This article presents a critique of Philip Pettit’s concept of ‘freedom as non-domination’ and provides an alternative theory of both domination and republican political freedom. I argue that Pettit’s neo-republican concept of domination is insufficient to confront modern forms of domination and that this hampers his concept of republican freedom and its political relevance under the conditions of modernity. Whereas the neo-republican account of domination is defined by ‘arbitrary interference’, modern forms of domination, I argue, are characterized by routinization and (...) systemic forms of control and subordination. In the end, the neo-republican account of domination is more appropriate for 17th- and 18th-century social institutions rather than those that persist under modernity. In its place, I propose a more dynamic concept of domination and rework the concept of freedom in order to place the republican tradition within the context of modernity itself. I argue that the core insight of republicanism is its emphasis on the arrangement and reformation of social institutions to enhance social freedom. From this, I argue that republicanism can take its place as a more attractive alternative to liberal theory. (shrink)

This essay argues that the neo-Roman republican principle of "non-domination," as developed in the recent work of Philip Pettit, cannot serve as a single overarching political ideal, because it responds to only one of two important dimensions of concern about human agency. Through critical engagements with several aspects of Pettit's work, ranging from his philosophical account of freedom as "discursive control" to his appropriation of the distinction between dominium and imperium, the essay argues that the idea of domination, which responds (...) to concerns about "control," needs to be supplemented by the idea of usurpation, which responds to questions about "involvement"; and it shows how attention to both domination and usurpation (and to the interaction between them) can shed light on such phenomena as imperialism, slavery, and democracy. (shrink)

The concept of non-domination is an important contribution to the study of freedom but it does not comprehend the whole of freedom. Insofar as domination requires a conscious capacity for control on the part of the dominant party, it fails to capture important threats to individual freedom that permeate many contemporary liberal democracies today. Much of the racism, sexism and other cultural biases that currently constrain the life-chances of members of subordinate groups in the USA are largely unconscious and unintentional, (...) and they do not always involve control. Although they constitute real barriers to freedom, these forms of influence are not accurately characterized as domination, and they will require different mechanisms to overcome them. To achieve the more capacious freedoms that liberal democracy promises, we will need to go beyond non-domination and to come to terms with the non-sovereign, socially distributed character of human agency. (shrink)

In his most recent book, Philip Pettit presents and defends a “republican” political philosophy that stems from a tradition that includes Cicero, Machiavelli, James Harrington, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Madison. The book provides an interpretation of what is distinctive about republicanism—namely, Pettit claims, its notion of freedom as nondomination. He sketches the history of this notion, and he argues that it entails a unique justification of certain political arrangements and the virtues of citizenship that would make those arrangements possible. Of (...) historical and philosophical interest, he stresses, is the fundamental contrast between freedom as nondomination and slavery. Joseph Priestly, for instance, invoked this contrast in defending the cause of the American Revolution, and in 1769 declared, incredibly, that if the parliament of Great Britain continued to tax the American colonies, “the colonists will be reduced to a state of as complete servitude, as any people of which there is an account in history”. Those opposed to American independence, among them Jeremy Bentham, relied instead on a Hobbesian notion of freedom as noninterference, using it to argue that the colonists were no more interfered with by the British government than were citizens of Britain. Drawing out this contrast, Pettit aims to establish that a republican view of freedom better supports the institutions of a constitutional democracy than does liberalism. His account of the distinguishing characteristics and strengths of republicanism is, however, only partially successful. Neither his case that a republican notion of freedom provides for a more solid defense of democratic institutions and constitutional protections than is available within liberalism, nor his argument that republicanism can better address “private” injustices, is convincing. (shrink)

It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men may also want to have certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the (...) first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires. (shrink)