Quentin Skinner’s dedication to investigating Hobbes’s concept of liberty in a number of essays and books has born some unusual fruit. Not only do we see the enormous problems that Hobbes set himself by proceeding as he did, but Skinner’s careful analysis allows us to chart Hobbes’ ingenuity as he tried to steer a path between the Charybdis of determinism and the Scylla of voluntarism – not very successfully, as we shall see. The upshot is a theory of individual (...) freedom and civil liberty to challenge the classical republican traditionThis Article does not have an abstract. (shrink)

Contemporary republicans have adopted a less-than-charitable attitude toward private beneficence, especially when it is directed to the poor, worrying that rich patrons may be in a position to exercise arbitrary power over their impoverished clients. These concerns have led them to support impartial public provision by way of state welfare programs, including an unconditional basic income (UBI). In contrast to this administrative model of public welfare, I will propose a competitive model in which the state regulates and subsidizes a decentralized (...) and nonstatist provision of support for the poor. This model will fix the historically objectionable features of private provision by having the state prevent collusion among private charities, deliver information to recipients about alternative sources of assistance, and give substantial grants to charities as well as tax incentives and vouchers to donors. I will contend that such an approach would do a better job of minimizing domination of the poor than traditional welfare states and may prove more politically feasible than a UBI, at least in the near term in certain national contexts. (shrink)

Catharine Macaulay was one of the most significant republican writers of her generation. Although there has been a revival of interest in Macaulay amongst feminists and intellectual historians, neo-republican writers have yet to examine the theoretical content of her work in any depth. Since she anticipates and addresses a number of themes that still preoccupy republicans, this neglect represents a serious loss to the discipline. I examine Macaulay’s conception of freedom, showing how she uses the often misunderstood notion (...) of virtue to reconcile the individual and collective elements inherent in the republican model. In her own analysis of the deep-rooted social obstacles that stand in the way of women becoming free, Macaulay identifies a serious problem that confronts all republicans, namely how to secure freedom in the face of entrenched structural imbalances that systematically disadvantage certain classes of person. In the end, I conclude that Macaulay herself cannot overcome the issues she raises. This in no way diminishes the importance of her work since her diagnosis is as relevant today as in her own time. (shrink)

Spinoza's use of the phrase “sui iuris” in the Tractatus Politicus gives rise to the following paradox. On the one hand, one is said to be sui iuris to the extent that one is rational; and to the extent that one is rational, one will steadfastly obey the laws of the state. However, Spinoza also states that to the extent that one adheres to the laws of the state, one is not sui iuris, but rather stands under the power [sub (...) potestate] of the state (TP 3/5). It seems, then, that to the extent that one is sui iuris, one will not, in fact, be sui iuris. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Spinoza's notion of being sui iuris that enables us to overcome this paradox and sheds light on Spinoza's relationship to the republican tradition. I work towards this goal by distinguishing between two ways in which Spinoza uses the locution, which correspond to two different conceptions of power: potentia and potestas. This distinction not only allows us to save Spinoza from internal inconsistency, it also enables us to see one important way in which Spinoza stands outside of the republican tradition, since he conceives of liberty not as constituted by independence, or citizenship in a res publica, but as being sui iuris in the first sense described above: being powerful. (shrink)

For years now, unionization has been under vigorous attack. Membership has been steadily declining, and with it union bargaining power. As a result, unions may soon lose their ability to protect workers from economic and personal abuse, as well as their significance as a political force. In the Name of Liberty responds to this worrying state of affairs by presenting a new argument for unionization, one that derives an argument for universal unionization in both the private and public sector (...) from concepts of liberty that we already accept. In short, In the Name of Liberty reclaims the argument for liberty from the political right, and shows how liberty not only requires the unionization of every workplace as a matter of background justice, but also supports a wide variety of other progressive policies. (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)

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)

This paper examines the concept of liberty at the heart of Sarah Chapone’s 1735 work, The Hardships of the English Laws in Relation to Wives. In this work, Chapone (1699-1764) advocates an ideal of freedom from domination that closely resembles the republican ideal in seventeenth and eighteenth- century England. This is the idea that an agent is free provided that no-one else has the power to dispose of that agent’s property—her “life, liberty, and limb” and her material (...) possessions—according to his arbitrary will and pleasure, without being accountable to the law. This paper shows how Chapone uses this ideal to ground her arguments against those laws that put married women in a worse condition than slavery, and to call for the establishment of reasonable and just safeguards for a woman’s personal property and property in her children. More than this, it is argued, in this text Chapone articulates a feminist ideal that is both negative freedom from domination and positive freedom to be one’s own master or arbiter. Her work thus occupies a unique—and hitherto unrecognized—place in the history of feminist philosophy. (shrink)

