In Chapter two, Appiah introduces arguments against autonomy, then illustrates why the two standpoints principle is a potential answer to reconciling agency and structure, subject and society by insisting upon the mutually constitutive character of each.
Appiah uses Tolstoy's character, Stepan Arkadyich to elucidate a portrait of what some might call "inauthenticity"--he fails to construct any rational beliefs that are his own; he merely takes up the beliefs of those to whom he responds (Appiah will argue against this later in the chapter).
Appiah asks: "Just how autonomous do you have to be to have true autonomy?" For Appiah, autonomy requires that one has the capacity to reflect; it doesn't necessarily imply that they exercise this ability on a regular basis. He references Raz, who calls the autonomous person someone who is "capable of understanding how various choices will have considerable and lasting impact on his life" (39). This does not mean premeditation or a very deliberate style of one's life...
Appiah dismisses the notion of "strong autonomy" as being too exalted and demanding--making autonomy look "outlandishly exigent" (38).
Johnstons example of Michael as having agency, but lacking personal autonomy is also argued against by Appiah. Michael still has the capacity to be reflective--he is aware of his conditions, opportunities, and abilities.
In the section "Autonomy as Intolerance" Appiah introduces arguments that suggest an apparent discord between autonomy and diversity. John Gray argues that autonomy is pitted against diversity in that is devalues the life of the nun, the professional soldier, or the passionate artist devoted to his life’s work. He is trying to protect the traditionalist who would actually reject his “voluntaristic model of self-choice or self creation that Gray evidently plumps for, and it is a curious suggestion that “self creation” is less (rather than more) burdensome an ideal than autonomy” (42).
Mill, as interpreted by Appiah, wants to say that diversity can be recognized and incorporated in the way we think about liberty. Moral pluralism is not in tension with political liberalism, as Gray would warn, rather it is a tribute to it.
Appiah says that one does not have to subscribe to autonomism to have autonomy. To be autonomous, one need not have the concept of autonomy at all. We should not confuse the capacity to reflect and its actual exercise. Also, freedom from manipulation does not necessarily mean freedom from social pressures. Social pressures are a way of shaping us as individuals—to have a completely independent mind would be to have no fixtures, no values or interests—it would be an inhuman mind. Autonomy comes in matters of degrees. Appiah uses Taylor to help reconcile subject-centered and social-centered accounts. The way we practice should be viewed as a “continual interpretation and reinterpretation of what the rule really means” (54). [We are engaged on practices as beings who act in and on the world]
Kant’s “Two Standpoints”: (1) we are natural beings as a part of the natural realm, “subject to theoretical explanations in terms of natural causes” (the sensible world) and (2) all men think themselves to have free will; “for purposes of action the footpath of freedom if the only one on which we can make use of reason in out conduct” (the intelligible world). These are not planes of reality, they are merely two standpoints, two points of view. Kant says that we have to “act as if freedom is possible even though we can’t provide any theoretical justification for it…it can’t be explained, only defended” (56). This suggests that we should give up our attempt to see structure and agency as competing for the same causal space; they belong to two distinct standpoints, each with a practical purpose. The answers we give depend upon the stories we want to tell and the positions we want to defend. Appiah suggests that what we should “ask of a theory is that is be adequate to its own constitutive project—that it earns its as ifs” (60). He ends saying that “to take autonomy seriously…is not without consequences. It proposes a politics that regards persons as ends, as possessing dignity and inherent worth. It proposes a social order conductive to some version of individuality” (61).