Routledge Autonomy Unbound (Routledge Revivals)

First published in 1999, this volume examines how the question of autonomy has come to be of recent interest in political theory. The author argues that autonomy goes deep into the Western consciousness and is a part of our very mode of being. He suggests that while autonomy is not universal, once tasted it becomes ineradicable. Autonomy runs deeper than is often thought and this book shows that while autonomy is unique to Western consciousness and to democracy, it raises and examines the question as to whether autonomy is either universally necessary or necessary to democracy. Review ’...Clarke forges a razor sharp critique of modes of thought forbidding or legislating autonomy and puts in their place an ethics of autonomy which I can only call, acknowledging Nietzsche’s project of going beyond nihilism, post-theological and post post-modernist.’ Glenn Bowman, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK