Historically, republicans were of different minds about markets: some, such as Rousseau, reviled them, while others, like Adam Smith, praised them. The recent republican resurgence has revived this issue. Classical liberals such as Gerald Gaus contend that neo-republicanism is inherently hostile to markets, while neo-republicans like Richard Dagger and Philip Pettit reject this characterization—though with less enthusiasm than one might expect. I argue here that the right republican attitude toward competitive markets is celebratory rather than acquiescent and that republicanism (...) demands such markets for the same reason it requires the rule of law: because both are essential institutions for protecting individuals from arbitrary interference. I reveal how competition restrains—and in the limit, even eradicates—market power and thereby helps us realize “market freedom,” i.e., freedom as non-domination in the context of economic exchange. Finally, I show that such freedom necessitates “Anglo-Nordic” economic policies. (shrink)

A half-century of Rawls interpreters have overemphasized economic equality in A Theory of Justice, slighting liberty—the central value of liberalism—in the process. From luck-egalitarian readings of Rawls to more recent claims that Rawls was a “reticent socialist,” these interpretations have obscured Rawls’s identity as a philosopher of freedom. They have also obscured the perhaps surprising fact that Rawlsian liberties (basic and non-basic) restrain and even undermine that same economic equality. As I will show in this article, such undermining occurs in (...) three areas: first, in the lexical priority of the basic liberties; second, in the (underappreciated) role played by free and competitive markets in Rawls’s theory; and third, in the structure and functioning of Rawls’s preferred economic institutions, viz., liberal socialism and property-owning democracy. (shrink)

This article brings an account of reasonable expectations to bear on the question of when unauthorized immigrants have a right to be regularized—that is, to be formally guaranteed freedom from the threat of deportation. Contrary to the current literature, which implicitly relies on a flawed understanding of reasonable expectations, this article argues that only those unauthorized immigrants who have both been tacitly permitted by the state despite lacking formal authorization and have remained long enough to develop deep social roots (...) in the state have a right to regularization. (shrink)

This essay attempts to render intelligible (you will pardon the pun) Kant's peculiar claims about the intelligible at A 539/B 567 – A 541/B 569 in the first Critique, in which he asserts that (1) ... [t]his acting subject would now, in conformity with his intelligible character, stand under no temporal conditions, because time is only a condition of appearances, but not of things in themselves. In him no action would begin or cease. Consequently it would not be subjected to (...) the law of all determination of everything alterable in time: everything which happens finds its causes in the appearances (of the previous state). In a word, his causality, in so far as it is intellectual, would not stand in the series of empirical conditions which the event in the world of sense makes necessary. (A 539/B 567 - A 540/B 568) ... in so far as it is noumenon, nothing happens in him, no alteration which requires dynamical determination in time .... One would quite rightly say of him, that it of itself begins his effects in the world of sense, without the action's beginning in him himself ... (A 541/B 569)2 What does Kant mean by claiming that intellectual causality is such that in one's intelligible character as noumenal agent, actions neither begin nor end, nor does anything happen in one? Do these claims have meaning merely by contrast to the familiar experience of empirical causality, in which actions have discrete durations and events occur? Is he merely inferring from this familiar sensible experience an ontologically and metaphysically independent, epistemically inaccessible "world," which can be conceptualized only through the negation of those terms and propositions that characterize this one? Or is he offering a.. (shrink)

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose? Not for Axel Honneth,whose Hegelian reconstruction sees freedom as the central, even sole, driving force of Western modernity. Other apparently central values are mere modifications of freedom. Nothin’ don’t mean nothin’ if it ain’t free. In his deliberately grand narrative, Honneth follows Hegel's Philosophy of Right in developing an account of social justice by means of an analysis of society. The end result is an outline of society in terms (...) of roles and ethical relations through which individuals can achieve freedom and self-realization.The construal is at the same time a description of the constitutive spheresof contemporary society, in terms of its less than fully realized potentialsand promises. In Hegelian parlance, the "rational" is in the process of becom-ing "actual" in modern history, but owing to misdevelopments and social pathologies, there is still ample room for social criticism, in light of the veryconcept that these institutions (are meant to) embody, namely, social freedom. (shrink)

The religious right often aligns its patriarchal opposition to same-sex marriage with the defence of religious freedom. In this article, I identify resources for confronting such prejudicial religiosity by surveying two predominant feminist approaches to same-sex marriage that are often assumed to be at odds: discourse ethics and queer critical theory. This comparative analysis opens up to view commitments that may not be fully recognizable from within either feminist framework: commitments to ideals of selfhood, to specific conceptions of justice, (...) and to particular definitions of secularism. I conclude by examining the "postsecular" turn in feminism, suggesting that we can see the same-sex marriage debate not in terms of an impasse between differing feminist approaches, but in terms of shared existential and ethical affinities. (shrink)

