This chapter characterizes the very idea of autonomy as a response to two problems: understanding the source of normativity and the reality of freedom. Following debates on normativity (Pufendorf and Leibniz) and freedom (Locke, Hume, Rousseau), Kant introduces the notion of autonomy as a unified response to both problems. On this account, to be positively free and to be normatively bound are one and the same thing: to follow rules one has given to oneself. After discussing the attractiveness of this idea, the chapter elaborates a first fundamental challenge: the so-called paradox of autonomy, suggesting that autonomy at its very foundation reverts to heteronomy or arbitrariness. The chapter shows that Kant’s conception is indeed threatened by this paradox and develops Kant’s ways of avoiding it. It argues that Kant’s most important resource, however, has not yet been fully acknowledged: It consists in his concept of self-organizing beings from the third Critique. To avoid the paradox, we should no longer think of self-determination in terms of self-legislation but rather conceive of it in terms of living self-constitution. The chapter closes by discussing why Kant himself did not fully develop this resource and argues that the main reason resides in his notion of transcendental freedom.

The scholarly discussion of Kant’s republicanism focuses heavily on his ‘negative’ conception of freedom: independence or not being subject to another master. What has received much less attention is Kant’s ‘positive’ conception of freedom: being subject to one’s own legislation. This chapter argues that Kant’s positive conception of external freedom plays a crucial role in his Doctrine of Right: external freedom in the negative sense (mutual independence) requires and is realized by freedom in the positive sense (joint self-legislation). After first discussing the ‘innate right to freedom’, it is shown that, on Kant’s account, this fundamental right is realized fully only when external freedom is realized in both senses and in all three spheres of public right. Any satisfactory account of Kant’s republican theory must complement the focus on independence with an emphasis on citizenship and joint self-legislation.