Economic liberty is best understood in opposition to economic domination. This article develops a radical republican conception of such domination. In particular, I argue that radical republicanism provides a more satisfactory account of individual economic freedom than the market-friendly liberties of working, transacting, holding, and using championed by Nickel and Tomasi. So too, it avoids the pitfalls of other conceptions of economic liberty which emphasize real freedom, alternatives to immiserating work, or unalienated labor. The resulting theory holds (...) that economic domination occurs when someone’s access to civic capabilities is contingent on the arbitrary economic power of others. Socialist institutions—suitably configured—can deliver on this individual economic freedom, allowing the dominating power of proprietors, shareholders, landlords, and managers to be kept in check, and providing an unconditional minimum that allows individual citizens to be less beholden to others in meeting many of their most fundamental civic needs. Thus, I conclude that socialism can be championed as a politics of individual economic liberty. (shrink)

Our modern ideals about liberty were forged in the great political and philosophical debates of the 17th and 18th centuries, but we seldom hear about women's contributions to those debates. This paper examines the ideas of early modern English women – namely Margaret Cavendish, Mary Astell, Mary Overton, ‘Eugenia’, Sarah Chapone and the civil war women petitioners – with respect to the classic political concepts of negative, positive and republican liberty. The author suggests that these writers' woman-centred (...) concerns provide a unique historical perspective on these much-discussed ideals of freedom from external interference, freedom as self-determination and freedom from domination. (shrink)

This article draws upon the civic republican tradition to offer new conceptual resources for the normative assessment of mental capacity law. The republican conception of liberty as non-domination is used to identify ways in which such laws generate arbitrary power that can underpin relationships of servility and insecurity. It also shows how non-domination provides a basis for critiquing legal tests of decision-making that rely upon ‘diagnostic’ rather than ‘functional’ criteria. In response, two main civic republican strategies (...) are recommended for securing freedom in the context of the legal regulation of psychological disability: self-authorisation techniques and participatory shaping of power. The result is a series of proposals for the reform of decisional capacity law, including a transition towards purely functional assessment of decisional capacity, surer legal footing for advanced care planning, and greater control over the design and administration of decision-making capacity laws by those with psychological disabilities. (shrink)

Adam Ferguson’s imperial thought casts new light on the age-old republican dilemma of the tension between empire and liberty. Generations of republican writers had been haunted by this issue as the decline of Rome proved that imperial expansion would eventually ruin the liberty of a state. Many eighteenth-century Scottish thinkers regarded this as an insoluble conundrum and thus became critics of empire. Ferguson shared their basic views but, paradoxically, was still able to defend the British Empire (...) in the debates over the American Revolution. His argument effectively offered a viable solution to the republican dilemma, which distinguished him from his contemporaries. In light of this, I argue that political representation was the pivotal conception for Ferguson to make empire and liberty compatible. It was on this ground that he could advocate the union with Ireland, which he believed would lead to a lasting balance of power in Europe. -/- ; British Empire; liberty; balance of power; political representation; American Revolution; Anglo-Irish Union. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It is fruitless to interpret Constant's modern liberty from the binary perspective of either the negative/positive freedom opposition or the liberal/republican freedom opposition. Both oppositional perspectives reduce the relationally complex nature of modern liberty to one or another component of the relation. Such reduction inevitably results in an incomplete and, therefore, inadequate interpretation of Constant's modern liberty. Consequently, either of these binary frames of interpretation obscures rather than illuminates the full nature of Constant's modern (...) class='Hi'>liberty. Boxed into their irreconcilably opposed alternatives, both binary perspectives fail to appreciate that Constant's conception of modern liberty is a complex achievement irreducible without loss to either liberal negative liberty as non-interference or republican freedom as non-domination. Nor does combining liberal negative freedom and positive freedom (in the sense of ancient liberty), as Holmes well establishes, adequately tells the whole story of Constant's modern liberty. As a complex achievement, Constant's conception of modern liberty, I shall argue, blends negative freedom as associated with neo-Roman republican freedom as non-subjection to arbitrary power, negative freedom as non-interference, associated with the liberal tradition, positive freedom in the sense of inner self-development, and positive freedom as collective self-government or civic republican freedom. (shrink)

Human life in contemporary society is extremely complex and there are various external factors that directly affect the realization in the individual ends. In this work I analyze the effects of the global market economy, manifested by a mode of production and distribution of goods and services in the form of a global network of economic relations, which involve people, transnational corporations and political and social institutions in moral sphere of people, affecting their choices and the realization of these choices. (...) Individual freedom can be understand as a freedom to realize our choices in the environment of a global economic market, but it is still problematic in the sense that the choices of goods and services available in this market do not reflect individual choices, but a set of preferences standardized according to the market itself. In this paper I will reflect about the individual freedom in economic globalization pointing from the debate between Pettit and Berlin that social freedom advocated by Republican Petit can be satisfactory for a start. (shrink)

