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The Ambiguity of the Modern Conception of Autonomy and the Paradox of Culture

Department of Marketing and Management, University of Southern Denmark, Odense Campus, dom{at}sam.sdu.dk

Grounded in newer French socio-political philosophy, this text deals with the paradoxical situation in which the interpretation of society as well as the relation between the individual and the social remains ambiguous even though autonomy and interrogation of the social emerges: Autonomy remains trapped between transcendence and immanence. Modernity is when society claims to know that it has to produce its own myths. Traditional societies did not relate to their myths as if they were their own products. Nevertheless, as soon as the traditional religious points of reference are disclosed and disappear, the community gives itself new points of reference in order to put the social at a distance. Thus the social creates a distance to itself and a mirror for itself in order to perceive itself and work upon itself. The article explores the questions of why this is so and the difference between heteronomous and autonomous autotranscendence.

Key Words: autonomy • autotranscendence • culture • imaginary • immanence • individual • market • modernity • paradox • subject • transcendence

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Thesis Eleven, Vol. 88, No. 1, 31-54 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0725513607072456


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