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)

Politicians and engineers are increasingly realizing that values are important in the development of technological artefacts. What is often overlooked is that different conceptualizations of these abstract values lead to different design-requirements. For example, designing social media platforms for deliberative democracy sets us up for technical work on completely different types of architectures and mechanisms than designing for so-called liquid or direct forms of democracy. Thinking about Democracy is not enough, we need to design for the proper conceptualization of these (...) values. As we see it, we cannot responsibly engineer and innovate and shape technology in accordance with our moral values without engaging in systematic and continuous conceptual engineering: This is not only an academic, or theoretical issue, it is also not simply an issue for public policy or politics, or regulators, it has become a central problem for engineering and the world of technology. In this paper, we present a framework for doing the necessary conceptual work in the context of requirement engineering. We draw on the literature on conceptual engineering to lay out a methodology to (1) assess different conceptions and (2) to develop new conceptions. Moreover, we integrate this methodology with extant approaches in the philosophy of technology which aim at designing technological artefacts ethically. In the final section we apply this integrated framework to freedom in the context of social media networks. (shrink)

Freedom and security are often portrayed as things that have to be traded off against one another, but this view does not capture the full complexity of the freedom-security relationship. Rather, there seem to be four different ways in which freedom and security connect to each other: freedom can come at the cost of security, security can come at the cost of freedom, freedom can work to the benefit of security, and security can work to the benefit of freedom. This (...) paper analyses each of these connections in turn. It shows that particular understandings of freedom can help us to see particular connections between freedom and security. The practical examples used to illustrate these connections are drawn from the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be suggested that, in the face of challenges such as this one, taking into account all four connections between freedom and security can ultimately help decision-makers in upholding both. (shrink)

Some argue that republican freedom is impossible because since it is always possible that a person or a group of persons possesses arbitrary power to interfere with individuals, no one is free to do anything. To avoid this challenge, in their recent article, Sean Ingham and Frank Lovett invoke the notion of ignorability in terms of which they offer a moderate interpretation of republican freedom. On their view, B is free from A to φ if A’s possible types who prefer (...) to intervene with B’s φ-ing are ignorable. They also try to show that freedom is not determined by the probability of an intervention. However, we argue that they fail to do this and that freedom as non-domination is not entailed by ignorability. (shrink)

This paper is on the paradox of a right, the right to education that is almost universally declared as compulsory. The reason for the compulsion seems to be in its nature as a right. Within a Hohfeldian framework, any claim-right has a corresponding duty. Given that making education compulsory equates to establishing a duty, the possible candidates to the duty generating right-bearers are considered.The rationales for compulsion from the points of view of positive (for one’s own good), negative (no compulsion (...) at all), and republican liberty (society right) are analyzed, and the conclusion is reached that none of the three can produce sufficient justification for compulsion. The main conclusion is that education is a right, not an obligation. Therefore, neither the children nor their families can be legally forced to an unrestricted exercise of this right without even being heard. The law must reflect, in its progressive flexibility, the growing possibilities of choice for right-holders who are adults ‘in fieri’. (shrink)

It is a core feature of the conception of freedom as non-domination that freedom requires the absence of exposure to arbitrary power across a range of relevant possible worlds. While this modal robustness is critical to the analysis of paradigm cases of unfreedom such as slavery, critics such as Gerald Gaus have argued that it leads to absurd conclusions, with barely-felt constraints appearing as sources of unfreedom. I aim to clarify the demands of the modal robustness requirement, and offer a (...) reinterpretation of its place in the conceptual framework of freedom as non-domination. I illustrate this point through a discussion of low-probability threats of interference which are central to Gaus’s critique, which I term ‘distant threats’. I argue that those committed to robust conceptions of freedom should still be concerned by these kinds of threats, which will sometimes constitute genuine sources of unfreedom. But rather than leading to absurd conclusions, we should instead view them as diagnostic of deficiencies within existing regimes of non-domination. The challenge posed by distant threats of domination to the republican conception of freedom does not prove it implausible, but illustrates some of its most important insights about the social and economic conditions of free status, and the fragility of that freedom. (shrink)

