Table Of ContentAUTONOMY AND NORMATIVITY
'A radical and systematic critique of some of the mainstream thinkers by means of
a single unifying principle. This book will contribute very constructively to current
philosophical debate.'
Wilfried Ver Eecke, Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University, USA
'Winfield has a very clear position, namely that normativity must be foundation-
free and so self-determining, and he explores the implications of this position with
great energy and clarity. It is very helpful to have these essays collected together so
coherently in this single volume which will appeal to students and scholars coming
from a broadly Hegelian direction, as well as those working on political questions
from the perspectives of Kant, Marx, Rawls or Habermas.'
Stephen Houlgate, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, UK
Autonomy and Normativity explores central topics in current philosophical debate,
challenging the prevailing post-modern dogma that theory, practice and art are
captive to contingent historical foundations by showing how foundational dilemmas
are overcome once validity is recognized to reside in self-determination.
Through constructive arguments covering the principal topics and controversies in
epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, Autonomy and Normativity demonstrates how
truth, right and beauty can retain universal validity without succumbing to the
mistaken Enlightenment strategy of seeking foundations for rational autonomy.
Presenting a compact, yet comprehensive statement of a powerful and provocative
alternative to the reigning orthodoxies of current philosophical debate, Richard
Winfield employs Hegelian techniques and focus to object to opponents, and
presents a radical and systematic critique of the work of mainstream thinkers
including Kant, Rawls, Husserl, Habermas and others. The ramifications for the
legitimation of modernity are thoroughly explored, in conjunction with an analysis
of the fate of theory, practice and art in the modern world. This book offers an
invaluable resource for students of both analytic and continental philosophical
traditions, and related areas of law, social theory and aesthetics.
In memory of my brother-in-law,
Siddhartha Gautam
Autonomy and Normativity
Investigations of Truth, Right and Beauty
RICHARD DIEN WINFIELD
First published 2001 by Ashgate Publishing
Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright © Richard Dien Winfield 2001
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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 00046896
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-70679-8 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-20162-7 (ebk)
Contents
A Note on the Text vi
Introduction viii
Part I: Truth
Chapter One Freedom from Foundations: The Normativity of
Autonomy in Theory and Practice 3
Chapter Two Hegel's Remedy for the Impasse of Contemporary
Philosophy 20
Chapter Three Philosophy without Foundations? 35
Chapter Four Concept, Individuality and Truth 42
Chapter Five Space, Time and Matter: Conceiving Nature without
Foundations 54
Part II: Right
Chapter Six Ethical Community without Communitarianism 69
Chapter Seven The Immanent Critique of Natural Ethical Community 81
Chapter Eight With What Must Ethics Begin? Reflections on Property
and Contract 87
Chapter Nine Unity in the Common Law? 97
Chapter Ten Friendship, Family and Ethical Community 109
Chapter Eleven The Unfinished Revolution in Family Law 127
Chapter Twelve Should the Economy be Democratized? 141
Chapter Thirteen Relativism and Democracy 152
Chapter Fourteen Post-Colonialism and Right 161
Part III: Beauty
Chapter Fifteen The Individuality of Art and the Collapse of
Metaphysical Aesthetics 179
Chapter Sixteen Romanticism and Modernity 195
Chapter Seventeen The Challenge of Architecture to Systematic Aesthetics 211
Conclusion
Chapter Eighteen Modernity and the Recovery of Truth, Right and Beauty 227
Index 245
v
A Note on the Text
Those chapters that were previously published are listed below with the corre
sponding publication credits. The respective journals and presses are thanked for
granting permission to include these studies, which are here integrated with certain
alterations.
Chapter One: "Freedom from Foundations: The Normativity of Autonomy in
Theory and Practice", Jadavpur Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 4, No. 1, Fall 1992,
pp. 1-27.
Chapter Two: "Hegel's Remedy for the Impasse of Contemporary Philosophy",
Reason Papers, Vol. 16, Summer 1991, pp. 115-132.
Chapter Three: Review of William Maker's Philosophy without Foundations:
Rethinking Hegel, The Owl of Minerva, Vol. 28, No. 1, Fall 1996, pp. 100-108.
Chapter Four: "Concept, Individuality and Truth", Bulletin of the Hegel Society
of Great Britain, Nos. 39/40, 1999, pp. 35-46.
Chapter Five: "Space, Time and Matter: Conceiving Nature without Foundations",
in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, edited by Stephen Houlgate (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 51-68.
Chapter Six: "Ethical Community without Communitarianism", Philosophy
Today, No. 2, 1996, pp. 310-320.
Chapter Eight: "With What Must Ethics Begin? Reflections on Benson's Account
of Property and Contract", Cardozo Law Review, Vol. 11, No. 3, February 1990,
pp. 537-548.
Chapter Nine: "Unity in the Common Law?", The Canadian Journal of Law &
Jurisprudence, Vol. IX, No. 2, July 1996, pp. 411-422.
Chapter Ten: "Friendship, Family and Ethical Community", The Philosophical
Forum, Vol. 28, No. 4 and Vol. 29, No. 1, Fall 1997-Winter 1998, pp. 1-20.
Chapter Twelve: "Should the Economy be Democratized?", Southeastern Political
Review, Vol. 23, No. 4, December 1995, pp. 689-702.
Chapter Thirteen: "Relativism and Democracy", Jadavpur Journal of
Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 1, Fall 1998, pp. 1-12.
vi
A Note on the Text vn
Chapter Fourteen: "Post-Colonialism and Right", in Hegel's Philosophy of Right,
edited by Robert Williams (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001).
Chapter Fifteen: "The Individuality of Art and the Collapse of Metaphysical
Aesthetics", in American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1, January 1994,
pp. 39-51.
