Many of those critical of traditional liberalism have focused on the notion of freedom at the center of that approach, namely the (negative) idea of liberty as the absence of interferences with action. Building a plausible and normatively acceptable positive alternative, however, has faced numerous criticisms and challenges. In this paper I discuss what such critics of liberalism sec; as the; limitations of the traditional negative notion and sketch the core components of a positive alternative. Specifically I suggest that the (...) dimensions of liberty should contain the positive elements of capabilities and agent authenticity. After laying out the core of these ideas I briefly defend them against standard objections. In doing so, I argue that such a positive notion is necessary to capture the dominance of the language of freedom in contexts of resistance and struggle in the actual, non-ideal, world. (shrink)

How is a person's freedom related to his or her preferences? Liberal theorists of negative freedom have generally taken the view that the desire of a person to do or not do something is irrelevant to the question of whether he is free to do it. Supporters of the “pure negative” conception of freedom have advocated this view in its starkest form: they maintain that a person is unfree to Φ if and only if he is prevented from Φ-ing by (...) the conduct or dispositions of some other person. This definition of freedom is value-neutral in the sense that no reference is made to preferences over options or indeed to any other indicators of the values of options, either in the characterization of “Φ-ing” itself or in the characterization of the way in which Φ-ing can be constrained. (shrink)

Antinatalism is an emerging philosophy and practice that challenges pronatalism, the prevailing philosophy and practice in reproductive matters. We explore justifications of antinatalism—the arguments from the quality of life, the risk of an intolerable life, the lack of consent, and the asymmetry of good and bad—and argue that none of them supports a concrete, understandable, and convincing moral case for not having children. We identify concentration on possible future individuals who may or may not come to be as the main (...) culprit for the failure and suggest that the focus should be shifted to people who already exist. Pronatalism’s hegemonic status in contemporary societies imposes upon us a lifestyle that we have not chosen yet find almost impossible to abandon. We explicate the nature of this imposition and consider the implications of its exposure to different stakeholders with varying stands on the practice of antinatalism. Imposition as a term has figured in reproductive debates before, but the argument from postnatal, mental, and cultural imposition we launch is new. It is the hitherto overlooked and underdeveloped justification of antinatalism that should be solid and comprehensible enough to be used even by activists in support of their work. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 26 Is freedom a plausible political value for animals? If so, does this imply that animals are owed legal personhood rights or can animals be free but remain human property? Drawing on different conceptions of freedom, I will argue that while positive freedom, libertarian self-ownership, and republican freedom are not plausible political values for animals, liberal ‘option-freedom’ is. However, because such option-freedom is in principle compatible with different legal statuses, animal freedom does not conceptually imply a (...) right to legal self-ownership. Nonetheless, a concern for animal option-freedom means that humans do have a _pro tanto_ duty of non-interference. Arguments familiar from the liberal tradition moreover imply that such a duty speaks for drastic reforms of existing animal law. But it does not imply wholesale abolitionism: it neither rules out positive duties towards animals nor means that we should abandon all interactions with animals. (shrink)

Is freedom a plausible political value for animals? If so, does this imply that animals are owed legal personhood rights or can animals be free but remain human property? Drawing on different conceptions of freedom, I will argue that while positive freedom, libertarian self-ownership, and republican freedom are not plausible political values for animals, liberal ‘option-freedom’ is. However, because such option-freedom is in principle compatible with different legal statuses, animal freedom does not conceptually imply a right to legal self-ownership. Nonetheless, (...) a concern for animal option-freedom means that humans do have a pro tanto duty of non-interference. Arguments familiar from the liberal tradition moreover imply that such a duty speaks for drastic reforms of existing animal law. But it does not imply wholesale abolitionism: it neither rules out positive duties towards animals nor means that we should abandon all interactions with animals. (shrink)