In her recent paper Virtuous Construal (2019) Vigani provides psychological support to McDowell’s silencing effect of virtue, arguing that it is through her moral outlook that the virtuous person represents the situation as an occasion for virtue only. The term “silencing” is still, however, a controversial matter, for it might lead to the conclusion that the virtuous person does not feel any sort of attachment to what is being silenced, thus suffers no genuine loss when it comes to forsaking something (...) valuable in the face of virtue (“no-genuine loss theory”: McDowell 1998; Baxley 2007). On the other hand, if we try to argue that what is silenced does not completely cease to exist in the eyes of the virtuous, then it is not clear what the difference between virtue and self-control (Aristotle’s enkrateia, continence; NE 1150a35) amounts to. The aim of this paper is to defend the difference between virtue and continence in terms of cognition ; that is to say, to provide further support to Vigani’s argument explaining how it is possible for something to be valuable yet be silenced (thus avoiding the no-genuine loss theory) and how this possibility is precisely what marks the difference between virtue and continence. I shall articulate my defence in the following steps: (A) arguing for the compatibility between a difference in cognition and Aristotle’s distinction between the virtuous and the enkrates (sections 1 and 2), (B) arguing that the silencing effect does not imply blindness to commonly shared human values (e.g. family, relationships, survival; section 3), and (C) making sense of the difference between virtue and continence in terms of deliberation (section 4). I shall be as loyal to Aristotle as possible, grounding my argument on the following premises: (i) virtuous actions issue from a virtuous conception of a life worth living (eupraxia: NE 1139a31-b5); (ii) there is some sort of context-dependency when it comes to deliberating virtuously (NE 1112b10-20); and (iii) virtuous deliberation does not allow for the inner struggle that is proper of continent deliberation (a “harmony” between appetites and reason: NE 1151b35-1152a5; while the continent is the one who has self-control: NE 1152a25-7). If I manage in the quest, then we will have found what the continent is missing in order to become virtuous, and it shall neither look in-humane nor undesirable; just hard. (shrink)

Socialist republicans advocate public ownership and control of the means of production in order to achieve the republican goal of a society without endemic domination. While civic republicanism is often attacked for its conservatism, the relatively neglected radical history of the tradition shows how a republican form of socialism provides powerful conceptual resources to critique capitalism for leaving workers and citizens dominated. This analysis supports a programme of public ownership and economic democracy intended to reduce domination in the (...) workplace and wider society. I defend this socialist republicanism from both the Marxist objection that it overlooks the impersonal nature of domination under capitalism and the left-liberal objections that property-owning democracy or worker codetermination are sufficient to suppress dominating relationships. The resulting position identifies the need for more ambitious institutional grounds for republican liberty than is often supposed, while offering us a distinctive emancipatory justification for socialism. (shrink)

According to Philip Pettit, we should understand republican liberty, freedom as ‘non-domination,’ as a ‘supreme political value.’ It is its commitment to freedom as non-domination, Pettit claims, that distinguishes republicanism from various forms of liberal egalitarianism, including the political liberalism of John Rawls. I explain that Rawlsian political liberalism is committed to a form of non-domination, namely, a ‘political’ conception, which is: (a) limited in its scope to the ‘basic structure of society,’ and (b) ‘freestanding’ in nature (that (...) is, compatible with the ‘fact of reasonable pluralism’). I show that the political conception of non-domination is an integral part of political liberalism through an exploration of the kind of citizenship education that political liberalism mandates for all students. Such an education would impart to future citizen the skills and knowledge necessary for them to realize republican freedom vis-à-vis their political institutions, their workplaces, and, by means of an enforceable ‘right of exit,’ the various associations to which they might belong. (shrink)

exam of the issue of conflict since the “History of Florence” provides us with elements capable to show the Machiavellian reflection does not evolve according to such a simple and linear way as it is shown in the “Discourses”. In fact, investigation will reveal that the opposition between the two types of conflict – positive conflict and negative conflict –, described in the “Discourses”, is progressively defined, from the analysis of Florentian history, as being just one type – the tragic (...) and violent type –, based on contrapositions that cannot be solved in terms of a classical virtú, characteristic of the first period of Roman history. Such transformations arise a set of questions to which, in some way, the present paper intends to offer some answers: Would Machiavelli have renounced to the idea of conflict as foundation of republican liberty and surrended himself to the utopia of a homogeneous and stable order? Which element should be to blame due to the fact that disagreements did not produce, in Florence, the same effects which were seen in Rome? Would all disagreements be natural and, for that reason, inevitable, or could there be “artificial” divisions and, by that reason,avoidable ones? -/- O estudo da questão do conflito a partir da “História de Florença” nos fornece elementos capazes de mostrar que a reflexão maquiaveliana não se desenvolve de modo tão simples e linear quanto parece nos “Discursos”. Com efeito, revelará que a oposição entre dois tipos de conflito – positivo e negativo – descrita nos “Discursos” se define progressivamente, a partir da análise da história florentina, como de um só tipo – trágico e violento – baseado sobre contraposições que não são possíveis de serem resolvidas em termos de uma virtù clássica, característica do primeiro período da história de Roma. Esta transformação levanta um conjunto de interrogações para as quais, de algum modo, o presente estudo pretende oferecer respostas: teria Maquiavel renunciado à ideia de conflito como fundamento da liberdade republicana e se entregado à utopia de uma ordem homogênea e estável? A que se deve atribuir o fato de as discórdias não haverem produzido em Florença os mesmos efeitos que em Roma? Seriam todas as discórdias naturais e, portanto, inevitáveis, ou poderia haver divisões “artificiais” e, portanto, evitáveis? (shrink)

