ABSTRACT Autonomy is foundational to ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, and it has been closely associated with argumentation. What is curious about autonomy is that it has traditionally been explained in terms of reasoning and argument: autonomy involves reasoning because, standardly, someone who’s autonomous is one who thinks things through, who has reasons for their actions. Autonomy regards argument because to respect the autonomy of someone who thinks things through, one must offer them reasons, that is, argue with them. One common thought is that provided one’s arguments meet certain criteria (e.g., they’re not sophistries or clever manipulations), then argument respects autonomy. But is this really so? No. Properly understood, argument is a kind of paternalism, for to argue with someone means to enter into and manage their stream of reasons, the very things that account for their autonomy.

ABSTRACT This introductory article discusses the state of the art in contemporary argumentation theory regarding the relationship between autonomy and argumentation. It introduces the contributions to the special section and discusses their relationship to each other and to the broader debate.

ABSTRACT This article argues that the theoretical concept of meta-argumentative fallacy is useful. The authors argue for this along two lines. The first is that with the concept, the authors may clarify the concept of meta-argumentation. That is, by theorizing where meta-argument goes wrong, the authors may capture the norms of this level of argumentation. The second is that the concept of meta-argumentative fallacies provides an explanatory model for a variety of errors in argument otherwise difficult to theorize. The authors take three as exemplary: the straw man, both sides, and free speech fallacies.