John Rawls thinks republicanism is compatible with his political liberalism. Philip Pettit insists that the two conflict in important ways. In this paper, I make sense of this dispute by employing David Chalmers’s method of elimination to reveal the meaning underlying key terms in Rawls’s political liberalism and Pettit’s republicanism. This procedure of disambiguating terms will show how the two theories defend the same institutional arrangement on the same grounds. The procedure thus vindicates Rawls’s view of the two theories being (...) compatible. The reason for this compatibility is that both theories are politicized—that is, they are constructed to attract the compliance of all reasonable members of a modern, pluralistic society. (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)

The neo-republican conception of freedom as non-domination has emerged as a powerful framework for conceptualizing the dynamic relationship between power, democracy, and constitutionalism in modernity. Despite this, I argue that adaptations of republican freedom to the problem of slavery displace attention to race and foreclose more productive ways of addressing how racial slavery constitutes a distinct form of oppression. To illuminate the limitations of neo-republicanism, I turn to the political thought of abolitionists David Walker and Ottobah Cugoano. Both utilize comparative (...) histories of race and slavery to reveal the specificity of modern slavery as a form of oppression, which cannot be captured as an issue of domination in the technical sense of the term. They thus pose challenges to neo-republican theory for its failure to fully appreciate the historical differences between ancient and modern slavery. To do so would illuminate how neo-republican theory faces severe limitations in providing an adequate conceptualization of oppression in the case of racial slavery. (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)

This article undertakes a republican analysis of power in the workplace and labour market in order to determine whether workers are dominated by employers. Civic republicans usually take domination to be subjection to an arbitrary power to interfere with choice. But when faced with labour disputes over what choices it is normal for workers to make for themselves, these accounts of domination struggle to determine whether employers possess the power to interfere. I propose an alternative capabilitarian conception of domination as (...) the arbitrary power to determine access to capabilities necessary for relationships of equality between citizens. This approach allows us to diagnose domination in the workplace and the labour market but does not capture unfreedom arising from the wider socio-structural position of workers. Thus, I supplement this capabilitarian account of the domination of workers with a structural account of dominating power, which reveals a richer set of conditions under which employers dominate workers. (shrink)

Although there seems to be an agreement on what slurs are, many authors diverge when it comes to classify some words as such. Hence, many debates would benefit from a technical definition of this term that would allow scholars to clearly distinguish what counts as a slur and what not. Although the paper offers different definitions of the term in order to allow the reader to choose her favorite, I claim that ‘slurs’ is the name given to a grammatical category, (...) and I consequently trace a difference in kind between slurs and other kinds of group pejoratives. I rely on a novel approach to slurs that characterizes them based on their membership to a particular kind of register category, an often neglected sociolinguistic notion determining the social contexts in which registered terms are expected, tolerated or unacceptable. The paper also points out to the close link between words registered as [+derogatory] and their usage in the context of dominance relations of different kinds between users and recipients of slurs. By pointing out to this link I hope to underscore the political significance of slur usage, as well as to contribute further to the explanation why slurs are so damaging and unacceptable in most social contexts. (shrink)

Theories of domination are primarily attempts to understand the value of justice, freedom, and equality by examining cases where they are absent. Such theories seek to clarify and systematize our judgments about what it is to be weak against uncontrolled strength, i.e., about what it is to be vulnerable, degraded, and defenseless against unrestrained power. -/- Much contemporary disagreement about domination involves competing answers to three questions: (1) Who, or what, can dominate? (2) Is it possible to dominate merely by (...) having power with a certain structure, or is domination an exercise or an abuse of power? (3) Exercised or unexercised, what kind of power is domination? The remainder of this entry will address each of these questions in turn, then conclude with a survey of how the idea of domination has been used in recent applied ethical theory. It will become clear as we examine competing answers to these three questions that different theorists have very different ideas of why, exactly, we need a theory of domination. There may be wide agreement that we need the idea of domination to make sense of unjust power relations, but unjust power relations are wildly varied, and theorists of domination disagree not only about which varieties most need to be understood, but about how theorizing domination helps us to understand them. (shrink)