In Liberalism with Excellence, Matthew Kramer makes an argument for how excellence may enter in into liberalism, despite liberalism’s strong commitment to neutrality. Kramer seeks to challenge not only the uncompromising rejection of this position by liberals such a Jonathan Quong, but also the so-called “blended” approach of “soft-perfectionist” scholars such as Joseph Raz and George Sher. In this essay, I do not so much challenge Kramer’s approach as offer an alternative for accomplishing the same thing. Under my proposal, certain (...) forms of excellence and neutrality can both be accommodated as long as state support for the form of excellence at issue is proportional to the support for such a form of excellence within the relevant polity, competing forms of excellence are non-rivalrous, and no one is forced to embrace a form of excellence with which they disagree. My proposal is therefore not what Ronald Dworkin derogatively characterized as “a checkerboard solution.” Rather than allowing the state to support contrary moral positions at one and the same time, it is a solution that takes morally compatible but nevertheless competing conceptions of excellence seriously, and exhibits neutrality by giving them proportional rather than full support. This neither forces anyone to pursue the particular forms of excellence the state supports nor prevents them from pursuing some other form of excellence entirely or, if they wish, no form of excellence at all. (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)

I reconstruct the civic republican foundations of Eugene Debs’s socialist critique of capitalism, demonstrating how he uses a neo-roman conception of freedom to condemn waged labour. Debs is also shown to build upon this neo-roman liberty in his socialist republican objections to the plutocratic capture of the law and threats of violence faced by the labour movement. This Debsian socialist republicanism can be seen to rest on an ambitious understanding of the demands of citizen sovereignty and civic (...) solidarity. While Debs shares some of the commitments of earlier American labour republican critics of capitalism, he departs from them in his thoroughgoing commitment to common democratic ownership of productive property. His socialist republicanism remains valuable today for its ability to illuminate features of plutocratic control, judicial autocracy, and the regime of property best suited to suppressing economic domination. I conclude that Debs not only deserves a prominent place in an emerging radical republican canon but presents a distinctive contrast with many of his Marxist contemporaries and offers a compelling challenge to recent liberal, plebeian, and socialist forms of republicanism. (shrink)

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

Efforts to ‘green’ civic republican thought link environmentalist with democratic ends. Such efforts cast both as contributions to virtuous world-making that contests ‘actually existing unsustainability’ and, so, seeks to realize freedom as nondomination. In the context of the erosion of both democratic and environmentalist achievements since the 1970s, however, a focus on contestation’s other side, the ‘world-unmaking’ virtue of obstruction, is warranted. ‘Democratic’ interpreters of Niccolò Machiavelli’s work urge such an understanding of political virtue, which they ground not in (...) equal freedom as nondomination but in civic liberty. Civic liberty is realized when all are able (1.) to participate in formulating rules and (2.) to defend procedures sufficient to subject all to constraint by so-formulated rules. Civic liberty therefore requires mobilization of majorities’ latent capacity to (re.1.) contest ‘public’ government decisions and (re. 2.) obstruct elites’ ‘private’ capacity to act with impunity in relation to such rules. This concept offers two insights into the current ‘crises’ of democracy and the environment. First, if, as empirical observers suggest, a significant cohort of elites have ‘seceded’ from electoral democracies, the normative concept ‘civic liberty’ unsettles contestatory presumptions about the deliberative character of contemporary politics. Second, if it is also true that a significant cohort of the poor are ‘seceding’ from mainstream politics out of frustration with the inegalitarian consequences of elite malfeasance, then the emphasis the concept places on the politics of majoritarian veto-power aimed at reining-in elite impunity might be useful to those who hope to make anti-democratic populists less attractive to at least some of this cohort. (shrink)