Nossa seleção de verbetes parte do interesse de cada pesquisador e os dispomos de maneira histórico-cronológica e, ao mesmo tempo, temática. O verbete de Melissa Lane, “Filosofia Política Antiga” vai da abrangência da política entre os gregos até a república e o império, às portas da cristianização. A “Filosofia Política Medieval”, de John Kilcullen e Jonathan Robinson, é o tópico que mais demanda espaço na nossa seleção em virtude das disputas intrínsecas ao período, da recepção de Aristóteles pelo medievo e (...) da tensão entre poder Papal e Civil. No verbete “Liberalismo”, de Gerald Gaus, Shane Courtland e David Schmidtz, vemos as fontes fundantes da Filosofia Política da modernidade. As ideias de liberdade negativa e positiva se coadunam com a Ética Liberal e sua influência sobre a abrangência do valor fundamental da liberdade individual diante das políticas públicas. O texto de Ian Carter, “Liberdade Positiva e Liberdade Negativa”, expõe o paradoxo da liberdade em suas concepções valorativas e neutra, muito úteis para compreender os problemas políticos que enfrentamos hoje. Por fim, Bas Van Der Vossen no texto “Libertarianismo” trata das noções tensas entre Estado e indivíduos. A concepção de “liberdade de si”, genuinamente negativa, ganha destaque justificatório. Jackie Scully, no verbete Bioética Feminista, exemplifica o valor da influência dessas correntes no âmago de todos os contemporâneos. Sua escrita homenageia postumamente Anne Donchin com um apanhado histórico da luta de inserção de políticas feministas na pesquisa acadêmica global. No verbete “Democracia”, os professores brasileiros Gustavo Dalaqua e Alberto Ribeiro Barros acrescentaram tópicos importantes ao tema geral, respectivamente: “Construtivismo Representativo vs. Representação Descritiva” e “Democracia Contestatória de Philip Pettit”. O texto de Thomas Christiano perpassa os principais argumentos de justificação política contra e a favor da democracia ocidental, com foco central nas concepções de liberdade e igualdade. Os verbetes dispostos nessa seleção de textos são tendenciosos na medida que expressam o interesse genuíno de cada pesquisador com os assuntos relevantes em suas pesquisas. Em virtude disso, a escolha “adota um lado” em detrimento de outros – mais especificamente: de outro que poderia ser mais “progressista”. Por si só, o livro já nasce reclamando um segundo volume, que será providenciado. Colocamos de lado qualquer exigência de “imparcialidade”, algo que não existe na Filosofia, muito menos na Filosofia Política. Sobressai, nesse aspecto, o caráter reflexivo que o assunto exige e a importância do assunto, sem o qual não teríamos a modernas concepções de representatividade, as teorias da justiça ou mesmo as ciências sociais. Um outro volume, portanto, se faz imperativo, por conta da abrangência da própria SEP e do respeito a seu projeto inicial, genuinamente um plano plural. (shrink)

Philip Pettit’s republican conception of freedom is presented as an alternative both to negative and positive conceptions of freedom. The basic idea is to conceptualize freedom as non-domination, not as non-interference or self-mastery. When compared to negative freedom, Pettit’s republican conception comprises two controversial claims: the claim that we are unfree if we are dominated without actual interference, and the claim that we are free if we face interference without domination. Because the slave is a widely accepted paradigm of the (...) unfree person, the case of a slave with a non-interfering master is often cited as providing a good argument for the first republican claim and against a negative conception of freedom. One aim of this article is to raise doubts about whether this is true. The other aim of the article is to show that the prisoner—also a paradigm of the unfree person—presents a good argument against the second republican claim and in favour of a negative conception of freedom. This is called the ‘prisoner-argument’. It will be argued that neither Pettit’s distinction between free persons and free choices nor his distinction between compromising and conditioning factors of freedom can help to rebut the charge of the prisoner-argument. (shrink)

It is commonly held that respect for autonomy is one of the most important principles in medical ethics. However, there are a number of interpretations as to what that respect actually entails in practice and a number of constraints have been suggested even on our self-regarding choices. These limits are often justified in the name of autonomy. In this paper, it is argued that these different interpretations can be explained and understood by looking at the discussion from the viewpoints of (...) positive and negative liberty and the various notions of a “person” that lay beneath. It will be shown how all the appeals to positive liberty presuppose a particular value system and are therefore problematic in multicultural societies. (shrink)

In this paper I describe some difficulties raised by the so-called thesis of the protective perimeter of liberties (ToPP). According to this thesis, a privilege does not necessarily involve a claim to non-interference, and a claim to non-interference does not necessarily presuppose a privilege. I argue that the first part of this thesis relies on a misunderstanding of ‘interference with a liberty’ (a misunderstanding that surfaces in the examples to which the thesis is applied) and that the second part of (...) this thesis contains a misleading description of what is involved in having a claim to non-interference. (shrink)

This essay discusses a heretofore neglected dimension of one of the most important questions in the realm of political theory: which obstacles that stand in the way of our performing a certain action render us unfree to perform that action? This dimension is concerned with the issue of the causal test that a certain central kind of obstacle—i.e., subjunctive interference—has to pass in order to render us unfree. The aim of this essay is, first, to introduce this issue; and, second, (...) to offer a first analysis of the two possible positions that can be taken with respect to it. (shrink)