Kim Iryŏp was raised and initially educated in a devout Methodist Christian environment under the strict guidance of her fideistic pastor father and her mother, who believed in female education. Both parents died while she was in her teens, and she questioned her Christian faith at an early age. She was one of the first Korean women to pursue higher education in Korea and Japan. Kim became a prolific poet and essayist, her writings engaging cultural and social issues, and a (...) leading figure of the feminist “new woman” movement in the 1920s, which promoted women’s self-awareness, freedom, and rights in the context of the complex intersection of traditional Korean... (shrink)

Certain states in the Global North have responded to refugees seeking safety on their territories through harmful practices of border violence, detention, encampment and containment that serve to prevent and deter refugee arrivals. These practices are ostensibly justified through an appeal to a right to control borders. This paper therefore assesses whether these harmful practices can indeed be morally justified by a state’s right to control borders. It analyses whether Christopher Heath Wellman’s account of a state’s right (...) to freedom of association, which represents the most restrictive account of a state’s right to control borders available in the literature, can extend to justify current harmful practices against refugees. If not, then no available justification will be able to do so, and thus contemporary harmful practices used against refugees cannot be justified by a state’s right to control borders. (shrink)

Worldwide, many impoverished parents migrate, leaving their children behind. As a result children are deprived of continuity in care and, sometimes, suffer from other forms of emotional and developmental harms. I explain why coercive responses to care drain are illegitimate and likely to be inefficient. Poor parents have a moral right to migrate without their children and restricting their migration would violate the human right to freedom of movement and create a new form of gender injustice. I propose (...) and defend an institutional solution. Taxes levied on the remittances sent by temporary migrants ought to be used to provide migrants' children with psychological counselling in order to mitigate the harm resulted from discontinuity in care. (shrink)

Freedom, liberty and rights are terms that long have suffered from vagueness that allows a host of differing interpretations, most of them ideological and overly simplistic. Good, serious modeling descriptions of those terms would not overlook the necessary complexity involved in these social interactions. MacCallum’s idea of (political and social) triadic freedom is here extended to include resources, ability, externalities, benefits to the exerciser, and reasons for non-interference. Interference is described as a subset of freedoms with significant externalities. A (...) class='Hi'>right is then described as a compound of a freedom protected by interferences. This provides a basis for the analysis of the game-theoretic economics of rights and when they will be produced. (shrink)

Although the Libertarian Party has gained traction as the third biggest political party in the United States, the philosophical grounding of the party, which is exemplified by Robert Nozick’s entitlement theory is inherently flawed. Libertarianism’s emphasis on a free market leads to gross inequalities since it has no regard for sacred rights other than one’s right to freedom from interference from the government beyond what is essential for societal functioning. I argue that Nozick’s entitlement theory leads to indirect injustice (...) and is therefore an unfitting philosophical theory, which means that the Libertarian Party’s platform is flawed. (shrink)

This article discusses a crucial question through an analysis of Adorno's critique of Kant's moral philosophy: can human beings live a good life? Kant optimistically argues that human beings as rational beings have transcendental freedom and can autonomously formulate and follow universal moral laws without any empirical conditions. Therefore, human beings can always act morally and live a good life. Adorno, on the other hand, argues that there is no right life in a wrong life. Adorno, who was at (...) a different time in history from Kant, criticized Kant's philosophy of transcendental freedom, moral imperative, and identity, and proposed new moral imperatives. I think Adorno's critique of Kant's conception of freedom failed, but his critique of the moral imperatives and identity shows a complex and profound philosophical reflection and practical concern. (shrink)

Government’s use of imprisonment raises distinctive moral issues. Even if government has broad authority to make and to enforce law, government may not be entitled to use imprisonment as a punishment for all the criminal laws it is entitled to make. Indeed, there may be some serious crimes that it is wrong to punish with imprisonment, even if the conditions of imprisonment are humane and even if no adequate alternative punishments are available.

World peace was a common theoretical consideration among philosophers during Europe’s Enlightenment period. The first robust essay on peace was written by Charles Irénée Castel de Saint- Pierre, which sparked an intellectual debate among prominent philosophers like Jean- Jacques Rousseau and Jeremy Bentham, who offered their own treatises on the concept of peace. Perhaps the most influential of all such writings comes from Immanuel Kant, who argues that world peace is no “high- flown or exaggerated notion” but rather a natural (...) result of the rational progression of the human species. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the mastermind behind the formation of the League of Nations in 1920 that provided the scaffolding to today’s United Nations, read Kant’s philosophy while he was a student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). Some have argued that it is no coincidence that the per-son responsible for embarking upon the first serious political pursuit of world peace on a global scale was familiar with Kant. Indeed, William Galston claims that “Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points [for world peace] were a faithful transcription of both the letter and spirit of Kant’s Perpetual Peace.”3 Historical connections aside, the question remains as to whether Kant’s philosophy is a viable conception of peace in a contemporary context. Using the conceptual distinction of positive and negative peace provided by Johan Galtung, I argue that Kant’s philosophy does provide the scaffolding for a viable conception of peace. In particular, I provide particular examples as to what social rights must be included in a Kantian model of peace. (shrink)

