The first normative argument to be considered is an appeal to the value of autonomy. This argument asserts that each person has a preeminent interest in living an autonomous life and, hence, that government can promote (the most) value by not acting on any particular conception of the good. Because the notion of autonomy is so elusive, there is an obvious risk that any formulation of this argument will be tendentious. Fortunately, however, the very analysis of autonomy that seems to me the most plausible is also the one that gives the argument its best chance of success. In the first half of this chapter, I shall defend that analysis and explain why the argument must presuppose it. In the second, I shall ask how autonomy, so conceived, is affected by the different methods of promoting (other) values. These, it will turn out, are far less inimical to autonomy than is generally supposed.

Although autonomy figures prominently in many discussions, there is little consensus about what it involves. Hence, an important first step is to survey the main approaches to it.