). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Vasterling, V. (1999) Butlers Sophisticated Constructivism: A Critical Assessment, Hypatia 14(3): 1738. Wood, A. (1999) Kants Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dr Pamela Sue Anderson is Dean and Fellow in Philosophy, Regents Park College, University of Oxford. Her publications include Ricoeur and Kant: A Philosophy of the Will (Scholars Press, 1993) and A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief (Blackwell, 1998), as well as articles in ethics and the philosophy of religion. Address: Regents Park College, University of Oxford, Pusey Street, Oxford OX1 2LB. Email: pamela.anderson@regents-park.oxford.ac.uk

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Autonomy, vulnerability and gender

Pamela Sue Anderson University of Oxford

Feminist Theory 4(2)