Syllabus: PHIL 4500 Freedom & The Good

Routledge, 2024

This volume brings together diverse sets of standpoints on liberalism in an era of growing skepticism and distrust regarding liberal institutions. The essays in the volume: - Relate concerns for liberal institutions with classical themes in perfectionist politics, such as the priority of the common good in decision-making or the role of comprehensive doctrines. - Analyse how perfectionist intuitions about the political life affect our concepts of public reason or public justification. - Outline various moral duties we have toward other persons that underlie the liberal institutions or notions of rights functioning across the contemporary political landscape. - Explore various aspects of pluralism from within influential religious or philosophical traditions, applying insights from those traditions to issues in contemporary politics. The comprehensive volume will be of great interest to scholars, students, and researchers of politics, especially those in political philosophy and political theory.

1986

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Reading Rasmussen and Den Uyl: Critical Essays on Norms of Liberty, 2008

The book, "Norms of Liberty," offers a refreshing new voice in the debate about the nature and normative grounds of a free society. Though I disagree with the version of liberalism Rasmussen and Den Uyl propose, and ultimately find their derivation of it from neo-Aristotelian ethics unconvincing, this book will stimulate a valuable debate about the prospects for a rapprochement between liberal normative theory and neo-Aristotelian ethics. One of the most salient contributions of Norms of Liberty, at least in this reader’s opinion, is its reminder that we must somehow rise to the challenge of grounding our political principles in a view of the good life without mistaking them for the whole of the good life; while one of its most significant shortcomings is its adoption of an absolute principle of negative liberty rather than a more moderate principle of freedom to be interpreted and applied by practical reason in conjunction with other requirements of human flourishing.

International Journal of Applied Philosophy

T he fact about human beings that unequivocally raises the spectre of liberty is the capacity that human beings have for self-determination. Human beings can-and in a most dramatic way-make decisions about what they do and, more generally, about how they wish to live. Significantly, though, the exercise of selfdetermination is not at all formally tied to choosing wisely, since the capacity for self-deception is a particularly human trait. 1 A person can masterfully exercise self-determination and yet very willfully choose to do what other individuals rightly point out that the person should not do. Indeed, such an individual can fail to exercise basic common sense. These considerations alone get us to the poignant truth that the mere exercise of self-determination alone on the part of all does not at all entail that over time all will be equally well-off, even if it is true that at the outset all were equally well-off and no one has been wronged by another.

Civic Freedom in an Age of Diversity: The Public Philosophy of Jame Tully, 2023

What would it mean to have a suitably ‘realistic’ account of political liberty? What does it mean to exercise control, or to be self-guiding, in the kind of world we live in today? One response to these challenges and our current social and political context, of course, is to embrace a kind of anti-humanism; to claim that the regulative ideals of human agency underpinning our dominant conceptions of freedom today rest on an ultimately illusory, essentialist humanism. However, there has also been a kind of return to humanism in recent years, on at least two fronts. First, to a corporeal or ‘mortalist’ humanism, grounded in our shared mortality and vulnerability to suffering. And second, to an ‘agonistic humanism’, grounded in a contestatory stance towards that which is claimed to be in our nature or as normative for us . Any conception of the political entails not only a distinctive mode of collective human activity, but also of agency, and a domain in which power and disagreement are central to any proper understanding of it. Thus, grasping liberty as a political value is also to explore the different ways in which we want this value to actually shape our practices and institutions.

