Institutions for Autonomy: Facilitating Moral Selfhood by Design

ABSTRACT Modern institutions can be seen as ‘regimes of autonomy’, social contexts in which different criteria for autonomy are maintained. Some of these institutions provide individuals the opportunity to nurture their moral selfhood as they allow persons to learn the capacity for giving legitimate justifications for their decisions. Among these institutions are the court of law, the educational system, the public debate and the academic system. Contemporary technical and institutional developments, such as the implementation of digital systems and the privatisation of public services, challenge the capacity of institutions to nurture their moral selfhood. These developments introduce regimes of autonomy in which the autonomous self appears to often be understood as an empirical given, in the sense that there is no necessity to support decisions by giving reasons.