Emancipation serves not only as a midwife for progressive agendas such as greater equality and sustainability but also as their gravedigger. This diagnosis underpins Ingolfur Blühdorn’s ‘dialectic of emancipation’, which depicts a dilemma but offers no perspective on how to deal with it. By drawing on Foucault, this article suggests conceiving of emancipation as a task moderns are confronted with even if a given emancipatory project has come to devour its children. Claiming autonomy from given social constellations is key to this task; key also is judging between legitimate and illegitimate claims to autonomy. In late modernity, the criteria for such judgement are no longer universally given. Instead of regarding the latter as entry into mere subjectivism (Blühdorn), this article presents judgement as a key political, ‘world building’-activity (Arendt), a critical social theory may join in, by not only observing the world but by also taking sides in it.

解放不仅是促进平等和可持续性等进步议程的助产士，而且还是它们的掘墓人。这种诊断支持了 Ingolfur Blühdorn 的“解放辩证法”，它描绘了一个两难境地，但没有提供如何处理它的观点。通过借鉴福柯，本文建议将解放视为现代人面临的一项任务，即使一个特定的解放项目已经开始吞噬它的孩子。从给定的社会星座中获得自主权是这项任务的关键。关键还在于判断对自主权的合法和非法主张。在现代晚期，这种判断的标准不再普遍存在。本文不将后者视为进入纯粹的主观主义（Blühdorn），而是将判断视为一种关键的政治“世界构建”活动（阿伦特），一种批判的社会理论可以加入，不仅通过观察世界，而且通过在其中选边站。