Personal Autonomy in a Post-Secular Society

Abstract

The contemporary philosophical debate on autonomy shows several interesting perspectives that emphasize the role of social contexts for developing this human capacity. There is a shift from the classical notion of “moral” autonomy to the wider notion of “personal autonomy”, and we underscore the “substantive view” that helps to provide arguments that support a plausible notion strictly connected with socialization and language use. In this article, we consider the source of autonomy that is represented by a communicative life-world in its ordinary and extra-ordinary dimensions to discuss the role of personal autonomy in a post-secular society. Moreover, we propose to adopt a pragmatic account to describe the social role of the autonomous agent in discursive contexts.

Keywords

• moral autonomy
• personal autonomy
• life-world
• post-secular society
• social statuses
• social attitudes