Chapter Sixteen: "Hegel, Romanticism, and Modernity", The Owl of Minerva,
Vol. 27, No. 1, Fall 1995, pp. 3-18.
Chapter Seventeen: "The Challenge of Architecture to Hegel's Aesthetics", in
Hegel's Aesthetics, edited by William Maker (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2000), pp. 97-111.
Introduction
Autonomy and normativity have had an often beleaguered association in the annals
of theory, practice, and art, but seldom has their link been suppressed. From the
beginning, philosophy has understood its pursuit of truth to depend upon the auton
omy of reason. Without reason's liberty to question everything, philosophical
inquiry could never escape the hold of prevailing authority and a relativizing
subservience to whatever claims that authority privileges. Moreover, without the
positive freedom to generate ideas independently of antecedent dogma, philosophy
could never advance from conditioned opinion to truths unconditioned by bondage
to unexamined givens. Whenever the legitimacy of conduct has become an issue,
freedom has equally had to be enlisted, first, as the constituent gateway to the
sphere of responsible action circumscribing right and wrong, and second, as the
conduit from enslavement under ruling convention to the enactment of practices
that are as they ought to be. Finally, for beauty to be evaluated in its own right,
shorn of magical, sacred, or prosaic concerns, the necessities of given form and
antecedent rules have had to make way for autonomy to accommodate the individ
uality, originality and creativity pervading the aesthetic fit of meaning and
configuration.
At each turn, the demands of normative justification require a liberation from
the given as well as a positive autonomy to deliver a content independent of exter
nal foundations. Neither truth, nor right, nor beauty can be defined by anything
lacking the normativity they each constitutively possess. Yet if truth cannot be
determined by what lies outside the truth, if what is right cannot be prescribed by
what is not itself right, and if beauty cannot be extracted from what lacks aesthetic
worth, that is, if, generally, what is normative cannot be defined by what is norma-
tively neutral, normativity seems to revert to an empty tautology where whatever
claims validity for itself has nothing to offer in its own support than the self-identity
that any arbitrary assertion might share. The alternatives seem starkly bleak: if
normativity gets rooted in some distinct foundation, that foundation can never
satisfy the standard of normativity that it endows by founding what derives from it.
As the antecedent ground of what counts as valid, the privileged foundation would
have to be its own ground to enjoy the normativity it establishes. Otherwise, the
foundation's own character would be a dogmatic given that cannot meet its own
requirement of resting upon the privileged ground from which validity is supposed
to derive. Yet if the foundation does rest upon itself, it ceases to be the foundation
of something other than itself, eliminating the entire relation of ground and
grounded by which its own privileged foundational role is defined. On the other
hand, if normativity cannot be based upon something lying outside itself, it seems
condemned to an arbitrary content, whose presumed privilege can be challenged by
any competitor, insofar as each and every discernible candidate can claim an
individuality making it a law unto itself. Normativity would seem reduced to the
sheer positivity of residing in whatever is put forward as exclusively privileged.
Vlll
Introduction IX
Although the horns of this dilemma have appeared insurmountable to many, its
formulation already contains the key to its own solution. In order for any putative
foundation of normativity to satisfy its own standard for validity, it must ground
itself. Accordingly, whenever foundational justification attempts to achieve inter
nal consistency, the ground of normative validity becomes impelled to determine
itself, thereby eliminating the distinction between prior foundation and what the
foundation endows with validity. In effect, normativity becomes equivalent to self-
determination, for only what is what it determines itself to be escapes the
dependence upon some ground that renders justification problematic.
Although this identification of freedom and normativity results from founda-
tionalism's own internal imperatives, it is hardly conditioned by any initial
attachment to foundational justification. There simply is no other alternative for
normative justification, for if what is valid is not self-determined, its validity is
determined by something else, reintroducing the ground-grounded relationship
defining foundationalism. Validity then once again derives from a separate legiti
mating factor, which can only meet its own validity requirement by grounding
itself and thereby reverting to self-determination. Opposition to the normativity of
freedom is thus refutable without appeal to any separate commitment, demanding
justification for itself. Not only does all opposition collapse on its own terms, but
this collapse leads justification directly to autonomy. No positive claim of any sort
need be supplied to provide this transition. Of course, if the move from the collapse
of foundational justification to the normativity of autonomy depended upon any
connecting principle this mediation would subvert the defining independence of
freedom.
What saves self-determination from collapsing into the arbitrary assertion of
any and every given is that what is self-determined cannot have any pre
determined content. After all, if freedom did have any antecedent nature, it would
possess a character that it had not determined by itself. Contents that are arbitrarily
asserted are not self-determined precisely because they owe their presence to the
arbitrary process of selection that has put them forward. Although arbitrariness and
freedom are commonly conflated by the thinking that cannot free itself of founda
tions, the capacity of choice is not autonomous precisely because whenever it posits
arbitrary contents, what gets determined are the choices, rather than the agency of
choice, which must already be at hand if any stipulation is to be made. Hence, just
as arbitrary contents are determined by an agency separate from themselves, that
agency determines not itself, but choices presupposing its faculty of choice, which
remains the same no matter what issues from it. By contrast, what is self-
determined cannot have an arbitrary content insofar as freedom cannot owe its
character to what any given agency has imparted to it.
These considerations might appear to be of merely theoretical significance, but
they have a decisive bearing upon the most important practical struggles of modern
times.
As much as modernity has been a battleground of competing projects of civiliza
tion, it has distinguished itself from other periods by giving rise to the venture of
erecting a civilization in which what alone counts as valid in theory, conduct and
art is what calls into question the authority of all given tradition and conforms to
rational autonomy. By contrast, pre-modern tradition accepts the sanctity of some
