Wolff between authority and autonomy: an analysis of the will conception of autonomy as self-legislation, and of its consequences on the thesis of the conceptual incompatibility between authority and autonomy

El trabajo distingue entre dos concepciones de la autonomía moral —como autolegislación y como juicio propio— presentes en In Defense of Anarchism, de Wolff. Seguidamente examina la particular comprensión wolffiana de la idea de autonomía como autolegislación: el voluntarismo. Se muestra que Wolff adopta esta tesis como consecuencia de su rechazo a la viabilidad de la pretensión kantiana de fundar la ley moral sobre bases a priori. Considero que presentar los argumentos de Wolff en contra de Kant es un buen medio tanto para determinar los contornos de la concepción voluntarista de la autonomía como autolegislación como para explicitar los compromisos que su adopción implica. Por último se intenta mostrar que desde una concepción voluntarista de la autonomía como autolegislación no puede sostenerse coherentemente la tesis de la incompatibilidad conceptual entre autoridad y autonomía. Si la democracia directa y por unanimidad es, como sostiene Wolff, un tipo de autoridad, entonces a partir del voluntarismo hay al menos un caso en que podemos hablar con propiedad de autoridad legítima.The paper distinguishes between two conceptions of moral autonomy —self-legislation and self-judgment—. Both are present in Wolff’s In Defense of Anarchism. The paper then focuses on the analysis of the peculiar Wolffian conception of autonomy as self-legislation: voluntarism. It is proved that Wolff adopts this thesis as a consequence of his rejection of the viability of the Kantian claim of grounding the moral law on an a priori basis. Presenting Wolff’s arguments against Kant is a good way both to determine the contours of the voluntarist conception of autonomy as self-legislation and to make explicit the commitments that its adoption involves. Finally, the paper attempts to show that the thesis of the conceptual incompatibility between authority and autonomy cannot be coherently sustained by a supporter of the voluntarist conception of autonomy as self-legislation. If unanimous direct democracy is, as Wolff asserts, a kind of authority, then from voluntarism there is at least one case of which we can properly speak of as being a case of legitimate authority