If autonomy is invoked merely in order to establish a proper heteronomy—along the lines of the “invisible hand,” for instance—then heteronomy is tacitly accepted but left undefined and thus “free” for the greater glory of the underlying law that not only escapes us today, but will escape us forever. The call for autonomy is then a call for an objectively determined imprisonment vis-à-vis any tutelage implied in an explicitly acknowledged heteronomy, which must remain palpably subjectivistic. The very paradox, however, remains imprisoned in the antinomies of the identity principle, for without the subject-object identity the paradox vanishes together with the fragile supremacy of the subject. Heteronomy remains, but it is stripped of its powers of absolute determination, to the extent that it is neither hypostatized nor relativized against the subject. The subject is allowed to strive toward autonomy and toward a social order that would not prevent it on any a priori grounds, that is, a social order that transcends the historically determined confrontation between the subject and its object. Philosophy remains as well, but only insofar as it is endowed with the possibility of self-criticism and self-dissolution.