<p>This paper critiques the modern neoliberal ideal of individual agency: the belief that freedom lies in the sovereignty of an isolated and self-determining actor, capable of purposive control over their circumstances. I argue that this ideal is both a metaphysical dead-end and politically harmful. To demonstrate this argument, I trace how autonomy as purposive control has theological roots but survives in secular form as the criterion of personhood and moral worth. This inheritance, I show, structures the dominant logics of colonialism, racial capitalism, patriarchy, and state bureaucracy. Further, I argue that in all domains where the ideal of individual agency is championed, it is an ideology that legitimates domination, disguises structural oppression and fragments resistance. Against this, I develop a Daoist conception of dependence-based agency by drawing on Daoist concepts such as <i>ziran</i> (self-so), <i>xinzhai</i> (fasting of the heart-mind), and <i>ying</i> (responsiveness). In this framework, agency is interdependent responsiveness, the capacity to create and improvise within constraints, rather than purposive domination or control. Dependence thus enables rather than restricts agency, allowing for genuine emancipation where individual agency disempowers and fragments.</p>