[ad. Gr. αὐτονομία the having or making of one’s own laws, independence, noun of quality f. αὐτόνομος: see prec.]
1. Of a state, institution, etc.: The right of self-government, of making its own laws and administering its own affairs.
(Sometimes limited by the adjs. local, administrative, when the self-government is only partial; thus English boroughs have a local autonomy, the British colonies an administrative autonomy; ‘political autonomy’ is national independence.)
1623. Cockeram, Autonomy, liberty to liue after ones owne law.
[1681. H. More, Exp. Daniel, vi. 237. His successour granted an Αὐτονομία to the Jews, viz. liberty of living according to their own laws.]
1793. W. Taylor, in Month. Rev., XI. 336. A protest in behalf of the Right of Autonomy in the name of all the independent states of Europe.
1846. Grote, Greece, I. xiv. I. 443. The inhabitants of Sigeium could not peaceably acquiesce in this loss of their autonomy.
1880. McCarthy, Own Times, IV. 482. It [Bulgaria] was to have, as to its interior condition, a sort of ‘administrative autonomy,’ as the favourite diplomatic phrase then was.
b. Liberty to follow one’s will, personal freedom.
1803. W. Taylor, in Ann. Rev., I. 384. The customers of a banker can desert to a rival at will, and thus retain … an autonomy of conduct.
c. Metaph. Freedom (of the will); the Kantian doctrine of the Will giving itself its own law, apart from any object willed; opposed to heteronomy.
1817. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., 70. Kant … was permitted to assume a higher ground (the autonomy of the will) as a postulate deducible from the unconditional command … of the conscience.
a. 1871. Grote, Eth. Fragm., ii. (1876), 45. Kant … means by Autonomy, that there are in this case no considerations of pleasure or pain influencing the will.
2. Biol. Autonomous condition: a. The condition of being controlled only by its own laws, and not subject to any higher one. b. Organic independence.
1871. H. Macmillan, True Vine, 79. Each branch is a little plant in itself … having its own autonomy, feeding, growing, and propagating as an individual.
1881. Syd. Soc. Lex., s.v., The several tissues of the body, as the muscles and nerves, have some properties which they possess in common with all the other tissues, and others which are peculiar to themselves, governed by special laws, and not subject to the laws affecting the rest of the system. In this respect they have an autonomy of their own.
3. A self-governing community (cf. a monarchy).
1840. trans. Ranke’s Popes (1849), I. 11. All those autonomies wherewith the world was filled … one after another, stoop and disappear.