This chapter develops a civic republican approach to disability justice. It begins by articulating a republican account of liberty as nondomination before showing how such domination can shape the relationships of people with disabilities. This leads to a consideration of whether disability justice can be defined in terms of maximizing or sufficient nondomination. Instead, the chapter provides a civic framework within which republican disability justice can be understood, encompassing both the absence of oppressive relationships and the presence of capabilities of (...) special egalitarian concern. It also considers some specific normative implications of a republican account of disability justice—doubting the suitability of contestatory democracy but pointing toward the merits of self-education and universal basic income. Finally, the objection that this republican approach to disability justice unreasonably denigrates dependence is rebutted. (shrink)

This article explores the relevance of the work of Cambridge historian of political thought István Hont to contemporary political theory. Specifically, it suggests that Hont’s work can be of great help to the recent realist revival in political theory, in particular via its lending support to the account favoured by Bernard Williams, which has been a major source for recent realist work. The article seeks to make explicit the main political theoretic implications of Hont’s historically-focused work, which in their original (...) formulations are not always easy to discern, as well as itself being a positive contribution to realist theorizing, moving beyond a merely negative critique of dominant moralist positions. (shrink)

Many philosophers conceive of freedom as non-interference. Such conceptions unify two core commitments. First, they associate freedom with non-constraint. And second, they take seriously a distinction between the interpersonal and the non-personal. As a result, they focus our attention exclusively on constraints attributable to other people’s choices – that is, on interference. I argue that these commitments manifest two distinct concerns: first, for a wide range of options; and second, for other people’s respect. However, construing freedom as non-interference unifies these (...) concerns in a way that does justice to neither. In particular, it focuses our attention on phenomena that are at best tangential, and at worst hostile, to our interest in respect. If we wish to preserve the distinctive significance of the interpersonal, we would be better served by a conception of freedom that focuses immediately on what I call "the social conditions of respect.". (shrink)

Contemporary proponents of republican political theory often focus on the concept of freedom as non-domination, and how best to promote it within a state. However, there is little attention paid to what the republican conception of freedom demands in the international realm. In this essay I examine what is required for an agent to enjoy freedom as non-domination, and argue that this might only be achieved for individuals if one of two possibilities is pursued internationally: either (1) all nations are (...) made equally powerful, such that none may arbitrarily impose its will on another without penalty, or (2) all nations are joined under a global sovereign which guarantees that the weaker states are not subject to the whims of the stronger. I further argue that the first condition cannot suffice for achieving true non-domination, and as a result, republicanism must prescribe working toward the establishment of a global state. This paper provides an important contribution to the literature by addressing the international implications of the republican conception of freedom. (shrink)