Several Dutch politicians have recently argued that medical voluntary euthanasia laws should be extended to include healthy elderly citizens who suffer from non-medical ‘existential suffering’. In response, some seek to show that cases of medical euthanasia are morally permissible in ways that completed life euthanasia cases are not. I provide a different, societal perspective. I argue against assessing the permissibility of individual euthanasia cases in separation of their societal context and history. An appropriate justification of euthanasia needs to be embedded (...) in a wider solidaristic response to the causes of suffering. By classifying some suffering as ‘medical’ and some as ‘non-medical’, most societies currently respond to medical conditions in importantly different ways than they do to non-medical suffering. In medical cases, countries like the Netherlands have a health care, health research and public health system to systematically assign responsibilities to address causes of medical suffering. We lack such a system for non-medical suffering among elderly citizens, which makes completed life euthanasia importantly different from euthanasia in medical cases. Because of this moral ‘responsibility gap’, focusing on the permissibility of completed life euthanasia in separation of wider societal duties to attend to possible causes is societally inappropriate. To spell out this objection in more philosophical terms, I introduce the concept of acts that are morally permissible but contextually problematic. (shrink)

When assessing institutions and social outcomes, it matters how free society is within them (‘societal freedom’). For example, does capitalism come with greater societal freedom than socialism? For such judgements, freedom theorists typically assume Individualism: societal freedom is simply the aggregate of individual freedom. However, G.A. Cohen’s well-known case provides a challenge: imagine ten prisoners are individually free to leave their prison but doing so would incarcerate the remaining nine. Assume further that no one actually leaves. If we adopt Individualism (...) plus the standard liberal view of freedom, such incarceration seems to leave societal freedom unaffected. This is an important theoretical challenge: it seems we must either reject Individualism or reject, or at least amend, the liberal view. Cohen also suggests his case, and the collective unfreedom therein, helps us capture how proletarians are unfree under capitalism. In this article, I argue that we can solve Cohen’s puzzle, if we focus on how power can reduce freedom. If we adopt the republican view of freedom, we can say that prisoners are unfree in Cohen’s case because they are dominated by the other prisoners. This solution keeps Individualism but moves beyond liberal freedom. I then also show how this individualistic framework captures proletarian unfreedom. (shrink)

Freedom is one of the central values in political and moral philosophy. A number of theorists hold that freedom should either be the only or at least one of the central distribuenda in our theories of distributive justice. Moreover, many follow Mill and hold that a concern for personal freedom should guide, and limit, how paternalist public policy can be. For the most part, theorists have focussed on a person’s freedom at one specific point in time but have failed to (...) give proper attention to freedom across time. Given that we care about personal freedom now, we have reason to care about future freedom too. But what kind of distribution of freedom across a person’s lifetime should we promote as a matter of legislation and public policy? I argue that none of the candidate principles for the distribution of freedom across time is plausible. Neither a starting gate view, nor a maximisation nor a sufficientarian view is satisfactory, because none adequately reflects our various reasons to value freedom. I show that this result presents a tough challenge for theories of distributive justice and paternalism that set great store by personal freedom. (shrink)

What distinguishes constraints on our actions that make us unfree (in the sociopolitical sense) from those that make us merely unable? I provide a new account: roughly, a constraint makes a person unfree, if and only if, first, someone else was morally responsible for the constraint and, second, it impedes an ability the person would have in the best available distribution of abilities. This new account is shown to overcome shortcomings of existing proposals. Moreover, by linking its account of unfreedom (...) to distributions of abilities, it offers an attractive combination of so-called positive and negative views of freedom. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has refocused attention on the issue of mandatory vaccination. Some have suggested that vaccines ought to be mandatory, while others propose more moderate alternatives, such as incentives. This piece surveys a range of possible interventions, ranging from mandates through to education. All may have their place, depending on circumstances. However, it is worth clarifying the options available to policymakers, since there is sometimes confusion over whether a particular policy constitutes a mandate or not. Further, I (...) illustrate a different kind of alternative to mandatory vaccination. Rather than seeking less coercive alternatives to a mandate, we might instead employ an alternative mandate, which requires people to do something less than get vaccinated. For instance, we might merely require people to attend an appointment at a vaccine clinic. Whether this mandatory attendance policy is justified will depend on specific circumstances, but it represents another way to promote vaccination, without mandating it. In some cases, this may represent an appropriate balance between promoting public health goals and respecting individual liberty. (shrink)

Ecological sustainability is essential in order to ensure human flourishing and human freedom.1 There is a scientific consensus regarding the anthropogenic origin of the activities leading to diffe...

