An esteemed philosopher discusses his theory of universal freedom, describing how even those who are members of free societies may find their liberties curtailed and includes tests of freedom including the eyeball test and the tough-luck test.

This book addresses the perennial question: What is justice?

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

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)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 47, Issue 4, Page 412-424, Fall 2019.

In Hobbes, freedom of choice requires nonfrustration: the option you prefer must be accessible. In Berlin, it requires noninterference: every option, preferred or unpreferred, must be accessible—every door must be open. But Berlin’s argument against Hobbes suggests a parallel argument that freedom requires something stronger still: that each option be accessible and that no one have the power to block access; the doors should be open, and there should be no powerful doorkeepers. This is freedom as nondomination. The claim is (...) that freedom as noninterference is an unstable alternative between freedom as nonfrustration and freedom as nondomination. (shrink)

In a recent discussion of Amartya Sen's concept of the capabilities of people for functioning in their society – and the idea of targeting people's functioning capabilities in evaluating the society – G. A. Cohen accuses Sen of espousing an inappropriate, ‘athletic’ image of the person (Cohen, 1993, pp. 24–5). The idea is that if Sen's formulations are to be taken at face value, then life is valuable only so far as people actively choose most facets of their existence: if (...) they fare well in the material stakes, for example, they must fare well as a result of active choice and effort, not because anyone else looks after them. ‘That’, says Cohen, ‘overestimates the place of freedom and activity in well-being’ (p. 25). (shrink)

The paper offers five desiderata on a realist normative theory of politics: that it should avoid moralism, deontologism, transcendentalism, utopianism, and vanguardism. These desiderata argue for a theory that begins from values rooted in a people’s experience; that avoids prescribing a collective deontological constraint; that makes the comparison of imperfect regimes possible; that takes feasibility and sustainability into account; and that makes room for the claims of democracy. The paper argues, in the course of exploring the desiderata, that a neo-republican (...) philosophy of government does pretty well in satisfying them. (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)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 46, Issue 4, Page 363-383, Fall 2018.

Philip Pettit (2001) has suggested that there are parallels between his republican account of freedom and Amartya Sen's (1970) account of freedom as decisive preference. In this paper, I discuss these parallels from a social-choice-theoretic perspective. I sketch a formalization of republican freedom and argue that republican freedom is formally very similar to freedom as defined in Sen's “minimal liberalism” condition. In consequence, the republican account of freedom is vulnerable to a version of Sen's liberal paradox, an inconsistency between universal (...) domain, freedom, and the weak Pareto principle. I argue that some standard escape routes from the liberal paradox – those via domain restriction – are not easily available to the republican. I suggest that republicans need to take seriously the challenge of the impossibility of a Paretian republican. Footnotes1 I am grateful to Luc Bovens, Geoffrey Brennan, Keith Dowding, Philip Pettit, and Wlodek Rabinowicz for very helpful comments and discussion. (shrink)

At the core of republican thought, on Philip Pettit’s account, lies the conception of freedom as non-domination, as opposed to freedom as noninterference in the liberal sense. I revisit the distinction between liberal and republican freedom and argue that republican freedom incorporates a particular rule-of-law requirement, whereas liberal freedom does not. Liberals may also endorse such a requirement, but not as part of their conception of freedom itself. I offer a formal analysis of this rule-of-law requirement and compare liberal and (...) republican freedom on its basis. While I agree with Pettit that republican freedom has broader implications than liberal freedom, I conclude that we face a trade-off between two dimensions of freedom (scope and robustness) and that it is harder for republicans to solve that trade-off than it is for liberals. Key Words: freedom • republicanism • liberalism • noninterference • non-domination • rule of law • robustness • liberal paradox. (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)

When is it correct to say that a person's freedom is restricted? Can poverty constrain freedom? Can you constrain your own freedom, for instance through weakness of the will or self-deception, and are you not truly free unless you act on a rational choice? Kristján Kristjánsson offers a critical analysis of the main components of a theory of negative liberty: the nature of obstacles and constraints, the weight of obstacles and the relation of freedom to power and autonomy. Through this (...) discussion, which examines much of the contemporary work on political freedom, he develops his own theory of negative liberty, the so-called 'responsibility view', which meets many of the goals of advocates of positive liberty while retaining its distinctive 'negative' nature. He also argues for, and implements, a method of naturalistic revision as a way of solving conceptual disputes in social philosophy. (shrink)

In his provocative book Matthew Kramer offers a systematic theory of freedom that challenges most of the other major contemporary treatments of the topic.

A. Two conceptions of moral legitimacy Socialism, understood as the rejection of markets based on private property in favor of comprehensive centralized economic planning, is no longer a serious political option. If the core of capitalism is the organization of the economy primarily through market competition based on private property, then capitalism has certainly defeated socialism. Markets have been accepted—and central planning abandoned—throughout most of the “third world” and the formerly Communist states. In the advanced industrial states of the West, (...) Labor and “democratic socialist” parties have rejected socialism, having deregulated markets and privatized industries, utilities, and transport. The United Kingdom Labour Party’s 1945 manifesto declared it to be a “Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate aim is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.”1 Today it insists that markets are a given. (shrink)