Nu cu foarte mult timp în urmă, grupul de teorie socială şi politică din cadrul proiectului POSDRU 89/1.5/S/56815 „Societatea bazată pe cunoaştere-cercetări, dezbateri, perspective”, a publicat, tot la editura Institutul European, lucrarea Concepte şi teorii social-politice. Volumul de faţă reprezintă un nou pas al grupului nostru de lucru în realizarea proiectului inaugurat prin publicarea acelei lucrări. Este vorba, reamintesc, despre proiectul elaborării unor volume care să-i ajute pe cei interesaţi în iniţierea (lor sau a altora) în teoria (şi în special (...) filosofia) politică, mai ales în dezvoltările sale conceptuale, argumentative şi problematologice recente. Desigur, nu am intenţionat în mod expres ca aceste volume să fie utile doar în această direcţie. Speranţa noastră a fost, dimpotrivă, ca ele să fie interesante şi pentru cercetătorii cu experienţă în investigarea şi dezbaterea temelor abordate în cadrul lor, mai ales pentru că unele capitole prezintă idei, argumente sau perspective originale, care, credem noi, merită atenţia critică a comunităţii cercetătorilor români. Menirea lor fundamentală rămâne totuşi, în intenţia noastră, cea introductivă. Aşa cum recunoşteam în cuvântul său înainte, Concepte şi teorii socialpolitice nu este deloc un volum exhaustiv. Teorii şi ideologii politice reprezintă, în bună măsură, şi o încercare de a compensa cumva acest „defect” al volumului în cauză. Desigur, nici publicarea lui nu ne permite să susţinem că am atins obiectivul oferirii unei introduceri cât mai complete în teoria/filosofia politică actuală. Deşi Teorii şi ideologii politice prezintă câteva dintre cele mai importante teorii sau ideologii politice contemporane, există multe altele care nu sunt prezentate (sau cel puţin nu sunt prezentate atât de detaliat pe cât ar fi meritat) între paginile sale. Mă refer aici, spre exemplu, la libertarianism, comunitarianism, cosmopolitism sau capabilism (ca teorie a dezvoltării umane). Ne consolăm însă în baza a trei argumente. Unul este acela că, aşa cum se poate observa cu uşurinţă din cuprinsul său, cartea de faţă prezintă totuşi un număr important dintre principalele teorii şi ideologii politice recente (unele dintre ele pentru prima dată în literatura românească de specialitate). Al doilea este acela că unele dintre teoriile sau ideologiile politice care nu sunt abordate aici au beneficiat deja de prezentări competente şi atente la noi (unele dintre ele chiar în Concepte şi teorii social-politice). În sfârşit, al treilea argument este acela că sperăm cu toţii că prezentul volum nu reprezintă ultimul nostru pas în realizarea obiectivului menţionat în debutul acestei intervenţii. Sperăm, altfel spus, să putem prezenta acele teorii sau ideologii politice care nu şi-au găsit locul între paginile lui sau ale celui precedent cu o altă ocazie. Ţin să precizez însă că volumul pe care îl introduc prin această intervenţie nu este întrutotul o continuare a celui precedent, deşi între ele există, desigur, destule afinităţi, relaţii şi continuităţi tematice. Mai exact, el nu ar putea fi descris totalmente neproblematic ca reprezentând „al doilea tom” al volumului Concepte şi teorii social-politice. Titlul său este menit să indice acest lucru. Dacă lucrarea anterioară era centrată pe prezentarea unora dintre principalele concepte ale teoriei/filosofiei social-politice contemporane, cartea de faţă prezintă câteva dintre principalele teorii sau ideologii dezvoltate şi apărate de politologii, filosofii, economiştii sau „ideologii” politici contemporani. Nici de această dată nu voi încerca să rezum principalele idei expuse sau metodologii utilizate de către autori în prezentarea teoriilor sau ideologiilor politice care se regăsesc între paginile ce urmează. Temeiul meu este acelaşi: acolo unde au considerat că este cazul, autorii capitolelor şi-au rezumat ei înşişi ideile prezentate sau/şi metodologiile utilizate. În plus, cititorul interesat să-şi facă o idee prealabilă despre conţinutul ideatic şi problematologic al cărţii dispune de un rezumat al ei (în limbile engleză şi franceză) în finalul său. În consecinţă, mă voi mulţumi să închei doar prin a exprima încă o dată speranţa noastră că această carte se va dovedi utilă celor cărora li se adresează cu preponderenţă. Sperăm, în alte cuvinte, ca ea să le fie de ajutor în înţelegerea şi evaluarea adecvată a teoriilor şi ideologiilor pe care le prezintă. Şi mai important, sperăm că ea îi va stimula să caute să aprofundeze cercetarea acestor teorii şi ideologii şi – mai ales – să iniţieze propriile investigaţii sistematice şi riguroase în această privinţă. Dezvoltarea politologiei şi a filosofiei politice în spaţiul românesc, ca să nu mai vorbim despre clarificarea şi fundamentarea cât mai completă şi adecvată a opţiunilor ideologice ale partidelor politice din România, au nevoie de acest lucru. (shrink)

The republican ideal of non-domination identifies the capacity for arbitrary interference as a fundamental threat to liberty that can generate fearful uncertainty and servility in those dominated. I argue that republican accounts of domination can provide a powerful analysis of the nature of legal and institutional power that is encountered by people with mental disorders or cognitive disabilities. In doing so, I demonstrate that non-domination is an ideal which is pertinent, distinctive, and desirable in thinking through psychological disability. Finally, I (...) evaluate republican strategies for contesting domination, focusing on the limits of contestatory democracy, and proposing a participatory alternative which better addresses problems of political agency in the mentally disordered and cognitively disabled. (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)

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)

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)

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...

