Title: Personal Autonomy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Headings: Personal Autonomy
Personal Autonomy
1. Introduction
2. Four More or Less Overlapping Accounts of Personal Autonomy
3. Challenges to Identifying the Minimal Conditions of Personal Autonomy
4. Agents as Causes and the Practical Point of View
5. Conclusion
Bibliography
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Acknowledgments

Content: They influence us in a way that makes a mockery of our authority to determine our own actions. They undermine our autonomy. What distinguishes autonomy-undermining influences on a person’s decision, intention, or will from those motivating forces that merely play a role in the self-governing process? This is the question that all accounts of autonomy try to answer. As the number and variety of these accounts indicate, the distinction is extremely elusive. There is certainly widespread agreement about the paradigm threats to personal autonomy: brainwashing and addiction are the favorite examples in the philosophical literature. But philosophers seem unable to reach a consensus about the precise nature of these threats. They cannot agree about how it is that certain influences on our behavior prevent us from governing ourselves. This disagreement about the defining characteristics of autonomous agency reflects the fact that even as concrete examples appear to call attention to a very real difference between those who govern themselves and those who do not, there are significant conceptual obstacles to making sense of this distinction.