Answerability

This chapter defends externalist or “constitutively relational” conceptions of autonomy through an examination of an alternative approach developed by Andrea Westlund. Westlund develops her approach in response to what has been called the “agency dilemma.” On the one hand, constraining external circumstances seem to undermine autonomy; on the other, the claim that people are nonautonomous because of their circumstances seems to erase their agency and disrespect their evaluative commitments. This chapter distinguishes the necessary and sufficient conditions of several interrelated aspects of agency: autonomy, authentic agential perspective, and moral responsibility. I argue that whereas answerability may be sufficient for moral responsibility, it is not sufficient for autonomy. Objections to externalist conceptions of autonomy, including the agency dilemma, wrongly assume that denying autonomy implies erasing agency. Once it is recognized that autonomy does not always overlap with authentic agential perspective or moral responsibility, the objections lose their force.