The need for ecological sustainability has been translated into different indicators such as the ‘ecological footprint’ and the ‘planetary boundaries’. Analysis of both concepts concludes that the planet is currently undergoing a period of ecological unsustainability. For this reason, ecologists argue that various limits are required in order to move to a path of sustainability. The implementation of such limits has mostly been analysed from the perspectives of environmental rights and environmental justice, however research in terms of freedom is (surprisingly) (...) still lacking. In what way do such limits have an impact on freedom? I will argue that there are two different ways to analyse the relation between freedom and ecological limits: on the one hand, freedom is often referred to as being in competition with ecological sustainability and the limits it is required to impose, and, on the other hand, the impact on an individual’s freedom due to ecological catastrophe if strict limits are not implemented. Accepting that freedom is an important topic regarding ecological challenges, I ask which conception of freedom is better suited to answer this challenge as well as the required implementation of ecological limits. I compare and confront the closely linked conceptions of freedom as non-frustration and the closely linked conception of non-limitation, as well as non-interference and the conception of freedom as non-domination. After presenting these conceptions I examine their relationship with ecological limits. The conclusion is that the conception of freedom as non-domination is better placed to justify ecological limits necessary to promote an ecologically sustainable future. (shrink)

The market is traditionally hailed as the very exemplar of a system under which people enjoy freedom, in particular the negative sort of freedom associated with liberal and libertarian thought: freedom as noninterference. But how does the market appear from the perspective of a rival conception of freedom (freedom as non-domination) that is linked with the Roman and neo-Roman tradition of republicanism? The republican conception of freedom argues for important normative constraints on property, exchange, and regulation, without supporting extremes to (...) the effect that ‘property is theft’ or ‘taxation is theft’ or anything of that kind. It does not cast a cold eye on commerce; it merely provides an alternative view of the attractions. (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)

ABSTRACT: What kinds of markets, market regulations, and business organizations are compatible with contemporary egalitarian theories of justice? This article argues that any thoughtful answer to this question will have to draw on recent developments in political philosophy that are concerned not only with the equality of the distribution of core goods but also with the requirements for equality of status, voice, and so on, in the relations between individuals and within organizations. The dominance of theories of distributive justice in (...) egalitarian political philosophy since Rawls may have contributed, on the one hand, to the oft-recognized gulf between these theories and their theorists and, on the other, to discussions of corporate governance and business ethics. The main purpose of this article is to introduce business ethicists to some of the less-familiar features of recent relational theories of justice and equality, and to suggest that some of these notions may help bridge the gap between business ethics and political philosophy more generally. (shrink)

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)

Although the notion of an essentially contested concept may shed light on the logic of disputes over the proper application of some key political terms, it nevertheless plays no genuine role in explaining the intractability of these disputes. The notion of an essentially contested concept is defended against some influential criticisms, showing how it is possible for one conception of an essentially contested concept to be justifiably regarded as superior to other competing conceptions. Two possible answers are distinguished to the (...) question of why disputes over essentially contested concepts should be regarded as inevitable, but neither provides us with a plausible explanation for why they are so intractable. Disagreements over the proper use of key political concepts are better explained by features of moral and political discourse, such as the short reach of ?intellectual authority? and the fact that consensus is not one of its primary aims, in conjunction with empirical hypotheses from the social sciences, rather than by essential contestedness theses. (shrink)

Are the rights, duties, and virtues of citizenship grounded exclusively in considerations of justice, or do some or all of them have other sources? This question is addressed by distinguishing three different accounts of the justification of these rights, duties, and virtues, namely, the justice account, the common-good account, and the equal-membership account. The common-good account is rejected on the grounds that it provides an implausible way of understanding what it is to act as a citizen. It is then argued (...) that the justice account and the equal-membership account provide complementary perspectives that differ in terms of the scope of the duties they ground: the latter offers an analysis of the duties that citizens proper (those with an unconditional right of residence and full political rights) owe to each other, whereas the former provides an analysis of the duties that those who are under the jurisdiction of the same state, whether fellow citizens or not, owe to each other. The article concludes by arguing that the distinction between the justice account and the equal-membership account cuts across the traditional one that is drawn between liberal and republican theories of citizenship. (shrink)

