In the debate on how we ought to define political freedom, some definitions are criticized for implying that no one can ever be free to perform any action. In this paper, I show how the possibility of freedom depends on a definition that finds an appropriate balance between absence of interference and protection against interference. To assess the possibility of different conceptions of freedom, I consider the trade-offs they make between these two dimensions. I find that pure negative freedom is (...) clearly possible. Republican freedom might also be possible, though its protection requirement is too vague for a definitive verdict. Finally, the recently proposed ‘freedom as independence’ is impossible since it is an attempt to avoid the unavoidable trade-off. (shrink)

A common argument against lockdowns is that they restrict freedom. On this view, lockdowns might be effective in protecting public health, but their impact on freedom is purely negative. This article challenges that view. It argues that while lockdowns restrict freedom, so too do viruses. Since viruses restrict freedom and lockdowns protect us from viruses, lockdowns can protect us from the harmful effects that viruses have on freedom. The problem we face is not necessarily freedom versus public health. Sometimes it (...) is freedom itself—or its value or distribution—that provides reason for lockdowns. (shrink)

What is domination? According to a leading strand of republican political philosophy, a person is dominated when under the unconstrained power of another. Call this the dyadic conception of domination, because it involves a two‐person relation. I argue that domination is better understood structurally. Structural domination is domination by institutions. Rather than a master dominating a slave and a boss dominating a worker (as in dyadic domination), structural domination holds that the institution of slavery dominates the slave and labor law (...) dominates the worker. Without the structural conception, I contend, one misdescribes the power dynamics of paradigm cases of domination. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel conception of freedom of thought as the right to epistemic self-realization. The recognition of this right is characterized here as a modally robust normative status that I think one has as a potential knower in an epistemic community. It is a status that one cannot enjoy without a specific form of institutionalized intellectual respect and support. To explain and defend this conception of freedom of thought, it is contrasted here with more traditionally “negative” conceptions of (...) freedom of thought, in terms of not being interfered with. It is also contrasted here with a “positive” conception of freedom of thought derived from a recently prominent account of doxastic agency as grounded in the rational capacity to self-determine one's own response to reasons. In both cases, the crux of the argument in this paper is that a conception of freedom of thought as a right to epistemic self-realization makes better sense of why we fear the counter-liberatory forces of propaganda and regulated thinking, and also why we hold out hope for the liberating potential of education and critical engagement with expertise in the public sphere. (shrink)

Institutions promoting republican freedom as non-domination are commonly believed to differ significantly from institutions promoting negative freedom as non-interference. Philip Pettit, the most prominent contemporary defender of this view, also maintains that these republican institutions are neutral between the different conceptions of the good that characterise a modern society. This paper shows why these two views are incompatible. By analysing the institutional requirements Pettit takes as constitutive of republican freedom, I show how they also promote negative freedom by reducing overall (...) interference. To avoid this result, republican institutions must be more restrictive and require that citizens conform to a life of political engagement. But then republican freedom will not be a neutral ideal. Rejecting negative freedom therefore means sacrificing neutrality. (shrink)

This paper defends a neorepublican account of civic virtue as consisting of stable traits of character, understood in broadly Aristotelian terms, that exhibit excellences associated with the role of citizen, and that contribute to the secure protection of freedom as non-domination. Such an account is important for the neorepublican project because neither laws nor social norms can yield reliable support for republican freedom without a parallel input from civic virtue. The paper emphasizes the need to distinguish civic virtue from desirable (...) norms, which can operate in tandem. Against other neorepublican accounts of civic virtue, it argues that the primary function of such virtue is not to support the stability of republican regimes. Rather, it has a corrective function, and may in fact challenge institutions, laws, and informal norms if they allow for the exercise of arbitrary power. Finally, the paper argues that this account of civic virtue is better positioned than a stability-focused account to shed light on the relationship between civic virtue and the common good. (shrink)

This article argues for a systemic conception of freedom as non-domination. It does so by engaging with the debate on the so-called coalition problem. The coalition problem arises because non-domination holds that groups can be agents of (dominating) power, while also insisting that freedom be robust. Consequently, it seems to entail that everyone is in a constant state of domination at the hands of potential groups. However, the problem can be dissolved by rejecting a ‘strict possibility’ standard for interpreting non-domination’s (...) robustness requirement. Frank Lovett and Philip Pettit propose to restrict the relevant domain of possible worlds by reference to two epistemic conditions pertaining to potential group members. I argue that this strategy unduly limits non-domination’s critical potential. I then argue that a suitably systemic conception of domination avoids this problem. By placing explanatory emphasis on social institutions, and how these bear on the feasibility of individual and collective action, a systemic conception of non-domination avoids the coalition problem in a way that retains its critical potential. The article clarifies the relationship between the rule of law and the social norms and objects to the claim that non-domination is bound to deem the latter irrelevant from the point of view of freedom. (shrink)

Who is responsible for fighting domination? Answering this question, I argue, requires taking the structural dimension of domination seriously to avoid unwillingly reproducing domination in the nam...