There is an ongoing debate in medicine about whether patients have a ‘right not to know’ pertinent medical information, such as diagnoses of life-altering diseases. While this debate has employed various ethical concepts, probably the most widely-used by both defenders and detractors of the right is autonomy. Whereas defenders of the right not to know typically employ a ‘liberty’ conception of autonomy, according to which to be autonomous involves doing what one wants to do, opponents of the right not to (...) know often employ a ‘duty’ understanding, viewing autonomy as involving an obligation to be self-governing. The central contribution of this paper is in showing that neither view of autonomy can reasonably be said to support the extreme stances on the right not to know that they are sometimes taken to. That is, neither can a liberty view properly defend a right not to know without limits, nor can a duty view form the basis of an absolute rejection of the right not to know. While there is still theoretical distance between these two approaches, we conclude that the views are considerably closer on this issue than they first appear, opening the way for a possible compromise. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo defiendo la postura según la cual el republicanismo -en comparación con otras nociones o motivos centrales- no se ha interpretado como uno de los rasgos que caracteriza a la filosofía jurídica y política de Kant como un todo. Una posible razón es que el republicanismo kantiano no ha ocupado un lugar destacado dentro de las narrativas republicanas, ya sea históricas o sistemáticas, que son más dominantes en las discusiones contemporáneas. A mi parecer, esto es así porque (...) hay características innovadoras en la empresa republicana kantiana que se encuentran en tensión con otros proyectos republicanos de otra índole. Aquí discuto algunos de los rasgos distintivos del proyecto de Kant en lo que atañe a concepciones suyas sobre el estado de derecho, la ciudadanía, la autoridad política, la libertad de expresión y el derecho internacional, con el fin de señalar que estas son parte integral de una teoría política y legal que todavía es atractiva y sugerente.In this paper, I defend the stance that republicanism -in comparison to other central notions- has not been interpreted as one of the main traits that characterize Kant’s legal and political philosophy. A plausible reason for this is that Kantian republicanism has not occupied a prominent place in the republican narratives, historiographical or systematic, that are dominant in contemporary discussions. To my mind, the reason for this is that some innovative characteristics in the Kantian republican enterprise are at odds with other republican philosophical projects. Here I discuss some distinctive traits of Kant’s project regarding his conceptions of the rule of law, citizenship, political authority, free speech, and international law with the aim of showing that they are an integral part of a political and legal theory that is still attractive and compelling. (shrink)

In spite of its everyday connotations, the term independence as republicans understand it is not a celebration of individualism or self-reliance but embodies an acknowledgement of the importance of personal and social relationships in people’s lives. It reflects our connectedness rather than separateness and is in this regard a relational ideal. Properly understood, independence is a useful concept in addressing a fundamental problem in social philosophy that has preoccupied theorists of relational autonomy, namely how to reconcile the idea of individual (...) human agency with the inevitable and necessary influence of other people, both directly and indirectly. I derive my account from the work of Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay, whose contributions have remained largely overlooked by current republican theorists. I have three purposes in this chapter. First, I set out the relational character of independence. Secondly, I outline a republican approach to the problem of structural social threats to agency. Finally, I hope to establish the basis for a fruitful dialogue between republicans and relational autonomy theorists on the requirements and dynamics of individual agency and freedom in oppressive social situations. I identify three distinctive features of the internal logic of freedom as independence that give it a relational character: it always locates the person within a community; there is a mediating role played by the notion of arbitrariness in connecting individual and collective perspectives; a causal relationship exists linking each person’s freedom as independence such that that the dependence of one class of persons jeopardizes the independence of the whole community. (shrink)

This paper assesses the most well thought out contemporary conception of republican liberty put forward by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner. I demonstrate that it is incoherent: at least insofar as it seeks to pick out a form of unfreedom not captured by the negative conception of liberty. This incoherence arises because Pettit and Skinner cannot both hold that republican unfreedom is defined by one agent’s mere capacity to interfere arbitrarily with another agent and, at the same time, claim that (...) republican freedom can be promoted by deterrence mechanisms. My contribution to contemporary republican theory is to suggest that a coherent republican conception can be achieved, however, through an important revision. This is to replace Pettit and Skinner’s antonym of republican liberty—the power to interfere arbitrarily—with a higher order power—the power to determine arbitrarily rules with respect to interference. This revised conception does pick out a genuinely distinct extension of unfreedom from the negative liberty conception. I believe it also reflects an important intuitive sense in which we may understand ourselves to be unfree, that is, to live under the rule of another. (shrink)

