This concept includes the free expression of enquiry, also known as “free speech”. It is central to the civic republican politics of knowledge associated with Fuller's version of social epistemology. In the equation “knowledge is power”, knowledge enables one to be free of the power exerted by others, not to exert power over others. (See epistemic justice.) The relevant sense of “freedom” here implies the recognition of objectively alternative courses of action, that is, an “undeterminist” historiography. In other words, one is free to speak only if the options of which one speaks are likely to lead to significantly different outcomes, even if they are ones that the speaker ends up regretting having chosen. In this sense, free enquiry embodies a “right to be wrong”. This sensibility is the cornerstone of autonomy, which, especially after Kant, has often been the mark of personhood. Unfortunately, still following Kant, modern moral philosophy has tended to see the pursuit of autonomy as somehow divorced from considerations of the consequences of one's actions. For example, a vulgarized Kantian might say that ethics requires that one act on principle without regard to consequences. Yet, the anticipation of consequences is vital to the construction of a society in which autonomy is feasible.

Historically the paradigm case of autonomy, classical Athens, restricted citizenship to male hereditary landholders. This enabled citizens to speak their minds openly without threat to their lives, even if they turned out to be wrong.