Abstract

It is a commonplace in our post-Freudian age that elements within our own minds may deprive us of freedom. The task of my dissertation is philosophically to characterize and defend the notion of freedom that is at work here, when we speak of our freedom as being undermined by the complexity of our own psychology. ;My dissertation consists of three independent but related essays. The first essay, "The Moral Psychology of Autonomy," shows how the specific conception of freedom I adopt grows out of liberalism, with its central focus on independence or "negative liberty," and the Kantian/Hegelian tradition, which focuses on the idea of self-realization . I develop a view that resembles liberalism in allowing that the conditions of each individual's autonomy depend upon her own value commitments, which may not be shared by others. However, unlike liberalism, my view contains a detailed examination of the psychology of creating and living up to "one's own value commitments," which can be seen as a form of "positive liberty." ;The second essay, "Internal Reasons and Motivation," concerns the much-discussed question of whether there can be "external" reasons for action. The traditional accounts of positive liberty presuppose that there are external reasons. I argue, against contemporary Kantians, that there are no external reasons. Finally, in the third essay, "Sentimental Re-Education: Psychoanalysis and the enhancement of Autonomy," I examine psychoanalysis as a specific method of enhancing autonomy. I argue that the unique role of psychoanalysis is to alter the analysand's dispositions to behave so that they can be brought into line with her commitments about how she ought to behave . This process brings about autonomy in exactly the sense characterized in "The Moral Psychology of Autonomy." ;To sum up, my dissertation offers an account of autonomy that is freed from contentious ideas about the universality of value and the externality of reasons.