What grounds human rights? How do we determine that something is a genuine human right? This chapter offers a new answer: human beings have human rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life. The fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life are certain goods, capacities, and options that human beings qua human beings need whatever else they qua individuals might need in order to pursue a characteristically good human life. This chapter explains how this Fundamental Conditions Approach (...) is better than James Griffin’s Agency Approach as well as Martha Nussbaum’s Central Capabilities Approach. It also shows how it can be compatible with the increasingly popular Political Conceptions of human rights defended by John Rawls, Charles Beitz, and Joseph Raz. (shrink)

This study explores freedom and equality as necessary constituents of a liberal democratic state. At the same time, equality and freedom conflict in various respects. It is examined how such conflicts may optimally be resolved while taking seriously the interests involved. These inquiries have far-reaching consequences for the justification of the liberal democratic state. Equal rights are generally considered to be an integral part of a liberal democratic state, but on what foundation are such rights based? Various attempts have been (...) made to provide such a foundation from a moral framework. Some important and influential positions are examined critically and an alternative perspective is offered. "Equality" is approached straightforwardly, without appealing to obscure notions while seeking an outcome that may universally be accepted. Rationality is an important feature in this respect. The question to what extent freedom should be allowed to citizens is another important issue. Granting citizens freedom is beneficial for the liberal democratic state as a whole and for citizens themselves. The limits of freedom must, however, be defined carefully. The search for a simple solution is balanced against the need to do the complexities of individual cases justice. In addition, it is not the task of a liberal democratic state to influence people’s convictions concerning equality ; only equal treatment should be guaranteed. (shrink)

The phenomenon of ambivalence is an important one for any philosophy of action. Despite this importance, there is a lack of a fully satisfactory analysis of the phenomenon. Although many contemporary philosophers recognize the phenomenon, and address topics related to it, only Harry Frankfurt has given the phenomenon full treatment in the context of action theory - providing an analysis of how it relates to the structure and freedom of the will. In this paper, I develop objections to Frankfurt's account, (...) all revolving around the charge that his account contains a serious ambiguity between willing and identifying. With such objections in place, I then develop an analysis that avoids the difficulties and ambiguities that Frankfurt's analysis is prey to. I briefly distinguish ambivalence from other types of internal conflict. This paper aims to offer conceptual clarification on the phenomenon of ambivalence, which will then allow for discussions about the normative merits and demerits of ambivalence, the effects of ambivalence on autonomous action, and methods of resolution of ambivalence. (shrink)

This paper explores the charge by Bruce Aune and Allen Wood that a gap exists in Kant's derivation of the Categorical Imperative. I show that properly understood, no such gap exists, and that the deduction of the Categorical Imperative is successful as it stands.

Sikhism is the world's fifth-largest religion. It was founded during the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent. Its adherents are known as Sikhs. Currently, there are about 30 million Sikhs worldwide. Most of them live in the Indian state of Punjab. As per Sikh tradition, Sikhism was established by Guru Nanak (1469–1539) and subsequently led by a succession of nine other Gurus. Before his death, the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), bestowed the status (...) of Guru to the sacred scripture of Sikhs, Adi Granth, which is presently known as Sri Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS) [1]. The Adi Granth was first compiled by Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth Sikh Guru, in 1604. Its second and final version has been the handiwork of Guru Gobind Singh, who added the hymns of his father, Guru Teg Bahadur, the ninth Sikh Guru [2], at Damdama Sahib, Talwandi Sabo, Punjab, in 1705. The holy Sikh scripture, SGGS, contains 1430 pages of text in poetry form. In addition to the hymns of the six Sikh Gurus and four Sikhs, it includes hymns composed by fifteen saints (Bhagats) and eleven poet laureates (Bhats) of the Guru's court. Muslims and Hindus, Brahmins, and "untouchables" all come together in one congregation to create a universal scripture. It is a compendium of mystic, metaphysical and religious poetry written or recited between the 12th and 17th centuries in the Indian sub-continent [3]. Sri Guru Granth Sahib, through its comprehensive worldview, offers a perfect set of values and an applicable code of conduct. Its cardinal message addresses the welfare of all humans irrespective of their caste, colour, creed, culture, and religion. SGGS emphasizes love, respect, empathy, and acceptance of others' existence. It prohibits us from infringing on the freedom and rights of others. The life and works of the Sikh Gurus exemplify the practicability of these ideas. Their inter-faith dialogues highlighted that human unity and oneness could be achieved through tolerance, communication, and respect for others [4]. Besides a matchless elaboration of spirituality, Sri Guru Granth Sahib enshrines a powerful expression of the message of revolutionary ideals of social welfare, human rights, multicultural distinctness, and religious freedom. In the present era, when the threats and fear of interfaith conflicts, military aggression, terrorism, etc., have overpowered human sentiments, the teachings of Sri Guru Granth Sahib are even more relevant to resolving all these problems. (shrink)