The article examines Quentin Skinner's influential interpretation of Machiavelli's views on liberty, and the sharp divergence between his methodological ideas and his actual practice. The paper explores how Skinner's political ideals directed his interpretation against his own methodological precepts, to offer a basis for a ‘revival’ of republican theory. Skinner's reinterpretation of Machiavelli as a theorist of negative liberty is examined, and refuted. The article analyses Skinner's claim about liberty as the key political value for Machiavelli, and demonstrates that liberty (...) is secondary to empire on the list of Machiavelli's priorities. Skinner's vocabulary and efforts to tone down or ignore Machiavelli's more aggressive ideas are closely examined. The analysis offered in the article, it is suggested, has wider implications, showing the difficulty of applying contextualism in practice, by the very founder of this approach in the history of ideas. (shrink)

Even long after their formal exclusion has come to an end, members of previously oppressed social groups often continue to face disproportionate restrictions on their freedom, as the experience of many women over the last century has shown. Working within in a framework in which freedom is understood as independence from arbitrary power, Mary Wollstonecraft provides an explanation of why such domination may persist and offers a model through which it can be addressed. Republicans rely on processes of rational public (...) deliberation to highlight and combat oppression. However, where domination is primarily social rather than legal or political (such as where cultural attitudes, traditions and values exert an arbitrary and inhibiting force) then this defence against domination is often negated. Prejudice, she argues, ‘clouds’ people’s ability to reason and skews debate in favour of the dominant powers, thereby entrenching patterns of subjection. If they are to be independent, then, citizens require not only political rights but a platform from which to add their perspectives and interests to the background social values which govern political discussion. (shrink)

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)

This article argues that Hayek employed a neo-Roman concept of liberty. It will show that Hayek’s definition of liberty conforms to that provided by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner, respectively...

Dignity is often invoked as the basis of human rights. The precise relation between dignity and human rights remains objectionably obscure, however, and many appeals to dignity seem little more than hand-waving, as critics have pointed out. This vagueness is potentially damning for contemporary human rights accounts, as it calls into question whether dignity can truly serve as the foundation of human rights. In order to defend the view that human rights are grounded in human dignity, this paper presents a (...) novel analysis of dignity that elucidates how human rights can be derived from dignity. Arguing that neither contingent nor inherent conceptions of dignity can, on their own, account for human rights, it develops a conceptualisation of dignity that combines inherent and contingent features in a coherent fashion. This, in turn, is shown to provide us with the means to explain how human rights are both grounded in and protective of dignity. Showing that the inherent features of dignity always generate a claim to the contingent features of dignity, the paper demonstrates that human rights derive directly from the inherent features of dignity, whilst what they protect are the contingent features of dignity. The paper closes with a discussion of the advantages of conceptualising dignity in the manner proposed, explicating the connection between dignity and nobility. (shrink)

Freedom as non-domination provides a distinctive criterion for assessing the justifiability of migration controls, different from both freedom of movement and autonomy. Migration controls are dominating insofar as they threaten to coerce potential migrants. Both the general right of states to control migration, and the wide range of discretionary procedures prevalent in migration controls, render outsiders vulnerable to arbitrary power. While the extent and intensity of domination varies, it is sufficient under contemporary conditions of globalization to warrant limits on states’ (...) discretion with respect to admission. Reducing domination requires, rather than removing all immigration restrictions or democratically justifying them to all, that there be certain constraints on states’ freedom to control migration: giving migrants a publicly secured status somewhat analogous to that enjoyed by citizens, subjecting migration controls to higher legal regulation, and making immigration policies and decision contestable by those who are subject to them. (shrink)