:The ideal theory debate rests on two conflicting claims: that justice is “the first virtue of social systems”, and that a just society is one in which “everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice”.Justice firstholds that questions about the meaning of justice — and thus about what an ideally just society would look like — must be settled before we can effectively pursue justice. However,universal consententails a project of justification that can only take place (...) over time. I propose that we avoid this impasse by treating freedom rather than justice as the “first virtue” of a liberal society. Liberal freedom has two distinct and complementary dimensions, which give rise to two distinct and complementary moral aims: on the one hand, to create the social conditions that make responsible agency possible, and on the other hand to carve out a social space within which the demands of responsible agency are relaxed or absent. Striking the appropriate balance between these two dimensions of liberal freedom is irreducibly a matter of judgment. A freedom-centered liberalism therefore requires that we treat justice as the endpoint rather than the starting point of political action, thus severing the link between legitimacy and consent. (shrink)

Much recent philosophical work on social freedom focuses on whether freedom should be understood as non-interference, in the liberal tradition associated with Isaiah Berlin, or as non-domination, in the republican tradition revived by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner. We defend a conception of freedom that lies between these two alternatives: freedom as independence. Like republican freedom, it demands the robust absence of relevant constraints on action. Unlike republican, and like liberal freedom, it is not moralized. We show that freedom as (...) independence retains the virtues of its liberal and republican counterparts while shedding their vices. Our aim is to put this conception of freedom more firmly on the map and to offer a novel perspective on the logical space in which different conceptions of freedom are located. (shrink)

Many political philosophers argue that interference (or vulnerability to interference) threatens a person’s agency. And they cast political freedom in opposition to interpersonal threats to agency, as non-interference (or non-subjection). I argue that this approach relies on an inapt model of agency, crucial aspects of which emerge from our relationships with other people. Such relationships involve complex patterns of vulnerability and subjection, essential to our constitution as particular kinds of agents: as owners of property, as members of families, and as (...) participants in a market for labor. We should construct a conception of freedom that targets the structures of our interpersonal relations, and the kinds of agents these relations make us. Such a conception respects the interpersonal foundations of human agency. It also allows us to draw morally significant connections between diverse species of unfreedom—between, for instance, localized domination and structural oppression. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The present essay concurs with R. Beehler's recent contribution to this journal 1991) in deeming the concept of negative liberty fully adequate for political discourse. Thus, section 1 indicates a plausible line of reasoning by which the negative concept can be defended against some standard objections. However, sections 2 and 3 argue that, nevertheless, Beehler's traditional conception of negative liberty is inadequate. It does not account correctly for various paradigmatic cases of ‘unfreedom’, for instance, the curtailment of the liberty (...) of the poor by their lack of economic resources. More precisely, Beehler's account will in many such cases fail to identify the correct constraining agents. The present essay suggests how Beehler's aim may be achieved on the basis of a different conception of negative liberty: the ‘responsibility view’. (shrink)

Organizations in competitive markets are often assumed to be voluntary associations, involving free exchange between various participants for mutual benefit. Just how voluntary or free organizational exchanges really are, however, is problematic. Even the criteria for determining whether specific transactions are free or coerced are not clear. In this paper, I review three general approaches to specifying such criteria: consequentialist, descriptive, and normative. I argue that the last is the most reasonable, that freedom is an essentially moral concept, whose meaning (...) is relative to preconceptions of human rights. Implications for freedom of contract are discussed.[O]n the whole, market competition, when it is permitted to work, protects the consumer better than do the alternative government mechanisms that have been increasingly superimposed on the market. ... If one storekeeper offers you goods of lower quality or of higher price than another, you're not going to continue to patronize his store. If he buys goods to sell that don't serve your needs, you're not going to buy them. The merchants therefore search out all over the world the products that might meet your needs and might appeal to you. And they stand back of them because if they don't, they're going to go out of business. When you enter a store, no one forces you to buy. You are free to do so or go elsewhere. That is the basic difference between the market and a political agency. You are free to choose (Friedman and Friedman, 1979, 222–223). (shrink)

This paper presents a critique of left republican writings from a non-republican socialist standpoint. It examines three claims that have been advanced by left republican authors: that workers are dominated 1) by their lack of access to the means of production; 2) by the market; and 3) by their employer. With regard to 1) and 2), it argues that alternative conceptions of freedom can identify the unfreedom in question, and that there are good reasons for pressing these complaints on the (...) basis of these alternative conceptions. With regard to 3), it argues that, while alternative conceptions of freedom may be able to identify the unfreedom in question, republican freedom provides a more suitable basis for pressing this claim. It concludes that while left republicans have shown that socialists have reason to care about republican freedom, they have not shown that socialists should adopt republican freedom at the expense of other conceptions of freedom. (shrink)

