Publication Type

Blog Post

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

1-2018

Abstract

Dan Klein asks: "If the signification [liberty] has no resemblance to others not messing with one's stuff, well, what is it?" In the history of the use of the term among philosophers and other writers, "liberty" has been held to mean many things: conceptions of liberty abound. For Locke it meant above all not being enslaved. For many republicans, past and present, it meant having a certain status: that of a free man, with certain rights and duties as a citizen—including political rights. For contemporary republicans, like Philip Pettit, it means not being dominated by others (which, in his account, requires certain social guarantees to individuals to ensure they are not rendered "unfree" by poverty, and regulation to ensure that the powerful are kept in check by institutions that limit their ability to dominate others). For Rousseau and Kant, liberty was enjoyed when one was subject only to laws one gave to oneself (and therefore something not diminished by the collective deciding to regulate one's use of one's property since the laws made by the collective were not the determinations of some alien power but laws that were legitimate because generated by a whole of which one was a part). For yet others, one is free only if the choices one makes are authentically one's own and not the product of some form of social control, whether clumsy (say, brainwashing) or subtle (say, a background culture that shapes one's preferences to reconcile one to a condition of subservience). None of these views suggests that liberty is about not having others messing with one's stuff.

Discipline

Political Science

Research Areas

Political Science

Publisher

Wiley

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