Li Zehou’s work can be understood as an account of a Chinese modernity, a vision for Chinese society that seeks to integrate three distinct philosophical approaches. These are Chinese history and culture, which Li understands as largely Confucian; Marxism, which has exerted such influence on a modernizing China; and Western learning more generally, as expressed by figures such as Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud. Li also frequently expresses the hope that a Chinese modernity will be one in which the importance (...) of the individual is recognized, and rights and freedoms upheld (e.g., Li and Cauvel 2006, p. 182). But this stance raises an important question: how are individuality and freedom understood in Li’s philosophical system? In this paper, I want to examine what resources Li offers to help us conceptualize their place in a modernity with Chinese characteristics. Confucian culture is often regarded as authoritarian and hierarchical, less interested than more liberal traditions in an ideal such as freedom. So how does freedom relate to the Confucian root of Chinese culture, as construed by Li? In this paper I explore how Li Zehou’s study of Confucian aesthetics can deliver a novel conception of freedom, one grounded in Confucian thinking about personal cultivation, and aimed at the free creation of delight (樂). (shrink)

This paper expands on another which focussed on Socrates’s question: ‘How should one live?’. The present paper also focusses on the ‘meaning of life’ and ‘meaning in life’ issues, and more on rights. To fully rationally answer Socrates’s question, we need to answer the epistemic question: ‘How can one know how one should live?’. This paper attempts to answer both. And knowing how one should live fundamentally involves knowing what values one should live by. This includes which rights one should (...) have and which rights others should have. So one’s values include how one should treat all persons (and (other) animals, the environment and so on.) All this relates to what one finds meaningful in life and the meaning or point of one’s life. In sum, all the notions in this paper’s title are interrelated. The issue of rationality is crucial here. Just one example here (qualified later) is that our rationality gives us cognitively meaningful notions. ‘Rationality’ here only concerns knowledge, e.g., ways to acquire scientific knowledge, and meta-knowledge concerning values. No values or rights as such are rational or knowledge. However:- Many factors are required for human rationality to exist and develop, e.g., life, mental health and evidence-based education. Human rationality’s need for those factors, hence their value to rationality, is rationally-unquestionable – and that applies to the practised values prescribing the prescribable factors. With this, there are rationally-unquestionable rights to those factors. Those prescribable factors require certain interrelated epistemic, moral, social, political, legal, educational and other values/rights to be practised. This implies a pro-rationality values-theory with one obligatory, general end – a uniquely rationally-unquestionable end. This end provides the basis for answering Socrates’s question as rationally (correctly) as is possible for values/rights. That end is fundamentally epistemic, namely ‘Be pro-rationality’, yet the theory has deeply-humanly-meaningful, universal applications. It has implications for current and all possible moral, social, political, legal, educational, environmental etc issues. E.g., the theory shows that human rationality crucially requires love and certain other emotions, health-care, education and upbringing. These require certain right to be respected and practised. With this, the paper discusses affection, free speech, journalism, psychotherapy, political and sexual consent, responsibilities, freedom and government. The theory’s general sub-values prescribe much prescribed by some other theories, e.g., broad and deep knowledge-acquisition (in certain areas), rationally-critical thinking, non-sexism, non-racism, general types of liberalism, holistic flourishing, happiness, unselfishness and fairness. However, all other values-theories lack pro-rationality theory’s maximum possible rational-unquestionability, internal coherence and coherence with rationality. The theory encourages (the right to) total freedom in a-rationality areas, areas irrelevant to its obligatory end. The theory inherently requires its advocates to be (self )critical, rationally viewing the theory’s necessarily human-suggested specifics as often fallible or unavoidably approximate. So the theory is a work-in-progress. (shrink)

Following an Open conception of Divine Foreknowledge, that holds that man is endowed with genuine freedom and so the future is not definitely determined, it will be claimed that human freedom does not limit the divine power, but rather enhances it and presents us with a barrier against arbitrary use of that power. This reading will be implemented to reconcile a well-known quarrel between two important interpreters of Duns Scotus, Allan B. Wolter and Thomas Williams, each of whom supports a (...) different interpretation of the way God acts according to right reason. (shrink)

