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This chapter discusses the concept of free will and the idea of causa noumenon, which is an individual with free will. It notes that it is the concept of the free self that makes up the basis of Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya's interpretation of Kant. The first sections of the chapter focus on the concept of ‘action’, which is defined as the result of a notion of doing. It identifies two kinds of knowledge on actions, and then examines the mutual dependency that exists between the certainty of autonomous action and the certainty about the ought. The rest of the chapter discusses other concepts of willing and duty, including autonomous willing, the three certainties - autonomous agency of the self, immortality of the self and existence of God, and the transnatural reality - and contemplative certainty. The chapter also discusses the concept of aesthetic contemplation.

This chapter considers the relationship between consent and autonomy, arguing that autonomous choice and voluntariness are central to the notion of consent. It starts by analyzing consent in terms of its normative features, basic elements, and senses. It then moves to the nature of consent as autonomous and discusses whether requirements to obtain informed consent are justified in terms of the principle of respect for autonomy. It then turns to theories of autonomy, starting with split-level theories. A different theory of autonomy is proposed, which features conditions of intentionality, understanding, and voluntariness. This theory is used to develop an account of degrees of autonomy. Finally, the chapter considers the problem of constraining situations, which present moral issues of undue influence and the exploitation of research subjects.

This chapter provides an overview of a real entity theory of company law. It begins by exploring three main theories of the company. The first theory explains the company as a contract; it forms the basis on which agency theory builds. The second theory conceives the company as a concession of the state, while the third theory characterizes the company as a real entity. The chapter then looks at a modern version of real entity theory and its application to company law. According to real entity theory, organizations or firms are social phenomenon outside of the law and they are autonomous actors in their own right. This occurs because human beings change their behaviour when they act as members of a group or an organization. Company law finds this phenomenon and evolves with a view to supporting autonomous action by organizations.

This chapter assesses the relationship between emotion and democracy. Emotional theory poses a challenge to several of the central verities of democratic theory. Mainly, it challenges the dominant assumption that the passions play no beneficial role in the process of deliberative democracy. In challenging that assumption, emotion theory raises subsidiary questions about the valorization of autonomous thought and action, the low regard for rhetoric and persuasion, the dismissal of the role of intuition, and the focus on universalizable principles that inform much of political discourse. The valorization of autonomous thought and action needs to be revisited, not only because it enshrines a descriptively inaccurate goal but also because it enshrines one that is normatively questionable.

This chapter comments on George Marcus's essay in Chapter 5. In Marcus's view, autonomous thought ultimately depends on one's emotional capacity for anxiety, and autonomous action ultimately depends on one's emotional capacity for enthusiasm. What democracy needs then is not a citizenry that deliberates about every political choice. Democracy needs citizens who are neurologically designed to develop serviceable habits of political judgment and action—habits whose basis may not be articulable—and who are also neurologically designed to shift into conscious deliberation when reliance on habits seems risky. By adopting a dual-process model of human psychology, reason need not pit against emotion or partisanship against deliberation.

Chapter 3 intervenes in the larger scholarship on CASA (The Center for Autonomous Social Action), a national Chicano Movement organization based in Los Angeles, by being the first analysis of its San Diego chapter called CASA Justicia. It reveals CASA Justicia as a significant political space that introduced younger Chicano Movement activists to elder organizers who had struggled against the deportation regime in earlier decades. CASA’s offering of legal and social services to immigrants suffering the perils of undocumented legal status unleashed a wave of migrant agency – that infused Chicano Movement ideological narratives with – and influenced the mostly Mexican-American administrators of CASA to a point where their own identities shifted. Migrants infused their narratives about the way border enforcement policies were an intensely repressive presence in their day-to-day lives determining their ability to be present in their familial relationships, to provide sustenance and economic well-being, and to freely move about.