Two interlocutors, Philip Pettit and a student, are exchanging views on liberal political and economic philosophy during lunch at Prospect House, the faculty club of Princeton. The dialogue begins with clarifications of the notion of liberty, and, against objections of the student, Pettit introduces and defends his own conception of freedom as non-domination rather than as non-interference. It proceeds with an exchange of arguments regarding the different kinds of institutional settings that entrench liberty and all the other things (...) valued by humans. The interlocutors reach a preliminary consensus that in order to substantiate the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination in concrete institutional realities, two things are required: the establishment of a mixed constitution – so that no single, unconstrained body can exercise lawmaking and other government functions – as well as eternal vigilance on the part of the citizens. The second part of the dialogue deals with a major challenge to the republican political philosophy expressed by the student: the issue of non-domination in markets, which is diagnosed as an important lacuna in republican thought. (shrink)

I develop a socialist republican conception of economic liberty and show how it can be used to understand the domination of workers. It holds that both paid and unpaid workers can be deprived of economic freedom when they are exposed to an arbitrary power to undermine their access to the economic capabilities needed for civic equality. Measures intended to reduce domination are recommended, including public ownership of productive property, workplace democracy, and robust unconditional basic income and services. Finally, (...) I discuss the implications of this approach for platform capitalism, digital surveillance, the rise of automation, and post-work politics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 31, Number 1, April 2005, pp. 123-144 Laws Not Men: Hume's Distinction between Barbarous and Civilized Government NEIL McARTHUR 1. Introduction Hume uses the adjectives "civilized" and "barbarous" in a variety of ways, and in a variety of contexts. He employs them to describe individuals, societies, historical eras, and forms of government. These various uses are closely related. Hume thinks that cultural and political development are (...) intimately connected, and are mutually dependent. Civilized government goes together with civilized society. A wise ruler cannot emerge before "refinements have taken place" in the society at large and "science [becomes] known in the world." At the same time, the policy of a monarch who is "ignorant and uninstructed... for ever prevents all improvements."1 This intimate connection, however, is not an identification. A civilized government is not simply that which produces, or results from, a civilized society. When discussing forms of government, Hume uses the terms "barbarous" and "civilized" consistently and somewhat narrowly, to describe governments that possess certain specific characteristics. It is striking that these characteristics are explicitly divorced from the abilities or characters of the rulers. While a nation requires wise and refined leadership to achieve its civilized status, Hume thinks it is a crucial feature of civilized government that, once established, it depends Neil McArthur is at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2M8, Canada, e-mail: [email protected] 124 Neil McArthur entirely on its institutional structure, and not on the talents or intentions of any individual or group. To understand Hume's distinction between these two kinds of government, it is useful to abstract away from his discussion of more general issues of cultural development, and to lay temporarily aside the causal question of what social and economic conditions are necessary to produce a civilized government. I propose to explain Hume's concepts of barbarous and civilized government just in terms of the institutional characteristics possessed by each. Hume's choice of adjectives is not, of course, accidental. The complex causal questions of how a civilized government comes about, and what is its relation to civilized society, are large and important ones. However, 1 do not propose to take them up here.2 The crucial feature dividing civilized and barbarous government is their relation to law. In his essay "Of Civil Liberty" Hume says: "It may now be affirmed of civilized monarchies, what was formerly said in praise of republics alone, that they are a government of Laws, not of Men."3 "Barbarous government" are thus "governments of men"—he also calls them governments "of will."4 Scholars of Hume's political theory have noted the importance of the rule of law in defining "civilized government. "5 However, they have not made clear precisely what Hume thinks precisely defines a "government of laws. " I submit that such a government must (for Hume) possess three characteristics. It must have: 1. A clear separation between the legislative and magisterial "powers" of the state; 2. A rigid subordination of the magisterial to the legislative power, such that the "discretion" of magistrates is restricted by "general laws"; 3. Self-sufficient laws and institutions, such that they are able to operate regardless of the intentions or abilities of individual rulers or officeholders. To this end, a government of laws must possess fixed rules governing the succession of officers, including (in a civilized monarchy) succession to the throne. Hume thinks specific governments may meet these criteria to varying degrees through time (with regression also possible). His use of the term "civilized government" nevertheless implies that it exists as a distinct, and achievable, ideal. An examination of Hume's theory of civilized government shows his understanding of the rule of law to be more subtle and complex than has previously been acknowledged. Hume moves beyond traditional Whig panegyrics on the rule of show to show how the law must operate if it is to protect people from oppression in the local theatres in which it is most acute. He articulates a theory of "civilized monarchy" that provides a middle path between republican and absolutist theories of government, and that is consistent his philosophy as a whole. Hume Studies Laws... (shrink)

