Yeomans reconstructs Hegel's expansion of Kant's notion of autonomy and argues that the result is a striking pluralism in moral psychology and the concept of action.

What would happen if pleasure were made the organizing principle for social relations and sexual pleasure ruled over all? Radical French libertines experimented clandestinely with this idea during the Enlightenment. In explicit novels, dialogues, poems, and engravings, they wrenched pleasure free from religion and morality, from politics, aesthetics, anatomy, and finally reason itself, and imagined how such a world would be desirable, legitimate, rapturous—and potentially horrific. Laying out the logic and willful illogic of radical libertinage, this book ties the Enlightenment engagement with sexual license to the expansion of print, empiricism, the revival of skepticism, the fashionable arts and lifestyles of the Ancien Régime, and the rise and decline of absolutism. It examines the consequences of imagining sexual pleasure as sovereign power and a law unto itself across a range of topics, including sodomy, the science of sexual difference, political philosophy, aesthetics, and race. It also analyzes the roots of radical claims for pleasure in earlier licentious satire and their echoes in appeals for sexual liberation in the 1960s and beyond.

G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche are often considered the philosophical antipodes of the nineteenth century. In Infinite Autonomy, Jeffrey Church draws on the thinking of both Hegel and Nietzsche to assess the modern Western defense of individuality&—to consider whether we were right to reject the ancient model of community above the individual. The theoretical and practical implications of this project are important, because the proper defense of the individual allows for the survival of modern liberal institutions in the face of non-Western critics who value communal goals at the expense of individual rights. By drawing from Hegelian and Nietzschean ideas of autonomy, Church finds a third way for the individual&—what he calls the &“historical individual,&” which goes beyond the disagreements of the ancients and the moderns while nonetheless incorporating their distinctive contributions.

Argues that laws that enforce what is good for the individual's well-being, or hinder what is bad, are morally justified.

Using the urbanized area that spreads across northern New Jersey and around New York City as a case study, this book presents a convincing explanation of metropolitan fragmentation—the process by which suburban communities remain as is or break off and form separate political entities. The process has important and deleterious consequences for a range of urban issues, including the weakening of public finance and school integration. The explanation centers on the independent effect of urban infrastructure, specifically sewers, roads, waterworks, gas, and electricity networks. The book argues that the development of such infrastructure in the late nineteenth century not only permitted cities to expand by annexing adjacent municipalities, but also further enhanced the ability of these suburban entities to remain or break away and form independent municipalities. The process was crucial in creating a proliferation of municipalities within metropolitan regions. The book thus shows that the roots of the urban crisis can be found in the interplay between technology, politics, and public works in the American city.

An unclouded look at territorial autonomy back and forward, 100 years after the establishment of the first "modern" territorial autonomy in a democratic state: the Åland Islands in Finland in 1921/22. Where has autonomy been successful to ensure minority protection and self-government, where has it failed, where is it in crisis, where is it aspired to? In which cases would autonomy settle open conflicts between states and regional communities, and in which cases of national emancipation is autonomy no longer sufficient? In 2021, after 100 years of experience with territorial autonomy in all parts of the world, this concept for solving sub-state conflicts is still underestimated. Background information and assessments on the development to date and on the perspectives for the application of territorial autonomy in various regions worldwide by the author of "The World's Modern Autonomy Systems", conversations with ten outstanding personalities from politics and science in these regions and a foreword by the South Tyrolean politician and scientist Oskar Peterlini, former senator in Rome.

This collection of new essays examines philosophical issues at the intersection of feminism and autonomy studies. Are autonomy and independence useful goals for women and subordinate persons? Is autonomy possible in contexts of social subordination? Is the pursuit of desires that issue from patriarchal norms consistent with autonomous agency? How do emotions and caring relate to autonomous deliberation? Contributors to this collection answer these questions and others, advancing central debates in autonomy theory by examining basic components, normative commitments, and applications of conceptions of autonomy. Several chapters look at the conditions necessary for autonomous agency and at the role that values and norms - such as independence, equality, inclusivity, self-respect, care and femininity - play in feminist theories of autonomy. Whereas some contributing authors focus on dimensions of autonomy that are internal to the mind - such as deliberative reflection, desires, cares, emotions, self-identities and feelings of self-worth - several authors address social conditions and practices that support or stifle autonomous agency, often answering questions of practical import. These include such questions as: What type of gender socialization best supports autonomous agency and feminist goals? When does adapting to severely oppressive circumstances, such as those in human trafficking, turn into a loss of autonomy? How are ideals of autonomy affected by capitalism? and How do conceptions of autonomy inform issues in bioethics, such as end-of-life decisions, or rights to bodily self-determination?