How is freedom valuable? And how should we go about defining freedom? In this essay, I discuss a distinction between two general ways of valuing freedom: one appeals to the good (e.g., to freedom's contribution to well-being); the other appeals to how persons have reason to treat one another in virtue of their status as purposive beings (to the right). The analysis of these two values has many relevant implications and it is preliminary to a better understanding of the relationships (...) between freedom and justice. First, it contributes to shed light on the relationship between trust and the value of freedom, and on two attitudes towards freedom – promoting and respecting freedom. Second, it disambiguates between two versions of the claim that freedom has non-specific/content-independent value: one appeals to the good, the other to the right. And third, I show that certain implications concerning the definition of freedom follow from assuming an account of the value of freedom that exclusively appeals to the right, illustrating how the value of freedom can shape what freedom is. (shrink)

Ian Carter argues against what he calls the ?specific freedom thesis?, which claims that in asking whether our society or any individual is free, all we need or can intelligibly concern ourselves with is their freedom to do this or that specific thing. Carter claims that issues of overall freedom are politically and morally important and that, in valuing freedom as such, liberals should be committed to a measure of freedom overall. This paper argues against Carter?s further claim that rejection (...) of the specific freedom thesis requires rejection of morally based determinations of degrees of overall freedom. Using a concept of freedom as a capacity to pursue one?s interests, it is argued that the value of freedom overall is not reducible to the value of specific freedoms, and that conditions of action can be determined as constraints only within the context of their impact on freedom overall. Taking the case of coercive proposals, it is argued that we must evaluate the morality of the circumstances in which conditional proposals are made if we are to weigh the opportunities and constraints contained in the proposal to determine whether its recipient suffers a loss of overall freedom. We must therefore appeal to values other than that of liberty itself to determine degrees of liberty overall, which we require in turn to determine whether threats or offers are coercive. (shrink)

This essay considers the theoretical disagreement between Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt on the meaning and value of freedom. Berlin thinks that negative liberty as non-interference is commendable because it is attuned to the implication of value pluralism that man is a choice-making creature and cannot be otherwise. By contrast, the political freedom to act is in Arendt’s view a more fulfilling ideal because it is only in political action that man’s potentiality is actualised, his unique identity manifested and his (...) being-in-the-world-with-others reaffirmed. What lies beneath the two thinkers’ dispute over the most satisfactory meaning of freedom, I argue, is a deeper disagreement over human nature itself. The implication of this analysis for the contemporary debate between pluralist liberals and their agonistic critics is briefly discussed in conclusion. (shrink)

Many existing defenses of group rights seem to rely on the notion of group freedom. To date, however, no adequate analysis of this notion has been offered. Group freedom is best understood in terms of processes of social categorization that are embedded in social mechanisms. Such processes often give rise to group-specific constraints and enablements. On the proposed social mechanism account, group rights are demands for group freedom. Even so, group rights often serve to eradicate individual unfreedom. Furthermore, generic measures (...) sometimes provide the most appropriate solution to a problem of group unfreedom. (shrink)

:Freedom is often analysed in terms of the absence of intentionally imposed constraints. I defend the alternative view on which the relevant constraints are those for which some agent can be held morally responsible. I argue that this best captures the relation between freedom and respect. Berlin correctly points out that intentional restrictions exhibit ill will and hence are disrespectful. However, the same holds, I argue, for restrictions that are due to indifference. Berlin also observed that it would be counterintuitive (...) if an agent could increase her freedom by changing her preferences. I criticize the argument that Dowding and Van Hees present according to which this observation counts in favour of explicating freedom in terms of intentionality. (shrink)

What is liberty, and can it be measured? In this paper I argue that the only way to have a liberty metric is to adopt an account of liberty with specific and controversial features. In particular, I argue that we can make sense of the idea of a quantity of liberty only if we are willing to count certain purely agential constraints, such as ignorance and physical incompetence, as obstacles to liberty in general. This spells trouble for traditional ‘negative’ accounts, (...) against which I argue directly. My aim is to establish the following somewhat surprising claim: that if a political theory is to contain a principle regarding the protection, maximisation, or equalisation of some liberty, it must concern itself--on pain of conceptual incoherence--with the positive preconditions (in addition to the negative preconditions) of that liberty’s effective exercise. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 228-244, May 2022. Private property rights involve coercion against non-owners in their enforcement. As critics of private property point out, this coercion involves a restriction on freedom. Sometimes, such critics suggest that collective property expands rights of access, and therefore expands freedom relative to private property. Does this follow? This paper argues no. To make this argument, I look at two particular forms of collective property: open-access commons and closed-access communes. Both (...) may give rise to potential threats to freedom. This does not mean that collective property never expands freedom relative to private property. It only means we cannot infer from the fact that collective property rules extend rights of access that collective property expands freedom. The upshot is a need to pay more attention to how different property rights work in practice. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta un argumento en favor de un concepción intersubjetivista de la libertad política constituida por cinco diferentes nociones de autonomía: moral, ética, legal, política y social. Más allá de las nociones estrictamente liberales o comunitarias, negativas o positivas, el concepto de libertad política incluye todas aquellas libertades que los ciudadanos, en tanto continentes y usuarios autónomos de la libertad, pueden conceder y garantizar de forma recíproca y general. Así, en la base de este concepto reposa un principio de (...) justiticación moral y política. (shrink)