In Europe and other regions of the world public debate concerning how many immigrants should be admitted, which rights those admitted should have, and which conditions can be required for access to citizenship is intense and enduring, and these have increasingly become central electoral issues. On the one hand, the harsh treatment of migrants is often a matter of public criticism; on the other hand, states are concerned about problems of welfare, security and social unrest that they have come to (...) associate with large-scale migration. At its most fundamental level, this debate concerns the question of how best to balance particularist principles of democratic self-determination and state sovereignty and universalist principles of individual freedom and human rights. The articles in this special issue examine whether the concept of domination can cast a distinctive light on the normative issues arising in this tension between state sovereignty and universal principles with respect to migration and the position of non-citizens in contemporary liberal democratic states. These issues arise both externally insofar as foreigners are subject to migration controls, and internally insofar as migrants live in states of which they are not full members. The issue thus examines the potential of domination as a concept to bring to bear on issues of migration controls, differential residence statuses and access to membership. (shrink)

Self-consciousness in non-human animals is a complex phenomenon which raises both conceptual and methodological problems. First, what do we mean by the concept of ‘self-consciousness’? Secondly, what is the best experimental approach to self-consciousness? This paper gives a short overview of the concept of self-consciousness in section 1. We can understand the concept of self-consciousness as capturing the ability of subjects to consciously think about themselves as themselves. If this is accurate, then it is prudent to look at a broad (...) bundle of abilities which are related to this ability. The paper then focuses on advantages and problems of the multipronged approach, a kind of empirical approach which uses several different test criteria to determine whether a subject is self-conscious or not. Section 2 briefly contrasts this kind of approach with other possibilities. The main disparity is to singlepronged approaches, which have been discussed and dismissed in greater detail elsewhere. Section 3 discusses the advantages of a multipronged approach, whereas section 4 is dedicated to the discussion of some of its problems. (shrink)

On the face of it, self-censorship is profoundly subversive of democracy, particularly in its talk-centric forms, and undermines the culture of openness and publicity on which it relies. This paper has two purposes. The first is to develop a conception of self-censorship that allows us to capture what is distinctive about the concept from a political perspective and which allows us to understand the democratic anxiety about self-censorship: if it is not obvious that biting our tongues is always wrong, we (...) need a fuller account of the moral sensibility that finds it so troubling and this is elaborated here. The second is to develop an argument to the effect that this sensibility should not have the last, or only, word, but instead that self-censorship should be viewed as an ‘ordinary vice’ of democratic societies. The grounds for tolerating it rest on the democratic values that critics believe it threatens. (shrink)

Prominent recent scholarship in global political justice has focused on creating conceptual space for international NGOs ? and sometimes also corporations and states ? as fully-fledged participants in global governance. While acknowledging the achievements of international non-state actors, I argue that core global governance tasks ? of global distribution, regulation or administration ? should not be assigned to them. Drawing from neo-republican theory, I contend that such actors fall short of the formal criteria that are necessary for constituting a global (...) public actor, because they do not have a global function and orientation. The distinction between public and private actors matters, since it conditions our expectations for them: both categories of actors are asked to avoid dominating individuals, but public actors must, in addition, protect individuals from third-party domination. (shrink)

Can state sovereignty justify privileged receiving countries exercising authority over non‐members in a third country to safeguard their own interests? Under the current migration governance of the EU, state sovereignty is manifested in migrant interdiction, interception and detention policies employed to prevent unauthorized migrants from reaching the EU, and even from attempting to embark on cross‐Mediterranean journeys. While reinforcement of the Schengen region's external borders is a key aim of the EU's internal migration politics, collaboration with third countries regarding migration (...) control has, in the last decade, become a key feature of its external migration policy. In close collaboration with third countries, the EU has managed to curb the outflux of migrants from transit and sending countries. In effect, irregular migrants are prevented from exiting as well as from entering. This article explores the justifiability of such practices, by questioning commonly invoked models of justification such as the sovereignty “model”, with a special focus on partnership agreements regarding migration control between the EU and Libya. (shrink)

This article argues that Hayek employed a neo-Roman concept of liberty. It will show that Hayek’s definition of liberty conforms to that provided by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner, respectively the chief theorist and leading historian of the neo-Roman concept. It will go on to demonstrate how the genealogy of liberty Hayek provides is also the same as that offered by Pettit and Skinner. This is important, as the neo-Roman concept is not regarded, either by Hayek or by neo-republicans led (...) by Pettit, as a product of political theory. Instead it is viewed as underpinning a historical tradition. Hayek’s self-conscious association with this tradition reinforces the article’s prior claim that Hayek’s conceptual writing on liberty is neo-Roman. Finally, the article considers how the neo-Roman nature of Hayek’s work complicates the historical narrative and political claims the neo-republicans make for the neo-Roman concept. It concludes that it is open to use by another, very different, political tradition: free market liberalism. (shrink)