Using Australia to illustrate the case, in this paper it is argued that the transformation of universities into businesses and the undermining of the liberal arts is motivated by either contempt for or outright hostility to democracy. This is associated with a global managerial revolution that is enslaving nations and people to the global market and the corporations that dominate it. The struggle within universities is the site of a struggle to reverse the gains of the Radical Enlightenment, the tradition (...) of Enlightenment that, committed to upholding and developing the civic humanism of the Renaissance, strove for liberty, understood as democratic self-governance. The central place the liberal arts had in upholding this liberty is shown. Inspired by the Ancient Greek notion of paideia, the liberal arts, which originated in republican Rome, was the form of education required designed for free people, in opposition to the specialist education appropriate for slaves, to inspire them to maintain their liberty and enable them to govern themselves. While not always upholding this ideal, it is argued in this paper that the liberal arts always kept alive this quest for liberty, bequeathing this quest to the Renaissance philosophers and to the proponents of the Radical Enlightenment. With managerialism and the undermining of democracy, such education and the questioning, creative people it produced, are now seen as a threat to the new global corporatocracy who, to achieve cultural hegemony, have coöpted university managers and academics to impose their agenda to cripple the liberal arts. Their goal, never fully articulated as such but successfully prosecuted, is a dumbed-down population. (shrink)

Essays from the political website CounterPunch. - Requiem: Dies Non, Not Dies Irae (September 18, 2001) - Mouth Wide Shut (April 8, 2002) - So Long Frank O. Gehry? (April 28, 2002) - Bête Noire (May 22, 2002) - “All politics is local?”: The Unbearable Lightness of NGOs (May 24, 2002) - Bush and Mies van der Rohe: Architecture and Ideology (June 1, 2002) - The Adventures of Mademoiselle M.: Or Getting Screwed in Paris (June 8-9, 2002) - Loose Lips: (...) Liberty, Democracy and Bush (July 6, 2002) - Go Tell Karl Rove!: The Anti-Republican Party (July 13, 2002) - Be Still My Beating Heart (July 15, 2002) - Grave New Urbanism: The World Trade Center Burlesque (July 20, 2002) - Roamin’ in the Gloamin’: Van Morrison: In September (July 25, 2002) - Sublime Žižek: Guarding Lenin’s Tomb (July 27, 2002) - Vox Populi: Everyone’s a Critic (August 3, 2002) - Auteur-Driven Vehicles: The New New Laocoon (August 19, 2002) - Beaux Rêves, Citoyens!!! (September 5, 2002) - Immortality: The Quest for Fire (August 31, 2002) Parting Shots: A Refracted History (Summary) Of The Twentieth Century (November 2, 2002) - New Books Christmas 2002: Livres Deluxe (December 23, 2002) - The Drunken Flower (July 26, 2003) - The Infernal Machine: “Architectures” in Service to Nothing (August 23, 2003). (shrink)

There are two rival images often offered of the state. In one the state serves like a nanny to provide for the welfare of its members; in the other it requires people to look after themselves, providing only the service of a night-watchman. But this dichotomy, which is routinely invoked in debates about public health and welfare provision in general, is misleading. What the rival images turn on is not competing pictures of how the state should function in people's lives (...) but competing pictures of what it is to guard the freedom of its people. On the neo-liberal theory, which has been dominant over the last century or so, providing for people's freedom means leaving them to their own devices and fortunes. On the neo-republican theory, which answers to a much longer tradition, it means democratically identifying a common set of basic liberties in the exercise of which everyone should be protected by law and, if necessary, resourced. This older way of thinking about freedom has important merits missing in the newer and argues strongly against the nightwatchman state. (shrink)

Freedom as a natural right, the importance of consent, defending the idea that government should be in the hands of the most virtuous and reflective citizens, denouncing patronage, the need to link individual and political freedom ? These are some of the characteristics of La Boétie's doctrine that I believe place him within the tradition that Quentin Skinner calls the neo-Roman conception of civil liberty. Of course, La Boétie did not write a positive defence of the rule of law, (...) as Livy did in his History of Rome and as the English republicans do, but the Discourse can easily be read as a legal plea condemning absolute monarchy and any kind of arbitrary regime. (shrink)

It is common to think that state enforcement is a restriction on freedom that is morally permitted or justified because of the unfortunate circumstances in which we find ourselves. Human frailty and material scarcity combine to make the compromise of freedom involved in exclusive state enforcement power necessary for other freedoms or other goods. In the words of James Madison, ‘if men were angels, no government would be necessary’ (1990: 267). But there is an opposing tradition, according to which the (...) very idea of freedom in society entails the necessity of state enforcement. However morally good human beings are, or whatever material conditions they find themselves in, on this view, the ideal of freedom we ought to be concerned to realise is such that it cannot be attained without state enforcement. It follows a priori from an important ideal of freedom that a state with exclusive enforcement power is necessary for individual liberty in society. In this paper, I argue against what I take to be the strongest argument of the a priori kind, which begins from the neo-republican ideal of freedom as non-domination, and thereby in (partial) defence of the alternative, Madisonian, view. Insofar as it is true that some sort of problematic domination will inevitably be present in a stateless society, I argue, the introduction of a state can do nothing to eliminate it. For the state to improve on even an ideal stateless society, it would need to give individuals control over the interference of potential dominators of a sort that could not be achieved in the ideal stateless society. -/- . (shrink)