One of the issues that caught my attention in the discussion on Religion and Human Rights, which is also an issue that has recently started to be hotly discussed in Indonesia, is the issue of LGBTQ+ minority rights (gay rights). This issue becomes interesting, the issue of gay rights, especially when this issue deals with the Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB). As we saw in the discussion of human rights at International, tensions between gay rights and FoRB in several (...) countries have their own characteristics. For example, in Indonesia, recently, the movement for defenders of the FoRB has begun to bloom, and, I observe, there is a tendency to include minority groups such as indigenous people, including LGBTQ+ people (gay rights), into their circle of struggle. The question is, how do religious freedom rights (FoRB) deal with gay rights? Or conversely, how do gay rights deal with religious freedom? In that context, this book becomes relevant to discuss. This book provides each author’s many different moral arguments and philosophical commitments. (shrink)

The chapter deals with the two most distinctive elements of the Introduction of the Naturrecht Feyerabend, namely the notions of an end in itself and autonomy. I shall argue that both are to be interpreted with regard to the aim of explaining the ground of right. In this light, I suggest that the notion of an end in itself counters a voluntarist conception like Achenwall’s with a claim whose necessity has a twofold ground: First, the representation of an unconditional (...) worth emerges as a structural element of the practical use of reason. Second, that representation concerns the necessary self-understanding of moral subjects. Finally, I argue that the other distinctive element, the occurrence of the notion of autonomy, is best understood as an application of that idea to a specific issue, which Kant addresses by showing that freedom is a self-regulating domain. (shrink)

Heidegger and Sartre developed the projects of their fundamental ontologies within the framework of the phenomenological approach. The traditional view of reality is based on dualistic oppositions of ideal and material, spirit and body, reality and possibility, and visibility and essence. It is phenomenology that enables elimination of the above-mentioned dualisms and restoration of the world’s ontological unity on a reliable foundation. Though Sartre’s existentialism was exposed to criticism both from right, and from the left intellectuals, and is not (...) a “fashionable” current at present, and the fundamental ontology of Heidegger was estimated by Levinas as ontology of the power subject-centred line, nevertheless the author considers that attention which is paid in these concepts to such phenomena as the voice of conscience, care and freedom represents the most urgent philosophical value nowadays; the author in this regard points to insufficient validity of modern criticism of approaches of Heidegger and Sartre, in particular–reproaches in a subject-centred line from adherents of “ontology of the Other”. (shrink)

In mainstream political discourse, refugeehood is increasingly being associated with victimhood, powerlessness, abnormality, and political crises. On the one hand, refugees are, often, viewed as voiceless victims who should be offered protection and assistance on humanitarian grounds under exceptional circumstances. On the other hand, they are, increasingly, being portrayed as enemy-like strangers who pose a threat to the borders, stability of receiving states, and the well-being of their citizens. This prevailing framework fundamentally disregards refugees’ political subjectivity and ignores emancipatory phenomena (...) and practices of freedom, which are embedded and expressed in refugees’ migratory movements. This philosophical investigation aims to contribute to our understanding of the dynamic relationship of freedom and unfreedom from the perspective of refugees. To examine this dynamic relationship, this study situates itself in the autonomy of migration approach and draws on narratives and lived experiences of refugees, which were collected during in-depth interviews with refugees (Greece). These experiential accounts have been analysed and theoretically discussed in accordance with the guidelines of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Through an interpretative process, this study critically contextualizes refugees’ perceptions and understandings of freedom in ongoing theoretical discussions concerning refugeehood and freedom. Based on these critical discussions, this study develops a theoretical examination of the dynamics of freedom and unfreedom in different spatio-temporal phases of refugeehood. In doing so, it explores the multifaceted act of flight, lived experiences of (un)freedom, socio-political structures of abandonment, and autonomous relations and arrangements by which refugees enact freedom in receiving states. Moreover, it challenges the prevalent conceptual distinctions between citizens versus non-citizens, hosts (nationals) versus guests (migrants), genuine refugees versus economic migrants, and the included (right-holders) versus the excluded (the rightless). (shrink)

The paper argues that the moral philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is unified by a complex conception of reason that imposes consistency norms of both rationality and reasonableness. Hobbes’s conceptions of rightness as reciprocity, and moral goodness as sociability belong to an original and attractive moral theory that is neither teleological nor classically deontological, nor as interpreters have variously argued, subjectivist, contractarian, egoist, or dependent on divine command.

