Autonomy, Legitimacy and Legality: About an Ancient Conflict Between Philosophy and Law Schools

Abstract

This work is a commentary on the article “moral autonomy anddemocratic legitimacy” from Jan-R Sieckmann. Here I pretend to discussmainly the link that the author establishes between the concepts of autonomy and individual autonomy. This work pretends to demonstrate that this link is neither obvious nor natural, and it will be shown through the analysis of two authors of the modern philosophy such as Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Starting from this point, I also pretend to discuss different issues related to the connection between legality and legitimacy, either in the field of morals, or law and politics, which would be behind the concept of autonomy as it is thought by Kant. Finally, I present some problems in order to think the legitimacy of law and democracy.