Green republicanism can be described as a subset of republican political theory that aims at promoting human flourishing by ensuring a non-dominating and ecologically sustainable republic. An essential aspect of green republicanism is the promotion of post-productivism while preserving or expanding republican freedom as non-domination. Post-productivism implies the promotion of personal autonomy rather than the pursuit of permanent economic growth and the promotion of labour as an intrinsically positive human activity, which for green republicans will have three positive aspects: reduced (...) ecological impact, more time available for civic participation, and the extension of democratic decision-making and norms to the sphere of production. An important aspect in the definition of a post-productivist society is the way welfare schemes are designed. In this article, I will thus compare the existing welfare regimes with a participation income and with an unconditional basic income, and analyse how they promote green republican goals. I conclude that the current systems are one of the elements of the productivist society and that would not answer the green republican conditions. A green participation income could have a positive ecological impact and contribute to a shift to post-productivism but would face serious challenges from a republican perspective, namely in terms of the non-arbitrariness of its attribution. Finally, I conclude that depending on how it is defined, an unconditional basic income could contribute to post-productivism while being non-arbitrary thus obeying the green republican conditions. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of a radical republican conception of freedom as non-domination, rooted in the anarchist tradition. In discussing both the non-statist theoretical frameworks and the practical educational experiments associated with this tradition, I suggest that it can add a valuable dimension to recent critical work in philosophy of education that draws on the republican idea of freedom as non-domination.

‘Optimistic’ normative theories of criminal justice aim to justify criminal sanction in terms of its reprobative/rehabilitative value rather than its punitive nature as such. But do such theories accord with ordinary intuitions about what constitutes a ‘just’ response to wrongdoing? Recent empirical work on the psychology of punishers suggests that human beings have a ‘brutely retributive’ moral psychology, making them unlikely to endorse normative theories that sacrifice retribution for the sake of reprobation or rehabilitation; it would mean, for example, that (...) we cannot expect people to support such optimistic theories democratically, calling their feasibility into question. Taking the civic republican theory as an exemplar of optimistic theories, we argue that it does not fail this feasibility test. We review recent empirical research, including studies of our own, to support the claim that, far from being brute retributivists, human beings are generally satisfied only with punishment that delivers something other than mere retribution. And we show that this coheres very closely with the goals and policies that civic republicanism would support, as it may be expected to cohere also with other optimistic proposals. (shrink)

When states perpetrate injustices, do their individual citizens develop liabilities to repair such wrongdoings? Most existing accounts of citizens’ liabilities for state-perpetrated injustices, whilst applicable across certain democratic contexts, struggle to provide robust accounts of the grounds and nature of liabilities for citizens in non-democratic contexts. This problematically leaves a lacuna when it comes to the responsibilities and appropriate responses of citizens in these states. This article advances a distinctive two-pronged authorisation-based account applicable to non-democracies. Objective authorisers are individuals who (...) derive presumptive benefits, are comparably better-off under, and can reliably influence the decision-making processes over the injustice perpetrated by the state. Subjective authorisers are citizens who autonomously endorse their state as credible interpreters and upholders of their aims in relation to the injustices in question. Both objective and subjective authorisers of the state in relation to particular injustices perpetrated, are liable to compensate, actively oppose, and commemorate the victims of state-perpetrated injustices. This account will be shown to be empirically applicable to a large number of minimally decent non-democratic states, where the political elite enjoy moderate popular support over their incorporation and reflection of citizen interests and preferences in their governance, despite the absence of formal democratic electoral mechanisms. This authorisation-based view differs from existing accounts oriented around complicity and participatory intentions, in better accounting for non-participants who are nevertheless intuitively liable for the actions of their authorised state, as well as circumventing structural shortcomings affecting complicity-centric accounts. (shrink)