Republican freedom is freedom from domination juxtaposed to negative freedom as freedom from interference. Proponents argue that republican freedom is superior since it highlights that individuals lose freedoms even when they are not subject to interference, and claim republican freedom is more ‘resilient’. Republican freedom is trivalent, that is, it includes the idea that someone might be non-free to perform some actions rather than unfree, and in that sense everyone regards republican freedom as different from negative freedom. Trivalence makes republican (...) freedom moralized according to negative libertarians. Beyond that, negative libertarians argue that all the supposed advantages of republican freedom are compatible with those of pure negative-freedom measures. That is, losses and gains of republican freedom are captured in measures of pure negative freedom, and any protection for republican freedom also protects negative freedom, ensuring each is equally resilient. Since republican freedom has no advantages over negative freedom, but has other problems (is moralized and is trivalent), negative freedom is superior. I examine this debate in this article through the ‘coalition problem’ for republican freedom. The coalition problem is that since there is always a coalition of others who could dominate any agent in any sphere, all agents are subject to domination, and hence no one can ever have republican freedom. Pettit’s simple solution to this reductio ad absurdum distinguishes potential from actual coalitions. Individuals are only dominated by actual coalitions, and not by potential ones. The simple solution highlights moralization problems as it demonstrates that domination cannot be purely institutionally defined, but requires consideration of dispositions and expectations about others’ behaviour. I argue that the differences between the ‘free man’ and ‘unfree person’ paradigmatic to republican arguments is best captured not by the difference between domination and interference, but, rather, from familiar distinctions between different types of rights and freedoms. Resilience is a practical matter that might track some of these familiar distinctions. (shrink)

When is it correct to say that a person's freedom is restricted? Can poverty constrain freedom? Can you constrain your own freedom, for instance through weakness of the will or self-deception, and are you not truly free unless you act on a rational choice? Kristján Kristjánsson offers a critical analysis of the main components of a theory of negative liberty: the nature of obstacles and constraints, the weight of obstacles and the relation of freedom to power and autonomy. Through this (...) discussion, which examines much of the contemporary work on political freedom, he develops his own theory of negative liberty, the so-called 'responsibility view', which meets many of the goals of advocates of positive liberty while retaining its distinctive 'negative' nature. He also argues for, and implements, a method of naturalistic revision as a way of solving conceptual disputes in social philosophy. (shrink)

According to republican theory, we are free persons to the extent that we are protected and secured in the same fundamental choices, on the same public basis, as one another. But there is no public protection or security without a coercive state. Does this mean that any freedom we enjoy is a superficial good that presupposes a deeper, political form of subjection? Philip Pettit addresses this crucial question in On the People's Terms. He argues that state coercion will not involve (...) individual subjection or domination insofar as we enjoy an equally shared form of control over those in power. This claim may seem utopian but it is supported by a realistic model of the institutions that might establish such democratic control. Beginning with a fresh articulation of republican ideas, Pettit develops a highly original account of the rationale of democracy, breathing new life into democratic theory. (shrink)

This is the first full-length presentation of a republican alternative to the liberal and communitarian theories that have dominated political philosophy in recent years. The latest addition to the acclaimed Oxford Political Theory series, Pettit's eloquent and compelling account opens with an examination of the traditional republican conception of freedom as non-domination, contrasting this with established negative and positive views of liberty. The first part of the book traces the rise and decline of this conception, displays its many attractions, and (...) makes a case for why it should still be regarded as a central political ideal. The second part of the book looks at what the implementation of the ideal would imply for substantive policy-making, constitutional and democratic design, regulatory control and the relation between state and civil society. Prominent in this account is a novel concept of democracy, under which government is exposed to systematic contestation, and a vision of relations between state and society founded upon civility and trust. Pettit's powerful and insightful new work offers not only a unified, theoretical overview of the many strands of republican ideas, but also a new and sophisticated perspective on studies in related fields including the history of ideas, jurisprudence, and criminology. (shrink)

We have two ways of talking about liberty or freedom, one in the singular, the other in the plural. We concern ourselves in the singular mode with how far someone is free to do or not to do certain things, or with how far someone is a free person or not a free person. But, equally, we concern ourselves with the plural question as to how far the person enjoys the liberties that we take to be important or basic. What (...) are those plural liberties, however? What does it take for something to count as a basic liberty? e usual approach to this question is to give a list of some presumptive basic liberties — say, those of thought, speech, and association — and then to add a gestural ‘and so on’. My aim in this paper is to do a little better in elaborating a conception of the sorts of liberties at which the ‘and so on’ gestures. I argue that the basic liberties can be usefully identifi ed as the liberties required for living the life of a free person or citizen and I spell out that requirement in three constraints, which I describe as feasible extension, personal signifi cance and equal co-enjoyment. ere are many candidate sets of basic liberties that might be proposed for protection, whether in general or for a particular society. e claim that I defend is that in order to count as a set of basic liberties, the types of choice protected under any proposal should be capable of being equally enjoyed at the same time by everyone (equal co-enj oyment), should be important in the life of normal human beings (personal signifi cance), and should not be unnecessarily restricted: they should be as extensive as the other constraints allow (feasible extension). e aim of the paper being quite limited, I abstract from many important issues. I do not provide an argument for why it is important that some set of basic liberties be protected, nor do I rate the importance of such protection against other social goals. I say nothing on how far it should be a requirement of democracy that certain sorts of liberties are entrenched—whether constitutionally or otherwise—and how far democratic process should be allowed to vary the specifi - cation and protection of basic liberties.. (shrink)

Republicans hold that people are dominated merely in virtue of others' having unconstrained abilities to frustrate their choices. They argue further that public officials may dominate citizens unless subject to popular control. Critics identify a dilemma. To maintain the possibility of popular control, republicans must attribute to the people an ability to control public officials merely in virtue of the possibility that they might coordinate their actions. But if the possibility of coordination suffices for attributing abilities to groups, then, even (...) in the best case, countless groups will be dominating because it will be possible for their members to coordinate their actions with the aim of frustrating others' choices. We argue the dilemma is apparent only. To make our argument, we present a novel interpretation of the republican concept of domination with the help of a game-theoretic model that clarifies the significance of collective action problems for republican theory. (shrink)