"Volume 4 builds upon the closing section of Volume 3 which focused upon the subversion of the universal and communal character of the principle of rational freedom by a capitalistically structured civil society. Having dealt with the political implications of reason turning into its opposite, suggesting how the future social order is to be organised, this volume examines the moral questions raised by the 'bourgeois' character of capitalist modernity. The volume, therefore, discuses Marx's critique of rights based liberalism, especially as contained in On the Jewish Question. Human emancipation as the practical reappropriation of social power is considered as asserting the priority of the good over the right, thus inverting contemporary Rawlsian liberalism. The final section considers the political implications of Marx's approach to morality with regard to the debate between liberals and their communitarian critics. This has been one of the influential debates in recent times, especially in terms of evaluating the respective merits of individual freedom and socio-political bonds. In changing the register to individual needs and capacities within a conception of community and the good, Marx exposes the liberal emphasis upon rights to be misplaced. At the same time, the communitarian conception of 'community' and common interest is shown to be similarly vitiated by its failure to escape the abstract dualisms of individual and society characterising the liberal framework. One of the advantages of approaching Marx in terms of the modern polis democracy lies in the ability to avoid this debate by repudiating the liberal antithesis of individual and community. By such means, Marx incorporates aspects of both liberalism and communitarianism. But he does so by completely rupturing the liberal framework of rights and justice, exposing the state as an alienated social power and as an antagonistic form which imposes an abstract moral and legal code as it regulates and rationalises capitalist class relations."

