Autonomy: Moral not political. Democratic education and Kan

This dissertation examines autonomy as an aim of moral education. I begin with an introduction to Immanuel Kant's conception of autonomy and some alternative conceptions. I then examine the contemporary kantian conception of autonomy articulated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice, arguing that it reduces autonomy to matters of justice and subjectivizes the virtues. I next provide an account of the application of Rawlsian autonomy to the theories of moral education advanced by Lawrence Kohlberg and Amy Gutmann and go on to discuss the move all three philosophers make from grounded to pragmatic liberalism. I refer to the pragmatic liberal ideal as the autonomy of the citizen and look closely at the form of this ideal articulated by Gutmann in Democratic Education. I argue that, like the grounded liberal ideal, citizen autonomy treats justice and the political virtues as objective and the rest of the virtues as subjective. I go on to argue that this conception of citizen autonomy is not an adequate ideal for public moral education in a democratic society. I locate the problem primarily in pragmatic liberalism's separation of the public and private spheres, a separation which undermines some of the capacities of the private sphere which the separation was designed to protect and upon which the public sphere relies, specifically the capacities for engaging in justificatory projects and cultivating the so-called private virtues. Finally, I attempt to provide an answer to the following question raised by Sher, Why does an asymmetry between objective principles of justice and subjective conceptions of virtue exist in liberal thought? I suggest that it is the result of building conditions which are hostile to the virtues into the moral or public standpoint. In justifying this standpoint, both forms of liberalism ultimately rely on a controversial conception of the person or citizen. I propose that we return to Kant for an alternative conception of autonomy, one which involves both duties of justice and virtue and is better suited to serve as an ideal of public moral education in a free society.