Ethical self-understanding as a dimension of personal autonomy

Over the course of his career, Jürgen Habermas has developed several conceptions of autonomy, most notably moral, private, and public autonomy.. Despite this interest, he has never engaged methodically with the idea of personal autonomy. Notwithstanding this absence, his work contains some ideas that are suggestive of the idea of personal autonomy and that can be developed into a coherent and comprehensive theory. As I state below, his underdeveloped idea of a conscious conduct of life (bewuβte Lebensführung) approximates significantly contemporary conceptions of personal autonomy. A close reading of his work suggests that the idea of a consciously lived life is composed of three interrelated ideas: ethical self-understanding, strong evaluation, and the recognition of participants in communication as competent communicative agents who are expected to speak for themselves. The idea of a conscious conduct of life can be developed into a multidimensional theory of personal autonomy, with each of the three constitutive ideas developed into specific dimensions.