Self-Government

To be self-governing is to be subject to no rule other than your own. Both individuals and groups aspire to self-government. One is self-governing when one obeys only those laws, rules, or norms of which one is the author, or can reasonably endorse in some way. A city, state, or group is self-governing when it is free from external domination, and thus free to pursue its own chosen ends of its own will. Although related, these two conceptions of self-government are distinct. One can live in a self-governing community and yet also live nonautonomously in various ways, driven mainly by appetite and desire. Still, with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant the two are brought more closely together. Self-government is valuable because of its close connection to rational autonomy and freedom, and the notion that human beings are owed a special kind of respect that is inconsistent with their being dominated or used by others, including tyrannical or arbitrary government.

The problems arise with defining the extent and scope of self-rule. How can a citizen simultaneously rule and yet also be ruled? The strongest claim would be that all those subject to the power of the state must have an equal say and share in how that power is to be exercised—as well as the capacities to do so. Although it is possible that a benign prince or class of elites could frame laws that reflect the true general will of the body politic, this can't be relied upon. Thus, Rousseau, who offers the most ambitious (and notorious) solution to the problem of reconciling political membership with autonomy, insists that citizens are only genuinely self-governing when they form a new political association in which they are subject only to those laws they prescribe for themselves from the standpoint of the general will, which expresses the common good of the community of which they are a member. One of the deep challenges faced by Rousseau's solution is that it presupposes there is indeed a common good that can be ascertained from this common viewpoint and that it is authoritative for each of us. In response, one can loosen the exact sense in which people are said to have equal responsibility in how power is to be exercised over them, and one can thin out the content of the common good or identity Rousseau presupposes to be shared between members of a political community. But then one is also loosening the sense in which there is indeed a self that is self-governing and the extent of control over the power being exercised over it. Genuine self-government thus remains elusive given the complexity of the relations within which the selves asserting their autonomy are always situated.