This is a study of the treatment of library patron privacy in licenses for electronic journals in academic libraries. We begin by distinguishing four facets of privacy and intellectual freedom based on the LIS and philosophical literature. Next, we perform a content analysis of 42 license agreements for electronic journals, focusing on terms for enforcing authorized use and collection and sharing of user data. We compare our findings to model licenses, to recommendations proposed in a recent treatise on licenses, and (...) to our account of the four facets of intellectual freedom. We find important conflicts with each. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the role of public opinion and De Staël’s liberal principles in relation to her psychological image of human nature. De Staël regarded the French Revolution as a new stage of human progress, in which the French people, for the first time, gained a political voice. From her position as a liberal republican, De Staël argues for political progress in the form of civil equality and liberty confirmed by law and political representation, for which (...) public opinion serves as a political tool. I aim to demonstrate that De Staël developed a multi-layered analysis of public opinion as both an emancipatory tool for more equality, justice, and liberty, as well as a discriminating and harmful tool. According to De Staël, human passions play a crucial role in determining the employment and the effects of public opinion, as becomes clear in the case of the trial of Marie-Antoinette. (shrink)

The republican case for workplace democracy is presented and defended from two alternative means of ensuring freedom from arbitrary interference in the firm—namely, the right to freely exit the firm and workplace regulation. This paper shows, respectively, that costless exit is neither possible nor desirable in either perfect or imperfect labor markets, and that managerial discretion is both desirable and inevitable due to the incompleteness of employment contracts and labor legislation. The paper then shows that WD is necessary, from (...) a republican standpoint, if workers’ interests are to be adequately tracked in the exercise of managerial authority. Three important objections are finally addressed— that WD is redundant, that it is unnecessary provided that litigation and unionism can produce similar outcomes, and that it falls short of ensuring republican freedom compared to self-employment. (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)

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)

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)

In this article, we address the relevance of J.S. Mill’s political philosophy for a framework of public health ethics. In contrast to some readings of Mill, we reject the view that in the formulation of public policies liberties of all kinds enjoy an equal presumption in their favor. We argue that Mill also rejects this view and discuss the distinction that Mill makes between three kinds of liberty interests: interests that are immune from state interference; interests that enjoy a (...) presumption in favor of liberty; and interests that enjoy no such presumption. We argue that what is of focal importance for Mill in protecting liberty is captured by the essential role that the value of self-determination plays in human well-being. Finally, we make the case for the plausibility of a more complex and nuanced Millian framework for public health ethics that would modify how the balancing of some liberty and public health interests should proceed by taking the thumb off the liberty end of the scale. Mill’s arguments and the legacy of liberalism support certain forms of state interference with marketplace liberties for the sake of public health objectives without any presumption in favor of liberty. (shrink)

In a paper recently published in this journal, Navin and Largent argue in favour of a type of policy to regulate non-medical exemptions from childhood vaccination which they call ‘Inconvenience’. This policy makes it burdensome for parents to obtain an exemption to child vaccination, for example, by requiring parents to attend immunization education sessions and to complete an application form to receive a waiver. Navin and Largent argue that this policy is preferable to ‘Eliminationism’, i.e. to policies that do not (...) allow non-medical exemptions, because Inconvenience has been shown to maintain exemption rates low while not harming parents by forcing them to do something that goes against their beliefs. We argue that it is at least doubtful that Inconvenience is ethically preferable to Eliminationism: while the latter disregards the value of liberty, Inconvenience disregards the value of fairness in the distribution of the burdens entailed by the preservation of a public good like herd immunity. We propose a variant of Inconvenience, which we call ‘Contribution’, which we think is preferable to the versions of Inconvenience discussed by Navin and Largent in that it successfully strikes a balance between the values of parents’ liberty, fairness and expected utility. (shrink)

We argue that at least some corvids morally ought to be granted a right to bodily liberty in the US legal system and relevantly similar systems. This right would grant immunity to frivolous captivity and extermination. Implementing this right will require new legislation or the expansion of existing legislation including the elimination of various "pest" clauses. This paper proceeds in three parts. First, we survey accounts of the moral grounds of legal rights. Second, to establish an overlapping consensus supporting (...) corvid bodily liberty rights, we survey the empirical literature on corvid cognition. Third, we illustrate what a corvid right to bodily liberty might look like, by looking to recent developments in animal law, as well as previous advocacy on behalf of primates and cetaceans. (shrink)