Various authors hold that what is wrong with risk imposition is that being at risk diminishes the opportunities available to an agent. Arguably, even when risk does not result in material or psychological damages, it still represents a setback in terms of some legitimate interests. However, it remains to be specified what those interests are. This article argues that risk imposition represents a diminishment of overall freedom. Freedom will be characterized in empirical terms, as the range of unimpeded actions available (...) to an agent. After briefly outlining the main characteristics of overall freedom as defended by Hillel Steiner and Ian Carter, the article shows that this notion is able to capture many of our intuitions about when and how risk imposition disadvantages an agent, without reference to welfare indicators. The article argues that if this non-welfarist perspective can be defended, then it would be easier to approach a number of applied questions about risk, including the questions of when risk imposition is permissible or legitimate, in which ways risk can be an object of distributive justice and how one can be compensated for being subject to a risk. (shrink)

The article responds to an influential critique of the view that there is a conceptual distinction between kinds of liberty. The critique in question began with Gerald MacCallum Jr’s famous argument that liberty is a single concept that has a triadic structure between agent, constraint, and end. Against this view, the article argues that the triadic structure offered by MacCallum is unable to conceptualize a particular distinct understanding of liberty. Following Charles Taylor, the article defends the view that there is (...) a distinct ‘exercise-concept’ of liberty that the triadic structure cannot account for. In support of this claim, the article contests a recent argument that an exercise-concept of liberty can be conceptualized in terms of the triadic structure. The article argues that the triadic framework can only conceptualize an exercise-concept of liberty at the cost of abandoning the substance of that framework. To defend this, the article explains that the triadic structure and an exercise-concept are basically conceptually distinct in virtue of the fact that the former embodies a ‘static’ concept, whereas the latter embodies a ‘dynamic’ one. To complete the argument that an exercise-concept is a distinct concept of liberty, the article articulates a common theme that unifies both the triadic structure and an exercise-concept as concepts of liberty. (shrink)

Presently it is en vogue to search and research business models heedful to concerns of social, moral, and ecological sustainability. On the view here defended, however, we ought not to strive for piecemeal corrections but for a thoroughgoing paradigm change of the predominant economic theories and practices in favor of a genuinely ‘humanistic management.’ This very call for humanistic management serves as an introduction into this paper. The article then lays out a concept of humanistic management in three methodologically distinct (...) steps, description – ascription – prescription, before addressing potential challenges to the approach of humanistic management and, finally, pointing out some of its practical implications. The article hence proceeds as follows: From a critique of the reductionist description of economic agency given in conventional economics, the paper moves on to the ascription of freedom and responsibility by and through human actors, which appears essential for any attempt at re-integrating moral prescriptions into economics and, by extension, management theory. The resultant, dignity-centered humanistic management conception is then defended against challenges from postmodern authors and defendants of ‘deep ecology’. Afterward, the article presents some normative postulates for management practice ; last, the main findings of the paper are summarized. (shrink)

Resting as it does on the principle of freedom, today’s global economic system is in need of a global economic ethos of responsibility so as to assure its social and ecological sustainability. Not all ideas of freedom, however, are equally amenable to conceptions of cosmopolitan responsibilities. This article examines how quantitative versus qualitative notions of freedom respectively respond to this challenge. Simply put, quantitative models hinder the integration of responsibility into models of economic rationality whereas qualitative conceptions advance it. As (...) a consequence, efforts to promote a humanistic paradigm of economics and management fare better when oriented at a qualitative idea of freedom. Cast along the lines of a qualitative conception of freedom, corporate responsibility more readily takes on a cosmopolitan dimension apt to meet the needs of the current age of globality. (shrink)