Archytas of Tarentum, a contemporary and associate of Plato, was a famous Pythagorean, mathematician, and statesman of Tarentum. Although his works are lost and most of the fragments attributed to him were composed in later eras, they nevertheless contain valuable information about his thought. In particular, the fragments of On Law and Justice are likely based on a work by the early Peripatetic biographer Aristoxenus of Tarentum. The fragments touch on key themes of early Greek ethics, including: written and unwritten (...) laws; freedom and self-sufficiency; moderation of the emotions and cultivation of virtues; equality and the competence of the majority to participate in government; criticism of “rule by an individual”; a theory of the ideal “mixed constitution”; distributive and corrective justice and punishment, and of the rule of law. The fragments also contain one of the only positive accounts of democracy in ancient Greek philosophy. (shrink)

This paper analyses the National Populist Challenges to Europe’s Center Right. It assesses the cases of the UK, Germany and France. It poses three questions for Europe: How will political integration be achieved and maintained? What policies will foster economic inclusion in the Eurozone? And, third, what are the best means to achieve economic solvency and growth. The paper make a case that neoliberal economic policies over the past decades have undermined some nations' public sector and have also contributed (...) to tensions between the geographical east and west of Europe. (shrink)

Scientists have the ability to influence policy in important ways through how they present their results. Surprisingly, existing codes of scientific ethics have little to say about such choices. I propose that we can arrive at a set of ethical guidelines to govern scientists’ presentation of information to policymakers by looking to bioethics: roughly, just as a clinician should aim to promote informed decision-making by patients, a scientist should aim to promote informed decision-making by policymakers. Though this may sound like (...) a natural proposal, I show it offers guidance that conflicts with standard scientific practices. I conclude by considering one cost of the proposal: that it would prevent scientists from acting as advocates in a way that is currently common in certain fields. I accept that the proposal would restrict scientists’ political advocacy rights, but argue that the benefits of adopting it — promoting democratic governance — justify the restriction. (shrink)

Li Zehou’s work can be understood as an account of a Chinese modernity, a vision for Chinese society that seeks to integrate three distinct philosophical approaches. These are Chinese history and culture, which Li understands as largely Confucian; Marxism, which has exerted such influence on a modernizing China; and Western learning more generally, as expressed by figures such as Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud. Li also frequently expresses the hope that a Chinese modernity will be one in which the importance (...) of the individual is recognized, and rights and freedoms upheld (e.g., 2006, p. 182). But this stance raises an important question: how are individuality and freedom understood in Li’s philosophical system? In this paper, I want to examine what resources Li offers to help us conceptualize their place in a modernity with Chinese characteristics. Confucian culture is often regarded as authoritarian and hierarchical, less interested than more liberal traditions in an ideal such as freedom. So how does freedom relate to the Confucian root of Chinese culture, as construed by Li? In this paper I explore how Li Zehou’s study of Confucian aesthetics can deliver a novel conception of freedom, one grounded in Confucian thinking about personal cultivation, and aimed at the free creation of delight (樂). (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to take the complexity of our histories of rights as seriously as the nature of rights themselves. Let me say immediately that the point is not to satisfy our sense of moral superiority by smugly pointing out the prejudices found in arguments made over three hundred years ago. We have more than our own share of problems and prejudices to deal with. Rather, in coming to grips with this history, and especially how early-modern political (...) theorists struggled with the extension and application of natural rights to the ‘New World’, we may learn something about our own struggles to extend human rights beyond the boundaries of the state system of which Grotius, Hobbes, Locke and Vattel were among the key intellectual architects. For Richard Tuck, the autonomous rights-bearing agent at the heart of liberal individualism is a product of seventeenth-century theorizing about the nature of the autonomous state acting in the international sphere. The sovereign individual is the ‘traditional cousin of the sovereign state’, argues Tuck, and especially the aggressive, violent, and minimally constrained relative described by Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Emer de Vattel. Thus the connection between liberalism and imperialism, on this reading, is not merely chronological or historical but metaphysical. The analogy between the sovereign state and the sovereign individual acting on the basis of their natural rights, constrained by the recognition of the basic rights of others (but not much more than that) represents an influential vision of liberal freedom. This minimalist account of freedom represents only one vision, however, and Tuck’s account of the pre-history of liberal rights has to be balanced against other conceptions, including more emancipatory ones. (shrink)

The “Right to be forgotten” lies at the heart of the infosphere debate. It embodies how mature information societies cope and deal with their memories. As such, it has become a defining issue of our time. Drawing on the author’s experience as a member of the Google Advisory panel, this paper discusses some of the salient points of the “Right to be forgotten” discourse, including: privacy vs. freedom of speech and availability vs. accessibility of information. It argues that, (...) while there should be no removal of past information, steps must be taken to ensure that this is not constantly, or unnecessarily, recalled. (shrink)

Arthur Ripstein’s conception of Kantian freedom has exerted an enormous recent influence on scholars of Kant’s political philosophy; however, the conception seems to me flawed. In this paper, I argue that Ripstein’s conception of Kantian freedom as “your capacity to choose the ends you will use your means to pursue” – your “purposiveness” – is both too narrow and too broad: (1) Wrongful acts such as coercive threats cannot choose my ends for me; instead, such acts wrongfully restrict my perceived (...) options. And (2) rightful changes to the context in which I choose that render my means insufficient for my ends restrict my capacity to choose them. Alternatively, my purposiveness reduces to my entitlements; but then freedom as purposiveness is viciously circular or fails as a new approach to the “devastating” objection that motivates it. (shrink)

Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been interpreted as a general warning against state intervention in the economy.1 We review this argument in conjunction with Hayek’s later work and discern an institutional thesis about which forms of state intervention and economic institutions could threaten personal and political freedom. Economic institutions pose a threat if they allow for coercive interventions, as described by Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty: by giving someone the power to force others to serve one’s will by (...) threatening to inflict harm, in the absence of general rules of conduct. According to the logic of the argument, welfare-state provisions are not coercive insofar as they do not allow the identification and discriminatory treatment of individuals. By contrast, we claim that a structure of coercion is likely to emerge from the command-and-control nature of protectionist institutions and immigration restrictions currently advocated by the radical right. (shrink)

This paper critically engages Philip Mirowki's essay, "The scientific dimensions of social knowledge and their distant echoes in 20th-century American philosophy of science." It argues that although the cold war context of anti-democratic elitism best suited for making decisions about engaging in nuclear war may seem to be politically and ideologically motivated, in fact we need to carefully consider the arguments underlying the new rational choice based political philosophies of the post-WWII era typified by Arrow's impossibility theorem. A distrust of (...) democratic decision-making principles may be developed by social scientists whose leanings may be toward the left or right side of the spectrum of political practices. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Axel Honneth’s normative reconstruction of the market as a sphere of social freedom in his 2014 book, Freedom’s Right. Honneth’s position is complex: on the one hand, he acknowledges that modern capitalist societies do not realise social freedom; on the other hand, he insists that the promise of social freedom is implicit in the market sphere. In fact, the latter explains why modern subjects have seen capitalism as legitimate. I will reconstruct Honneth’s conception (...) of social freedom and investigate how it is realised in the sphere in which Honneth sees it most successfully at work, the sphere of interpersonal relations. I then move on to the sphere of the market economy and discuss two related problems of this view that stem from his interpretation of Hegel. Next, I consider Honneth’s method of “normative reconstruction” and his reconstructions of the sphere of consumption and, finally, the labour market. My conclusion will be that market institutions cannot realise social freedom, and that this insight should orient the philosophical direction of critical social theory. (shrink)

This paper argues that Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy contains a coherent, albeit implicit, defense of the legitimacy of capital punishment, one that refutes the most important objections leveled against it. I first show that Kant is consistent in his application of the ius talionis. I then explain how Kant can respond to the claim that death penalty violates the inviolable right to life. To address the most significant objection – the claim that execution violates human dignity – I argue (...) that motives of honor, as Kant conceives it, require a rational person to will her own execution, were she to commit murder. (shrink)

At the heart of Kant’s legal-political philosophy lies a liberal, republican ideal of justice understood in terms of private independence (non-domination) and subjection to public laws securing freedom for all citizens as equals. Given this basic commitment of Kant’s, it is puzzling to many that he does not consider democracy a minimal condition on a legitimate state. In addition, many find Kant ideas of reform or improvement of the historical states we have inherited vague and confusing. The aim of this (...) paper is to untangle both puzzles by exploring Kant’s idea of self-governance. I argue that Kant’s idea of self-governance gives us a very good starting point for thinking about how to leave room for a variety of political systems—different ideals—that have grown out of and responding to different contingent historical and cultural circumstances. It also helps us identify those areas where we want to take extra care to build in safeguards to secure stability and to take sufficiently seriously humankind’s truly nasty sides. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s views regarding suicide are usually interpreted as a response to Christian, Kantian, and Schopenhauerian ethics. Here, they are defended on the basis of his notion of life as an aesthetic phenomenon in order to provide extramoral responses to such challenges as the following: a) whether the self can deliver the right kind of judgment regarding her life, b) how suicide can be considered an empowerment of the will, and c) whether suicide can be considered an exercise of freedom (...) by the subject who thereby cancels the very grounds and means for will and action. Reconstructed as a response to Hegel’s argument against suicide on the grounds that one is not the master of oneself and that one therefore lacks the proper means to judge one’s life, Nietzsche’s position provides the epistemic footing to ground an alternate notion of self-mastery as well as the necessary insight regarding one’s life. It is shown that this reading of Nietzsche’s argument is in alignment with his non-dualism and expressivist views regarding agency. Finally, a response is formulated to the socially-grounded arguments prohibiting suicide on the basis of this reading of Nietzsche’s position. (shrink)