My paper is on the republican version of patriotism and its justification, as developed most systematically by Philip Pettit and Maurizio Viroli. The essence of the justification is as follows: patriotism is to be viewed as valuable insofar as it is an indispensable instrument for the upholding of the central republican ideal, namely freedom understood as non-domination. My primary aim is to evaluate the normative force of this justification. In the first section, I introduce minimal descriptive definitions of (...) the concepts of patriotism and the patria. Second, I reconstruct the republican patria-ideal to which patriotism is linked to. In the third section, I reconstruct the republican justification of patriotism. Finally, I ask what we justify when we justify republican patriotism. Two views are prevalent in this regard. According to the first, republican patriotic motivation, similarly to its justification, ought to be instrumental itself too. I argue that this view is untenable, since it is in tension with the minimal definition of patriotism. The conclusion is that the other view – according to which the patriotic motivation ought to be of intrinsic character – possesses greater normative force. (shrink)

Suppose we embrace the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination: freedom as immunity to arbitrary interference. In that case those acts that call uncontroversially for criminalization will usually be objectionable on three grounds: the offender assumes a dominating position in relation to the victim, the offender reduces the range or ease of undominated choice on the part of the victim, and the offender raises a spectre of domination for others like the victim. And in that case, so it appears, (...) the obvious role for punishment will be, so far as possible, to undo such evils: to rectify the effects of the crime that make it a repugnant republican act. This paper explores this theory of punishment as rectification, contrasting it with better established utilitarian and retributivist approaches. (shrink)

What would it mean to have a suitably ‘realistic’ account of political liberty? On the one hand, I don’t think we can properly understand liberty without an underlying account of personhood or agency.2 In making sense of liberty, we need to ask: What kind of agency does it presuppose or promote? What kind of independence do we care most about? What does it mean to exercise control, or to be self-guiding, in the kind of world we live (...) in today? At the same time, a conception of moral and political personhood needs to be appropriately ‘realistic’: It shouldn’t be over-idealized (or over-simplified), nor demand more than can be reasonably expected, given the kind of creatures we are. (shrink)

Bernard Williams articulated his later political philosophy notably in response to Ronald Dworkin, who, striving for coherence or integrity among our political concepts, sought to immunize the concepts of liberty and equality against conflict. Williams, doubtful that we either could or should eliminate the conflict, resisted the pursuit of conceptual integrity. Here, I reconstruct this Dworkin–Williams debate with an eye to drawing out ideas of ongoing philosophical and political importance. The debate not only exemplifies Williams's political realism and its (...) connection to his critique of the morality system. It also illustrates the virtues and hazards of contemporary efforts to ameliorate or engineer our concepts; it indicates what political philosophy might look to in appraising political concepts; it adverts to the different needs these concepts have to meet if they are to sustain a politics of pluralism, deal with polarization, and secure the consent of those who end up on the losing side of political decisions; and it presents us with two starkly contrasting conceptions of politics itself, of the place of political values within it, and of our prospects of reducing the uncomfortably conflictual character of those values through philosophy. (shrink)

This article develops a civic republican approach to medical ethics. It outlines civic republican concerns about the domination that arises from subjection to an arbitrary power of interference, while suggesting republican remedies to such domination in healthcare. These include proposals for greater review, challenge and pre-authorisation of medical power. It extends this analysis by providing a civic republican account of assistive arbitrary power, showing how it can create similar problems within both formal and informal relationships of (...) care, and offering strategies for tackling it. Two important objections to civic republican medical ethics—that it overvalues independence and political participation in healthcare—are also considered and rebutted. (shrink)

What would the institution of the family look like, if it were reformed according to republican desiderata? Would it even survive such re-shaping?

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)

In response to the spread of COVID-19, governments across the world have, with very few exceptions, enacted sweeping restrictive lockdown policies that impede citizens’ freedom to move, work, and assemble. This paper critically responds to the central arguments for restrictive lockdown legislation. We build our critique on the following assumption: public policy that enjoys virtually unanimous support worldwide should be justified by uncontroversial moral principles. We argue that that the virtually unanimous support in favor of restrictive lockdowns is not adequately (...) justified by the arguments given in favor of them. Importantly, this is not to say that states ought not impose restrictive lockdown measures, but rather that the extent of the acceptance of these measures is not proportionate to the strength of the arguments for lockdowns. -/- We begin by exploring the case for restrictive lockdowns. We first argue that several of the principles that are used to justify the lockdowns yield unexpectedly revisionary implications for other political problems that many would be unwilling to accept. We then outline what we consider the strongest argument for a lockdown—namely, that its net welfare benefits are great enough to defeat the moral presumption against restricting citizens’ civil liberties to move, work, and assemble. However, we give a number of reasons for doubting that the lockdown’s net welfare benefits are, in fact, sufficiently high to defeat the presumption against it. (shrink)