The Master of Yourself - Tradition vs. Modern Autonomy 

   In the Purgatorio, the second cantica of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Virgil’s final words to Dante encapsulate a classical view of autonomy: “I crown and miter you over yourself.” With this declaration, Virgil marks the end of his mentorship and the beginning of Dante’s own self-rule. This moment captures the classical idea that true freedom comes from mastery — over oneself and one’s desires, and over the skills and virtues that lead to a good life. Autonomy, in this sense, is not simply the power to make choices but the capacity to govern oneself in accordance with reason and virtue.

   In the classical tradition, freedom is not defined by the absence of constraints or the rejection of external authority. Rather, it is the result of a disciplined process of training and education aimed at achieving excellence (or arete). This kind of freedom requires self-mastery, which is cultivated through the development of virtues — habits that align our desires with reason and guide our actions toward the good. Virgil’s pronouncement to Dante reflects this view: it is only after Dante has undergone the trials of Purgatory, confronting his disordered desires and learning to master them, that he is declared “master of himself.” Virgil’s mentorship is no longer needed because Dante has internalized the principles of virtuous living.

    This concept of autonomy contrasts with modern notions that emphasize self-determination or the power to create one’s own values. In the classical view, autonomy is not about creating a personal reality but about aligning oneself with an objective moral and rational order. The goal of education is not to encourage individuals to invent their own truths but to help them develop the skills and virtues necessary to discern the truth and act according to it. Whether in the arts, athletics, or politics, true freedom comes only after the mastery of the relevant discipline. A pianist who has achieved technical and interpretive excellence can play freely, with no need for external guidance. A basketball player who has mastered the fundamentals of the game moves freely on the court, making split-second decisions with skill and confidence. Similarly, a person who has mastered the virtues required for living in a political community can act freely, making choices that contribute to the common good rather than being driven by selfish impulses.

     Without this kind of mastery, freedom is not true autonomy but a form of license that can easily become destructive. A person who lacks self-control may believe they are free when they act on every impulse or desire, but this kind of freedom is illusory. It leads to chaos and disorder, both in the individual soul and in the community. Plato illustrates this idea in the Republic with the image of the ship of state: if the crew, lacking training and discipline, seizes control of the ship, they may think they are free, but they are, in fact, in great danger. True freedom belongs to the skilled navigator who has mastered the art of steering the ship according to the stars and the conditions of the sea.

      In Dante’s journey, Purgatory represents this process of training and self-discipline. Each terrace of Purgatory is dedicated to the correction of a specific vice, through practices that cultivate the opposite virtue. The souls in Purgatory are not free to indulge their desires; they willingly submit to discipline because they understand that true freedom lies on the other side of self-mastery. When Virgil finally releases Dante from his guidance, it is not because Dante is free from all constraints but because he has achieved the internal discipline needed to guide himself according to the principles of virtue.

      This view of autonomy emphasizes the role of education and mentorship. The goal of education, in this framework, is to lead the student toward mastery and excellence so that they no longer need external guidance. It is a process of forming the soul and the character, aligning desires and actions with reason. Autonomy, then, is not the rejection of mentorship or tradition but the fulfillment of it. The mentor’s role is to lead the student to the point where they can internalize the principles of the discipline and apply them independently.

     Virgil’s pronouncement to Dante captures a classical understanding of autonomy as the result of mastery. True freedom is achieved not by rejecting external authority or creating one’s own values but by developing the virtues that allow one to govern oneself by reason and the good. This view of autonomy conflicts with modern ideas of self-determination or self-invention. It suggests that without the discipline of mastery, freedom is not a positive good but a potential danger, leading to chaos rather than excellence. The autonomy of the self-mastered individual is the freedom to act well, to realize one’s potential in a way that contributes to the good of the self and the community.

. . .

The Modern Program - Three Examples

    In Milton’s Paradise Lost, the character of Satan embodies a form of autonomy that is both rebellious and self-defining. Autonomy (understood in a certain way) is the essence of the Satanic. In Book 1, Satan declares, “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” For Milton, through Satan, autonomy is an assertion of the mind's power to create its own reality, independent of external conditions. Satan rejects God's authority, rejects reality as God (pure Being, Goodness, and Love) created it, choosing instead to govern his own inner world. Yet, this autonomy is ultimately self-defeating; Satan's independence is self-destructive because it is rooted in pride and defiance rather than true freedom. Evil is contradictory because it is (by definition in a Christian metaphysical reality anyway) contrary to reality; that is what makes evil evil; that is the evilness of evil.

     Sartre posits that in a godless universe (axiomatic for him) it must follow argues that “existence precedes essence.” Humans are free because they have no pre-determined nature – how could they if they had not been created according to an idea in the mind of a Creator? (The philosophical idea of human nature depends on God.)  This radical freedom, however, comes with the burden of choice. Sartre’s autonomy is about the lack of any fixed criteria guiding our actions because reality itself is meaning- and valueless. Individuals must choose without guidance from any inherent essence or real (and thus objectively binding) moral obligations. This leads to what Sartre calls “bad faith” when individuals attempt to escape the anxiety of freedom by pretending their choices are determined by external factors. Unlike Milton’s Satan, who consciously defies an external God, Sartre’s autonomous individual struggles with the internal absence of any guiding meaningful reality.