Freedom is among the central values in political philosophy. Freedom also features heavily in normative arguments in ethics, politics, and law. Yet different sides often invoke freedom to establish very different conclusions. Some argue that freedom imposes strict constraints on state power. For example, when promoting public health, there is a limit on how far the state can interfere with individual freedom. Others, in contrast, argue that freedom is not just a constraint but also an important goal of state power (...) and collective action. Good public health policy, for example, promotes people’s freedom. Of course, different arguments often draw on different theories of freedom. So, to evaluate such arguments, we need to analyze these different theories and their implications and assess their plausibility. -/- The broadly liberal tradition views freedom as being about external options. Such theories typically start with an account of when someone has a specific freedom or unfreedom to do something. For example, some argue that only a narrow set of interpersonal interferences count as constraints on freedom. Others argue that a far broader set of factors, including ill health and natural constraints, can reduce one’s freedom. -/- Since the 1980s and 1990s, scholarship has increasingly recognized that to use liberal freedom in normative arguments, one must move beyond specific freedom and unfreedom. Most laws and policies both subtract and add specific freedoms. What matters is how a person’s freedom is affected overall. Philosophers and economists have thus engaged in intricate debates about how to measure overall freedom. Moreover, policies and law affect not only one person at one point in time but also multiple persons across time. So, liberal freedom-based arguments also require distributive criteria for intertemporal and interpersonal distributions of freedom. -/- In the early 21st century, republicanism has developed into a prominent alternative to liberal theories. Republicans argue that being a free person is not just, or not even primarily, about liberal option-freedom. Freedom requires being free from dominating power. Republicans and liberals have engaged in a lively debate on who offers the better theory. In developing the republican ideal, republicans also engage in intramural debates. For example, is domination primarily an interpersonal or structural phenomenon? And what economic institutions does republicanism imply? -/- Theorizing around freedom has become richer and moved from narrower questions regarding specific freedom and unfreedom to overall freedom and to republican theories of nondomination. But recent theorizing also seeks to extend its focus and scope. Historically, theorizing started with the freedom of able-bodied male citizens within nation states. Recent theorizing shifts the focus to include issues around gender, disability, freedom at the international level, and the freedom of nonhuman animals and future generations. Beyond fascinating implications of existing theories, a more inclusive focus is likely to also yield important lessons on how current theories can be improved. (shrink)

This thesis concerns the measurement of freedom, and its value. Specifically, I am concerned with three overarching questions. First, can we measure the extent of an individual’s freedom? It had better be that we can, otherwise much ordinary and intuitive talk that we would like to vindicate – say, about free persons being freer than slaves – will turn out to be false or meaningless. Second, in what ways is freedom valuable, and how is this value measured? It matters, for (...) example, whether freedom is valuable only insofar as it enables us to pursue specific ends we happen to value for independent reasons, or whether it is also valuable in itself. In the latter case, but not the former, more freedom will always be better. Likewise, it’s important to get clarity on what ends, exactly, freedom is especially instrumentally valuable in promoting, since this goes to how much we should care about it. And finally, the liberal political tradition asserts that there is a special sphere of personal choices within which individuals should be free to do as they please, for reasons over and above the value of freedom itself. Now, can we measure the extent to which states and individuals respect individual liberties, and can we weigh the importance of respecting liberty against competing values like social welfare? To answer these questions, I follow the axiomatic tradition of social choice theory, and I develop several novel measures of freedom – including the first measure of freedom ever proposed that is sensitive to how modally robustly our options are available – a novel approach to measuring the diversity of an opportunity set, and I develop an account of the value of freedom according to which an important part of why freedom matters is that it enables us to improve our preferences through learning, and I construct ways of measuring the value of freedom along this dimension of value. Finally, in later chapters, I provide a representation result for a measure of illiberalism, i.e. of the degree to which states fail to respect the rights of their citizens, and I extend this result to provide a characterization of moral theories that express concern for respecting the rights of others. The final chapter closes by discussing how this concern may be weighed against concerns for social welfare. (shrink)

Pettit endorses a ‘republican’ conception of social freedom of the person as consisting of a state of non-domination, and takes this to refute Mill’s ‘liberal’ claim that non-domineering but coercive interference can compromise social freedom of choice. This paper argues that Pettit’s interpretation is true to the extent that Mill believes that the legitimate, non-arbitrary and just coercion of would-be dominators, for the sake of preventing them from dominating others, can render them unfree to choose to do so without rendering (...) them socially unfree (qua dominated) persons in their own right. However, contra Pettit, Mill is correct to reject the ‘republican’ view for at least two reasons. Firstly, it enables him to avoid commitment to the implausible implication that would-be dominators who sincerely deny any interest in a shared system of basic liberties are automatically rendered unfree persons by the coercion necessary to uphold such a system. Secondly, it enables him to avoid begging the question against ‘immoralists’ like Nietzsche, whose opposition to systems of reciprocal non-domination is at least partly motivated by the losses of social freedom of choice they entail for those they deem to be worthy of dominating others. (shrink)