Members of racial and sexual minorities often live in the fear of arbitrary interference from others—rogue police officers or sexual harassers. Are they unfree by dint of believing they are unfree? I draw on the republican theory of freedom—according to which we are unfree if we are subjected to a risk of arbitrary interference—to offer a qualified positive answer. I clarify the role of probabilistic judgements about risk in republican political theory. I argue that under specific circumstances, diagnoses of republican (...) freedom can be indexed to a certain belief about probability—what it is warranted for someone to believe in light of their distinctive epistemic perspective. (shrink)

I develop an egalitarian account of what's objectionable about coercion. The account is rooted in the idea that certain relationships, like those of master to slave or lord to peasant, are relationships of subordination or domination. These relationships are morally objectionable. Such relationships are in part constituted by asymmetries of power. A master subordinates a slave because the master has more power over the slave than vice versa. Coercion is objectionable, I argue, because it creates such asymmetries of power and (...) so creates relationships of subordination. This account, moreover, illuminates what's wrong with blackmail, exploitation, withholding aid, and compulsion. (shrink)

I argue social and political freedom is not primarily about the absence of constraints, whether those constraints be in the form of interference or domination. Instead, social freedom is centrally about what makes us free. That is, the question of social freedom is first and foremost about determining the positive preconditions of being a free person within society. Social freedom is about what I call the social bases of freedom, or those features of our social world that we have a (...) reason to rely on in making plans or going about our business. (shrink)

Equal Justice: Fair Legal Systems in an Unfair World, by Wilmot-SmithFrederick. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. 256.

I explore the idea that the state should love its citizens. It should not be indifferent towards them. Nor should it merely respect them. It should love them. I begin by looking at the bases of this idea. First, it can be grounded by a concern with state subordination. The state has enormous power over its citizens. This threatens them with subordination. Love ameliorates this threat. Second, it can be grounded by the state’s lack of moral status. We all have (...) reason to love everyone. But we beings with moral status have an excuse for not loving everyone: we have our own lives to lead. The state has no such excuse. So, the state should love everyone. I then explore the nature of the loving state. I argue that the loving state is a liberal state. It won’t interfere in its citizens’ personal spheres. It is a democratic state. It will adopt its citizens’ ends as its own. It is a welfare state. It will be devoted to its citizens’ well-being. And it is an egalitarian state. It will treat all its citizens equally. This constitutes a powerful third argument, an abductive argument, for the ideal of the loving state. (shrink)

It is common to think that state enforcement is a restriction on freedom that is morally permitted or justified because of the unfortunate circumstances in which we find ourselves. Human frailty and material scarcity combine to make the compromise of freedom involved in exclusive state enforcement power necessary for other freedoms or other goods. In the words of James Madison, ‘if men were angels, no government would be necessary’ (1990: 267). But there is an opposing tradition, according to which the (...) very idea of freedom in society entails the necessity of state enforcement. However morally good human beings are, or whatever material conditions they find themselves in, on this view, the ideal of freedom we ought to be concerned to realise is such that it cannot be attained without state enforcement. It follows a priori from an important ideal of freedom that a state with exclusive enforcement power is necessary for individual liberty in society. In this paper, I argue against what I take to be the strongest argument of the a priori kind, which begins from the neo-republican ideal of freedom as non-domination, and thereby in (partial) defence of the alternative, Madisonian, view. Insofar as it is true that some sort of problematic domination will inevitably be present in a stateless society, I argue, the introduction of a state can do nothing to eliminate it. For the state to improve on even an ideal stateless society, it would need to give individuals control over the interference of potential dominators of a sort that could not be achieved in the ideal stateless society. -/- . (shrink)

The legislature and the judiciary have been a constant focus of contemporary political philosophy. However, the executive – ‘the government’ itself – has been comparatively neglected. Today, this is changing with a well-spring of new work that bears upon what we might call the ideal of ‘good governance’, that is, how governments (and/or their agents) should exercise their powers. This review paper begins by clarifying the concepts of ‘governance’ and ‘good’ governance (§1). It then highlights five sets of values, working (...) nominally from the most foundational constraints on the exercise of government power to those that should guide the exercise of discretion: legitimacy and rule of law (§2); respect and trustworthiness (§3); efficiency and rationality (§4); public participation and accountability (§5); and the public interest and fiduciary duties (§6). (shrink)

When progressive governments attempt to redistribute wealth, nationalize major industries, or empower unions, they are often faced with the threat of capital flight. Some republican theorists have suggested that this phenomenon might be a source of domination. However, the prominent neo-republican account of domination presented by Philip Pettit cannot justify this claim, since the class of investors is not usually an agent. In this article, I present a novel theory of domination by diffuse collectives that can justify the intuition that (...) the threat of capital flight is a source of domination. (shrink)

The recent years have seen the revival of neo-Roman republicanism through the works of Philip Pettit, who has replaced Isaiah Berlin’s taxonomy of positive/negative liberty with freedom as nondomination. This essay compares the neo-Roman conception of nondomination to the liberal conception of noninterference, with the purpose of clarifying whether nondomination is a distinct concept of liberty and preferable to that of noninterference. The essay highlights the exchange between Pettit/Skinner and Carter/Kramer, wherein Carter and Kramer make their case for ‘pure negative (...) liberty’, which is claimed to be the proper articulation of negative liberty. Pure-negative theorists believe that nondomination is a strand of negative liberty, adding nothing new to the concept, whereas their republican counterparts disagree. My essay argues that nondomination is a distinct, preferable concept of liberty, thanks to its view on fundamental unfreedom and the mere presence of arbitrary power, which the pure negative view fails to account for satisfactorily. (shrink)