Rather than focusing on the individual’s inner world or existential freedom, Foucault looks at how power structures shape our sense of self. Autonomy is a product of power relations. He argues that our identities are formed through socially constructed areas languages (discourses), roles, and identities that we internalize. What seems like self-rule or autonomy is often the result of subtle forms of social control. In Discipline and Punish, he describes how institutions like prisons, schools, and hospitals create “docile bodies” that regulate themselves according to the norms imposed by society. Thus, autonomy for Foucault seems illusory; it is not a real, self-determined freedom but the internalization of external control. But while the self is shaped by power relations and social discourses, it is not entirely static or fixed. He believes that individuals can resist, reinterpret, and reshape the norms and practices imposed on them. Foucault’s later work explores the concept of "technologies of the self," where individuals can engage in self-formation and transformation. This involves a kind of critical autonomy — the ability to recognize and question the ways we have been shaped by power and to enact changes in our own lives. He acknowledges a limited, context-dependent freedom that emerges when we become aware of how power operates. Unlike Sartre’s idea of total, criterionless freedom, Foucault's reconstructed self is not free in an absolute sense but can exercise a form of agency within constraints, by redefining aspects of its own subjectivity in opposition to the prevailing social constructs by which it had previously defined itself – a girl can become a ‘non-binary,’ for example.

. . .

    Comparing these three views.... Milton’s Satan represents autonomy as a powerful, yet ultimately flawed, act of defiance. Sartre sees autonomy as the heavy burden of total freedom without any inherent guidelines. Foucault questions whether autonomy exists at all; it is a construct shaped by the systems of power that govern us. For Milton and Sartre, autonomy is an inner state or choice, even if it leads to inner conflict or existential angst. For Foucault, autonomy is a false idea, a mask for the deeper ways that society    shapes and limits the self.

    Despite their differences, all three reject the classical and medieval ideal that human beings should strive to conform their will and intellect to an objective reality, often conceived as a divine order or a fixed human nature that can be realized through virtue and self-mastery. Instead, they place emphasis on the self as the arbiter of meaning and reality, challenging the traditional view that freedom is the outcome of aligning oneself with a moral and rational order.

     In Paradise Lost, Satan’s declaration that “The mind is its own place” signifies a rejection of the idea that the mind should conform to God’s order or reality. Instead, Satan asserts a self-creating power, where autonomy is about refusing any external standard of goodness or truth. Satan’s autonomy does not seek the realization of a higher human nature or the cultivation of virtue; it is the assertion of independence from all external authority, even if that independence leads to self-contradiction and ruin. Thus, Satan embodies a refusal to strive for the classical ideal of freedom through self-mastery. Instead, he sees freedom as self-determination, even at the cost of defying objective reality.

    Sartre takes this idea further by denying any inherent human nature altogether. In his view, “existence precedes essence,” which means that humans are not born with a predefined purpose or nature that they must actualize. Instead, individuals are radically free to define their own essence through their choices. Sartre’s rejection of any essential human nature aligns with the rejection of education as a process of conforming to a rational or moral order. For Sartre, freedom is not about mastering oneself in accordance with virtue; it is about the radical responsibility to create one’s own values and identity without guidance from any objective standard. Education, in this framework, would not aim at shaping a virtuous character but at recognizing the individual’s freedom to choose their own path.

     Foucault’s critique of power relations also rejects the classical idea of aligning oneself with an objective truth or nature. For Foucault, the very concepts of “truth” and “human nature” are constructs shaped by historical power dynamics. He views education, traditionally understood as a way of cultivating rational and moral capacities, as a tool for producing compliant subjects who fit within established norms. In his later work on “technologies of the self,” Foucault does suggest that individuals can engage in practices of self-formation, but this is not a return to the classical idea of self-mastery. Instead, it is about resisting and redefining the norms imposed by society. Foucault’s self is not striving for virtue in the classical sense but is engaged in a project of ongoing self-invention and critique, often in opposition to any notion of an objective human nature.

     All three thinkers, then, share a vision of autonomy that contrasts sharply with the classical ideal of education as the cultivation of virtue and the alignment of the self with a rational order. In the classical and medieval tradition, freedom is the result of becoming master of oneself through the exercise of reason and the cultivation of virtues, thus aligning one’s desires and actions with an objective human nature and reality. Autonomy, in this view, is not self-creation but self-realization according to a given nature.

      Milton’s Satan, Sartre, and Foucault each reject this ideal. They do not see freedom as the outcome of conforming to reality but as self-assertion as the creator and judge of what is real and therefore good. For Milton’s Satan, this autonomy is an act of defiance against divine order; for Sartre, it is the existential project of creating meaning in an indifferent universe; and for Foucault, it is the critical task of deconstructing the norms and power relations that shape our sense of self. While their views differ in important ways, they share a rejection of the idea that education should lead us to conform our minds and wills to a pre-given reality. Instead, they place the individual in the position of self-legislator, responsible for constructing their own meaning and values. This is the very thing that condemns souls to the Inferno in Dante. Modernity is a transvaluation of values (“Umwertung der Werte” in Nietzsche’s memorable phrase) in which Satan’s philosophy replaces traditional Catholic teaching. It is the ideological expression of the revolutions in science, technology, and capitalism that took off in the 17th century. The end product was a regime featuring the fusion of these three into a single unholy trinity – SCIENCE-TECHNOLOGY-CAPITALISM – with ‘autonomy’ against the backdrop of a meaningless, valueless nature as the prime human value. In the end autonomy comes to mean to power of elites to form the masses according to its own images. (see C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man). The shift in the understanding of autonomy: from a classical view that sees freedom as the result of conforming to objective reality and actualizing potentials, to a modern view that treats freedom as the power to define one’s own reality, even against the structures of nature, tradition, or social norms.

. . .

  In a way Kant is the arch-Satanist i.e. the thinker whose "Copernican Revolution" legitimated this way of thinking: that reality is a construct of the mind, the mind not an imprint of reality. That reality is not intelligible. That the mind is cut off from reality as it is in itself and constructs its own world by projecting its fantasies, discourses, ideologies, world versions onto the indifferent background of the universe.