Global Intellectual History, 2020

It has become evident that, rather than being entirely opposed to one another, contemporary liberalism and communitarianism share many goals. For all their criticisms of the individualism of liberal polities, most communitarians are firm supporters of civil liberties and rights. And, for all their warnings about the dangers of citizen involvement and communal sentiments in politics, most liberals would welcome a revival of civic virtue and a renewed sense of common purpose in America. But while a modicum of peace has come to the liberal—communitarian debate, important questions, of both a theoretical and practical nature, remain about how to reconcile liberal and communitarian ideals. Part of the reason that these questions arise is due to uncertainty about the fundamental aims of both liberalism and communitarianism. What, for liberalism, is the basis of our right to civil liberty? Is civil liberty merely a means to our ends? Or is it necessary for deeper reasons? And what, for communitarianism, is the ultimate basis for civic virtue? Does communitarianism seek to support any or all conceptions of civic virtue and the common good? Or is communitarianism best seen as a defense of a more or less Aristotelian conception of moral virtue, one that, in our time, can best be realized by the revival of civic virtue and communal life of certain kind? By answering these questions, this paper attempts to show how liberalism and communitarianism can be reconciled. Rather than start with abstruse theoretical conflicts between liberalism and communitarianism, the first part of this paper addresses the most pressing practical problem, the proper extent of civil liberty and state action. Most contemporary liberals defend a broad right to freedom on the grounds that a liberal state must be neutral between competing conceptions of the human good. And, on these same grounds, they argue that government must not use its powers to tax, subsidize, and regulate our activities in order to help people pursue one view of the human good rather than another. Communitarians, however, explicitly defend a non-neutral state. And they seem willing to limit human freedom in order to form citizens of a certain kind. My suggested resolution to this debate is that communitarians accept the most extensive civil liberty while liberals accept government action in support of one or another conception of the human good, so long as (1) that action is taken in as decentralized a manner as possible and (2) freedom remains unrestricted. On my view, the state may not set any limits on what we think, say, and, in the privacy of our homes, do. But, at the same time, the state can encourage, honor, and subsidize particular ways of life. In doing so, however, it must adopt the principle of subsidiarity: government endorsement of a particular conception of the good must be undertaken in as local a form of government as is consistent with the good in question. I apply this general principle—which I call the principle of freedom—to a number of contemporary debates concerning such matters as abortion, schooling, and sexual orientation. While my proposal cuts the knot of conflict between liberalism and communitarianism, it needs some defense. The second part of the paper argues that the principle of freedom rests on the notion that human beings have the capacity, in both our political and individual lives, to pursue a reasoned account of human nature, the human good, and our own good here and now. I suggest that we think of reasoning about the human good as a fallible, empirical activity. There are no guarantees that any features of human nature are broad enough and widely enough shared to sustain an account of the human good. Nor are their any guarantees that we will reach consensus about the human good. But we do not need such guarantees in order to explore questions of our own nature and our good. Nor do we need consensus in order for reasoning about the human good to be productive of individual and political and social enlightenment. Moreover, the mere possibility of reasoning about the human good mandates that we have the freedom, in both our individual and collective lives, to examine and test different conceptions of a good life. This freedom is most likely to be found, I argue, when we protect the most extensive civil liberty to express our ideas and to do as we please in our private lives and when local and regional governments can support a particular conception of the good life. In the third part of my paper, I examine two important consequence of my proposed reconciliation of liberalism and communitarianism. I argue, first, that communitarians should not see community and civic virtue as ends in themselves. Liberals, I argue, are quite right to think that civic virtue and a communal spirit can lead to trouble. Trouble can arise, as liberals have pointed out, when the pursuit of civic virtue and community takes illiberal forms or leads to the kinds of conflicts that cannot easily be constrained in a liberal polity. It can also arise, however, when community and a civic spirit make it more rather than less difficult for human beings to lead a fulfilling life. Community and civic virtue are only defensible ideals when they take a form that helps human beings live a good life. If they accept the principle of freedom, communitarians will be pluralists, who value a wide range of experiments in community. But while, as a matter of principle, communitarians should allow for the greatest variety of conceptions of civic virtue and communal solidarity, they should not be reluctant to express their preferences for one idea of virtue and community over another. They should, in other words, encourage free people to choose well and wisely. There is no principled way to accomplish that task, however. If reasoning about the human good is a fallible, empirical activity, then we cannot know in advance what kinds of troubles will result from our pursuit of civic virtue and community. Nor is there any algorithm than can tell us when even attractive forms of communitarianism—those that might help people sustain a fulfilling way of life—can threaten the central ideals of liberalism. For, we should not kid ourselves: there are likely to be tensions between individual and collective freedom, and thus between civil liberty and the pursuit of a good polity and society. In the principle of freedom, I propose a clear line between what we might call the communitarian good and the liberal right. But, while helpful, no such line can solve all our problems. It cannot warn us when political and social institutions and practices meant to realize a good life are likely to set off a movement that threaten our freedoms. Nor can it tell us what kinds of communitarianism are likely to help us live better lives. So, the second consequence of my reconciliation of liberalism and communitarianism is the recognition that, in any sound political theory, principles must be supplemented by prudence or practical wisdom. Finally, if we are to defend an account of reasoning about the human good that supports the principle of freedom and makes room for prudence, and we need a sound philosophical psychology or anthropology. Thus I agree with Michael Sandel in holding that some view of human action and of human desires underlies our conception of the task of politics. But, in the fourth part of this paper, I sketch a philosophical psychology that transcends the difference between the two views he presents in Democracy’s Discontent. The self, I argue, is neither entirely prior to its ends nor entirely defined by its ends. Rather I see the self as capable of both the discovery of our deepest ends and the invention of new ways of life that best enable us to satisfy those ends. The self is, in other words, a product of an intertwining of nature and culture. As we seek our own good, we also search for the best way to understand how our ends are the product of both nature and culture. Precisely because we can do this, however, we can stand apart from our ends and evaluate them from a distance. We are not so constituted by our ends that distance from them is impossible. Nor are we capable of a standing so far from our ends that they lose all importance. It is the tension between what we are by nature and by culture that creates the occasions for and the possibility of distance. And it is the congruence between what we are by nature and by culture that makes our way of life inescapably important to us.

Political Theory, 2010

Contemporary political philosophers discuss the idea of freedom in terms of two distinctions: Berlin's famous distinction between negative and positive liberty, and Skinner and Pettit's divide between liberal and republican liberty. In this essay I proceed to recast the debate by showing that there are two strands in liberalism, Hobbesian and Lockean, and that the latter inherited its conception of civil liberty from republican thought. I also argue that the contemporary debate on freedom lacks a perspicuous account of the various conceptions of freedom, mainly because it leaves aside the classic contrast between natural liberty and civil liberty. Once we consider both the negative/positive distinction and the natural/civil one, we can classify all conceptions of freedom within four basic irreducible categories. In light of the resulting framework I show that there are two distinct conceptions of republican liberty, natural and civil, and that the former is coupled with an ideal of individual self-control.