While the image of the slave as the antithesis of the freeman is central to republican freedom, it is striking to note that slaves themselves have not contributed to how this condition is understood. The result is a one-sided conception of both freedom and slavery, which leaves republicanism unable to provide an equal and robust protection for historically outcast people. I draw on the work of Frederick Douglass – long overlooked as a significant contributor to republican theory – to show (...) one way why this is so. Focusing the American Revolution, the subsequent republican government established new political institutions to maintain the collective interests of the whole population. The political revolution was held in place by processes of public reason that reflected the values and ideas of the people that had rebelled. The black population, however, had not been part of this revolution. After emancipation, black Americans were required to accept terms of citizenship that had already been defined, leaving them socially dominated, subject to the prejudices and biases within the prevailing ideas of public discourse. Douglass argued that republican freedom under law is always dependent on a more fundamental revolution, that he calls a ‘radical revolution in thought’, in which the entire system of social norms and practices are reworked together by members of all constituent social groups – women and men, black and white, rich and poor – so that it reflects a genuinely collaborative achievement. Only then can we begin the republican project of contestatory freedom as independence or non-domination that today’s republicans take for granted. (shrink)

Many interpreters argue that irrational acts of exchange can count as rational and civic-minded for Hegel—even though, admittedly, the persons who are exchanging their property are usually unaware of this fact. While I do not want to deny that property exchange can count as rational in terms of ‘mutual recognition’ as interpreters claim, this proposition raises an important question: What about the irrationality and arbitrariness that individuals as property owners and persons consciously enjoy? Are they mere vestiges of nature in (...) Hegel’s system, or do they constitute a simple yet valid form of freedom that is not only a part of Hegel’s rational system of right, but its necessary starting point? I will argue the latter: The arbitrary, purely egoist self-definition of property owners is the simplest possible type of freedom for Hegel, which he dissects in order to show how the very arbitrary self-definition implicitly relies on an identity between persons, and hence foreshadows the more social forms of freedom Hegel will discuss later in his book. I make this argument by highlighting Hegel’s references to his discussion of atoms and freedom in his Logic of Being. (shrink)

The notion of being-at-home-in-otherness is the distinctive way of thinking of freedom that Hegel develops in his social and political thought. When I am at one with myself in social and political structures they are not external powers to which I am subjected but are rather constitutive of my self-relation, that is my self-conception is mediated andexpandedthrough those objective structures. How successfully Hegel may achieve being-at-home-in-otherness with regard to these objective structures of right in thePhilosophy of Rightis arguable. What (...) is at issue in this paper is however to argue that there is a blind spot in the text with regard to nature. In Ethical Life the rational subject's passions and inclinations are brought into the subject such that she is ‘with herself’ in them; with regard to external nature no such reconciliation is achieved or even attempted. In Abstract Right external nature is effectively dominated by and subsumed into the will and it is never something in which one is with oneself. It remains outside the model of freedom that Hegel develops in thePhilosophy of Right. There is something troubling about this formulation, since it excludes nature from freedom, but also something accurate, as it reflects the unresolved attitude of moderns to the natural world. (shrink)

The idea that citizens have a right to receive information that is relevant for their suitable exercise of political rights and liberties is well established in democratic societies. However, this right has never been systematically analyzed, thus remaining a blurry concept. This article tackles this conceptual gap by conceptualizing citizens’ right to information. After reviewing previous approaches to this idea, I locate citizens’ right to information on the map of communication rights, and put forward a systematic (...) framework for both justifying and analyzing it. This framework focuses on this right’s grounds, its function, its holders, its content, and its correlative duties. Although the conceptualization offered here will be incomplete, it will be enough to distinguish the general concept of citizens’ right to information from both its specific conceptions and from the other two best-known rights of the public: freedom of information and the public’s right to know. (shrink)

For Hegel, personhood is developed primarily through the possession, ownership, and exchange of property. Property is crucial for individuals to experience freedom as persons and for the existence of Sittlichkeit, or ethical life within a community. The free exchange of property serves to develop individual personalities by mediating our intersubjectivity between one another, whereby we share another’s subjective experience of the object by recognizing their will in it and respecting their ownership of it. This free exchange is grounded the abstract (...) right to property which is defined by the liberal institution of private property. Like all legal/juridical rights, the abstract property right and its related institution are productions of the state, which can also claim priority over them. This prioritization reveals the dialectic inherent in the both the conception and exercise of the right, in which the private right to property at the level of civil society confronts the public right of the state, resulting in both the preservation and uplifting of the right, and, at the same time, its cancellation or annihilation. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to clarify the role wrong plays in Hegel ’s system of right, as both a form of freedom and the transition to morality. Two approaches will be examined to explore wrong in practical philosophical terms: First, one could take the transition to be descriptive in nature. The transition describes wrong as a realized fact of the human condition that one inherits from the outset. Second, one could see it as prescriptive. Actual wrongdoing would (...) be essential for the subject’s progression to becoming moral. Though both are most likely the case, emphasis is given to the latter since it represents the actualization of potential. Furthermore, it will be suggested that wrong plays a similar role as that which alienation does in the Phenomenology of Spirit; both bridge the will as abstract personality with the moral point of view. (shrink)