The basic idea behind autonomy is that one's decisions and actions should really be one's own.  It may be helpful to distinguish between two complementary aspects of autonomy, namely, non-perfectionist and perfectionist autonomy: the former occurs when a subject's decisions and actions are free from undue interference from others; the latter when the subject's decisions and actions are free form undue interference from one's unwanted passions or character traits .

1. Non-perfectionist autonomy
Autonomy is a right (not a mere permission) to make certain personal decisions without undue interference from others.
There are two types of argument for autonomy:

1. Kantian argument: persons are ends in themselves because they possess a rational will.  But a rational will manifests itself in decisions and actions, and consequently the respect due to a person requires autonomy.
2. Utilitarian arguments.  Here we look at some of Mill's arguments for autonomy in On Liberty:

Essay thesis: The sole permissible end for individual or collective interference with individual liberty of action is the avoidance of harm to others (other regarding actions). In  matters concerning only oneself, one’s right is absolute (self-regarding actions).  Over oneself, one’s body and mind, the individual is sovereign.  Hence, the following sacrosanct: absolute liberty of conscience, tastes, opinion & speech; limited liberty of pursuits and association (no harm to others clause).
Method of argument: Utilitarian argument grounded in the “permanent interests of man as a progressive being.”

Chapter III: Of individuality as one of the elements of well-being.
Freedom of action is not as unrestricted as freedom of opinion because it is more likely than mere speech to harm others.  However, since it's a manifestation of individuality, it should be protected because individuality is important both to individuals and to society

1. Individuality important to well-being of individual because

• A. plasticity argument
• human nature not like a machine, built after a fixed model, but like a tree developing through its own forces and responding to the demands of the environment.
• such development is good because it brings out the best in us.

NOTE: note Mill's optimism and his attack on calvinism and dark view of human nature.
• hence, pagan self-assertion, i.e. not always fitting into a mold, following one's own quirks, is important to one's well-being.
• B. Pleasure/pain argument
• Sources of pleasure and pain are different for different people.  Hence, unless people left free to pursue their different interests and ends, they’ll miss out on happiness.
2. Individuality important to well-being of society because:
•  genius and spur to change and improvement is maximized in an atmosphere valuing individuality and different thinking.
•  danger of mass-society in which mediocrity produces oppressive custom: in this case, even mere eccentricity is a good.
Chapter IV: of the limits to the authority of society over the individual.
Question: What are the limits to the sovereignity of individual over himself?
Answer: Society may interfere with the part of the individual’s life chiefly interesting society (other regarding actions); the individual is sovereign in that part chiefly interesting the individual (self-regarding actions).  Hence:
• One not allowed:
•   to injure those interests of others which by law or tacit understanding are considered important.
•   to avoid one’s share of labor and sacrifice needed to defend society from injury and molestation.
• Apart from the above, one’s freedom is complete because that is the  sphere of self-regarding actions.  There is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion and that of one offended  by it.

NOTE: analogy with desire to keep my purse vs. desire of robber for it.
If we don’t agree with one’s behavior, we can avoid his company (without parading the avoidance), warn others, not offer him optional positions.
Examples: temperance laws; Sabbatical precepts; persecution of Mormons because of polygamy.
Problems by Mill and others.
1. The distinction between self regarding and other regarding actions is unclear and/or untenable
Possible answers:
• self-regarding actions affects only oneself; other-regarding actions affect others as well.

Problem: no man an island.
• self-regarding actions affect only my interests, i.e., my personal concerns according to common standards; other regarding actions affect others’ interests as well.

Problem: if public opinion has final word, then very reason for distinction between self and other regarding actions is lost.
• self-regarding actions don't affect other people's rights; other regarding actions do.
2. Paternalism: even if self-regarding actions exist, cannot we maximize happiness through paternalism?
Possible argument against paternalism:
1. restraint or compulsion is an evil; hence, onus probandi on its advocates.
2. since conduct here considered is self-regarding appeal to protection of others irrelevant.
3. we either cannot advance the interests of the individual by compulsion, or doing so involves evils outweighing the good one because adult individual knows what’s good for him better than society which is likely to interfere at  wrong time for wrong reasons.

