This conference aims to reflect on the conceptual foundations for diagnosing the increasingly intertwined relationship between forms of authoritarianism and freedom as autonomy. The goal, therefore, is to examine how authoritarian tendencies exploit the concept of freedom to their advantage, while simultaneously questioning what this instrumentalization reveals about the possibilities and limitations of this concept. On the other hand, it is important to consider the implications for the philosophical grammar of freedom that arise from the authoritarian shaping and categorization of individual experience—a process brought about by certain reinterpretations of the idea and the pursuit of autonomy and liberation. Against the backdrop of the hypothesis of a complicity between authoritarianism and the understanding of freedom as self-possession and self-legislation, we will reexamine the concept of autonomy with a fresh perspective, drawing on the critiques ranging from Hegel through Horkheimer and Adorno to Menke.