Equal freedom
(2012)
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- Authors
- Supervisors
- Van Parijs, Philippe
- Abstract
- (en) The main goal of this dissertation is to present an interpretation of what it should mean for a society to fulfil the ideals of freedom and equality. I argue that society should equalise levels of individual freedom. I defend this thesis in three stages, which are associated to the three parts of the dissertation. Part (A) is devoted to the elaboration of a new conception of freedom. The objective is to rehabilitate the intuitive idea that associates individual freedom with the ability to do or be what one wants. In chapter 1, I engage with the analytical literature on freedom and develop a conception of freedom according to which individuals are free overall to the extent that they have the specific freedoms they authentically prefer, where a specific freedom is defined by the probability that the agent will realise a phenomenon. The extent of one’s freedom is thus made to depend on how reality relates to what one authentically wants it to be. In chapter 2, I offer a method for the measurement of freedom so conceived. According to this method, a person’s level of overall freedom is obtained by multiplying the physical extent of her actual specific freedoms by the evaluative extent to which these actual specific freedoms correspond to her authentically preferred ones. In part (B), I defend the claim that a strictly and continuously equal distribution of this individual freedom is the best embodiment of moral equality. Firstly, in chapter 3, I argue that freedom is a better egalitarian currency than welfare, resources, capabilities and pluralist alternatives because freedom’s anti-perfectionism, anti-fetishism and flexibility make it an optimal tool for the pursuit of any life plan. Freedom supports equally moral persons regardless of the ends they require, the means they need or the relative value they assign to these means. Secondly, in chapter 4, I defend strict and continuous equality as a distributive criterion over time. I show that efficiency-based and responsibility-based arguments in favour of inequalities are incompatible with the equal respect owed to moral persons. As long as individuals qualify as moral persons, they are owed equal respect and hence equal amounts of overall freedom. Thirdly, I address the famous claim according to which freedom and equality are conflicting ideals. I argue that this claim either stems from mistaking a conceptual distinction between a currency and a distributive criterion as a conflict of ideals, or expresses deeper disagreement over the meaning of freedom or the role of aggregative considerations in moral distributions. In any case, the claim is seriously weakened if not entirely destroyed. Parts (A) and (B) form the ideal theory of Equal Freedom. In part (C), which is constituted by chapter 5, I try to show how this ideal theory can guide us in nonideal circumstances. Firstly, I suggest a model to understand the relation between ideal and nonideal theory. I argue that nonideal theory is best understood as involving the maximisation of the realisation of the ideal under feasibility constraints and moral constraints imposed by the very nature of the ideal. Secondly, I apply this model to Equal Freedom. The main result is a radically egalitarian balance between concerns for feasibility, relative and absolute levels of overall freedom. Thirdly, I discuss in more detail policy strategies and proposals to equalise freedom in nonideal circumstances. As an example, I assess the desirability and feasibility of a ‘right to be heard’, which is an enforceable right given to employees that provides them with a capacity to alter their workplace environment in accordance with their life plans. This evaluation concludes my defence of Equal Freedom as the core of a theory of social justice.
- Affiliations
Citations
Hudon, F. (2012). Equal freedom. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/158410