’...Clarke forges a razor sharp critique of modes of thought forbidding or legislating autonomy and puts in their place an ethics of autonomy which I can only call, acknowledging Nietzsche’s project of going beyond nihilism, post-theological and post post-modernist.’ Glenn Bowman, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK
First published in 1999, this volume is an exploration of how deep autonomy goes into Western consciousness and whether autonomy is either universally necessary or necessary to democracy.
Part 1. Autonomy Bound. 1. A Confusion of Concepts. 2. In the Beginning was Autonomy. 3. Autonomy, Authority and Saying No! 4. For the Soul Has Many Gazes. Part 2. Bounded Autonomy. 5. From Hermeneutics to Anthropology. 6. A World Made By Others. Part 3. Autonomy Unbound. 7. The Informed and Opaque Heart. 8. Between Here and Eternity. 9. Of Fractured Minds and Broken Paradigms. 10. A Tale of Two Cities. 11. Autonomy, Myth, Poesis and the Summum Bonum.