Problem: first shot of heroine?
Possible answers
• the very capacity to choose is an intrinsic good.
• treating adults like children turns them into children
3. Enforcement of morals (Lord Devlin)
Argument for the enforcement of morality
1. Society has a right to pass judgment in matters of morals, i.e. there ought to be a public morality.

Rationale: Society is, among other things a community of  ideas, including moral ideas.  Without shared ideas in politics, ethics etc. society cannot survive.
Problem: Is there a community of ideas or a commons sense of the good in a pluralistic democracy?  Is moral uniformity a necessary condition for the flourishing of a democratic society? (Leiser)
2. Hence, there is no private morality, i.e. a sphere in which  society has no business to enter.

Problem:  Shouldn't we ask
• Is a practice harmful, independently of its ripercussions on common morality?
• Does it significantly affect common morality?  For example, are people going to abandon common morality if, say,  homosexuality is legal (Devlin's specific issue)?
3. So, society has a right to enforce its judgment on moral issues.  No theoretical limits can be set to the power of society to legislate against immorality.

Rationale:  Society has a right to protect itself from danger.  But an attack on common morality is a danger. (Other leg is education involving religion because we do not know of any other way to teach morality but through religion.)
4. The moral judgments which should be enforced are those about which the man in the street feels a strong combination of intolerance, indignation and disgust.  No reason need be given.

Rationale: This necessary for the keeping of common morality.  Whether such morality is right or wrong is irrelevant to the right of society to enforce it.
Problem: Too much stress on feelings and too little on reason (consider the case of witch burning).  At a minimum, there must be a demand for rational justification.
NOTES:  For Devlin,
• what’s tolerated varies from time to time (e.g. fornication, adultery etc.)
• the maximim degree of individual freedom should be allowed compatibly with the integrity of society.

2. Perfectionist autonomy.
There are two related versions.

A. Kantian sense of autonomy.

For Kant, one is autonomous insofar as one acts morally, i.e., out of duty.  As we saw, the moral agent acts on the basis of self-imposed categorical imperatives which are themselves the product of his mind insofar as it is rational.
Problem:
For Kant, moral action involves a detachment from passions and emotions in the sense that they should not affect one's moral decisions.  However, many have claimed that emotions such as caring and compassion are an ineliminable part of proper moral decision making.

One can view autonomy as the capacity to be the sort of person one wills to be, that is, the capacity to attune one's first order desires, feelings etc., to one's second order desires, to attune one's motivations to one's evaluations.  This involves the difficult task of changing one's character (think of Aristotle).
However, nothing has been said about the origin of one's values.
• Clearly, to the extent that one's values are the result of indoctrination, hypnosis or brain-washing, and are accepted without any critical evaluation, one cannot be  autonomous.

NOTE: the issue is more complicated once one rationally accepts the results of one's own indoctrination as correct.
• Although there is a need for the social transmission of values through parents,  school, etc., to the extent that one accepts them uncritically, one cannot achieve autonomy.
 NOTES:
• One may add the demand that the values be the right ones.  The problem, is that different people may have different conceptions of the good (think of Aristotle and, say, a Christian).
• A particularly interesting issue is that of false consciousness, namely, a set of (usually) descriptive beliefs with high moral relevance which contribute to keep   one in a position of unwarranted inferiority.  For example, the woman, the paria, the racially oppressed, may believe (wrongly) that their position is the result of some natural inferiority, not of specific forms of exploitation.
• Some social philosophers believe that the consumer society produces a peculiar form of false consciousness by creating ‘false needs’ (the need for expensive   clothing, cars, big TV’s etc.).  The satisfaction of false needs produces euphoria   (but not happiness), requires aggressive and competitive behavior (a sort of rat   race) and favors powerful economic and political groups at the expense of the welfare of most people.

Problem: how does one determine what a false need is?  Perhaps one can claim that a need which is not based on any rational means of persuasion is a false one.
NOTE: I one accepts the theory of false needs, a liberal consumer society like ours presents the particular problem that its members, suffering from false consciousness, do not want to be emancipated.