I n the last fifteen years individual rights have been increasingly emphasized at the expense of personal obligations to the human community-past, present, and future. Much of my concern for the implications of this development may conveniently be discussed under the rubric of "autonomy." Indeed, I have a growing impression that autonomy has supplanted eudemonia (happiness), or utility, or the glorification of God as the good to be maximized by ethical behavior. More meticulous philosophers than I would draw a distinction between "autonomy," as discussed for example by John Stuart Mill to mean personal liberty from incursions by the state, and "free will," that is, the capacity to choose a course of action free of any influence whatsoever-genetic or environmental, historical or contemporary, sacred or profane. Gerald Dworkin, in an elaborately careful paper, which he may later put forward as an introduction to a possibly plausible definition, refers to the free will position as a "strong definition-the unchosen chooser, the uninfluenced influencer."1 He goes on to say: "It seems as if [such] autonomy is impossible," since, in effect, we cannot escape history. Nevertheless, he tells us that "Marxists speak of man as the creature who makes himself." I have been unable to identify the quote in the canonical texts. Indeed, an orthodox Marxist I consulted stated flatly that only a vulgar Marxist could have said it. Vulgar or not, it was a similar statement that first alerted me to the possibility that a strong definition of autonomy is not only possible, but is alive and well and living with Science for the People. As part of the lively correspondence that followed the publication of E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology,2 their spokesman, Larry Miller, wrote: "The dichotomy (genetics vs. environment) is a false one; both extremes present a passive view of humans as vehicles either for our genes or our environment. We view humans as active agents, striving to shape lives and destinies. Determinist theories, whether genetic or environmental, serve to inculcate an ethos of passivity and thus render us susceptible to active manipulation by others."3 Clearly, this is an extreme view, but it may at least serve to define the outer limits of the concept of