The author demonstrates that autonomy, as a political demand, is indispensable, but as an anthropological determination, it can never exist in pure form. The question of the subject is of central importance, approached from various perspectives in philosophy, socialization theory, pedagogy, and psychology. Remarkable affinities emerge, such as between Adorno and the phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty. Established oppositions, for instance between Habermas and contemporary French thinkers, become fluid. The book recalls the critical power of psychoanalysis, Freud and Lacan, as well as the anthropology of Mead and Plessner. Illusions of autonomy thus attain not only a new theoretical dimension but also a political one.