The roots of the principle of autonomy can be traced back to the political theory of ancient Greece. Originally used to describe the capacity of the Greek polis or city-state to govern itself, the concept of autonomy received its first modern expression – and its first application to the individual – in the moral theory of Immanuel Kant. For Kant, autonomy stood for the ideal of free will: a human will be driven to action, not by appetite or desire, but by identification with a ‘higher’ or rational self. At the heart of Kant's ethics is the close association of moral action with human rationality; for Kant, autonomous action – action which is deliberately and self-consciously motivated by moral reasons – is the quintessential expression of human rationality. Although the moral universalism Kant sought to defend is no longer philosophically tenable, his insights about many of the core features of autonomous action remained influential until well into the twentieth century.

L. Campbell