An unresolved problem: freedom across lifetimes

Philosophical Studies, Aug 2016

Freedom is one of the central values in political and moral philosophy. A number of theorists hold that freedom (or, relatedly, opportunity) should either be the only or at least one of the central distribuenda in our theories of distributive justice. Moreover, many follow Mill and hold that a concern for personal freedom should guide, and limit, how paternalist public policy can be. For the most part, theorists have focussed on a person’s freedom at one specific point in time but have failed to give proper attention to freedom across time. Given that we care about personal freedom now, we have reason to care about future freedom too. But what kind of distribution of freedom across a person’s lifetime should we promote as a matter of legislation and public policy? I argue that none of the candidate principles for the distribution of freedom across time is plausible. Neither a starting gate view, nor a maximisation nor a sufficientarian view is satisfactory, because none adequately reflects our various reasons to value freedom. I show that this result presents a tough challenge for theories of distributive justice and paternalism that set great store by personal freedom.

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An unresolved problem: freedom across lifetimes

Philos Stud An unresolved problem: freedom across lifetimes Andreas T. Schmidt 0 0 Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen , Oude Boteringestraat 52, 9712 GL Groningen , Netherlands Freedom is one of the central values in political and moral philosophy. A number of theorists hold that freedom (or, relatedly, opportunity) should either be the only or at least one of the central distribuenda in our theories of distributive justice. Moreover, many follow Mill and hold that a concern for personal freedom should guide, and limit, how paternalist public policy can be. For the most part, theorists have focussed on a person's freedom at one specific point in time but have failed to give proper attention to freedom across time. Given that we care about personal freedom now, we have reason to care about future freedom too. But what kind of distribution of freedom across a person's lifetime should we promote as a matter of legislation and public policy? I argue that none of the candidate principles for the distribution of freedom across time is plausible. Neither a starting gate view, nor a maximisation nor a sufficientarian view is satisfactory, because none adequately reflects our various reasons to value freedom. I show that this result presents a tough challenge for theories of distributive justice and paternalism that set great store by personal freedom. Freedom; Liberty; Aggregation; Paternalism; Positive and negative liberty; Distributive justice; Equality of opportunity Mill 1 Introduction I’ve been lookin’ for freedom. I’ve been lookin’ so long. I’ve been lookin’ for freedom. Still the search goes on. David Hasselhoff. Freedom is a fundamentally important ideal, yet, as David Hasselhoff observes, its nature is so elusive one can spend a long time looking for it. One well-known reason for this is that different concepts might be employed to spell out ‘freedom’.1 In this article, I add a different and often overlooked challenge for invoking freedom in normative political theorising: even if we settle on a particular concept and conception of socio-political freedom at a particular point in time, this does not by itself tell us what kind of distribution of freedom we should seek across time. It seems that if we have reason to care about a person’s freedom now, we also have reason to care about her future freedom. However, how much and what kind of freedom a person has in the future depends, among other things, on her very own decisions, on how she exercises her freedom. This article is about the intrapersonal, crosstemporal distribution of freedom (henceforth just intrapersonal distribution). Specifically, I discuss what kind of distribution of freedom across persons’ lives we should promote as a matter of legislation and public policy. This article ultimately ends with a negative result: none of the prima facie plausible candidates for a standard for the intrapersonal distribution is plausible. This means we should either be less confident about the role of freedom as a value in political theory or we should intensify our search for a plausible standard for the intrapersonal distribution of freedom. This result has important implications, as it presents a tough theoretical challenge for normative political theories that set great store by personal freedom. First, a number of theorists argue that freedom should be one of the central distribuenda in a theory of distributive justice. However, without an account of the intrapersonal distribution of freedom, such theories remain strongly underspecified. Second, how paternalist interferences affect a person’s future freedom is often thought be an important consideration in the justification of paternalism. Yet without an account of the appropriate intrapersonal distribution of freedom, the precise relationship between freedom and paternalism remains somewhat unclear. Given the importance of this question, it is surprising that—to my knowledge—only one systematic attempt has been made to theorise personal freedom across time (Carter 2013) .2 I start by outlining how the intrapersonal distribution of freedom matters for freedom-based theories of distributive justice and paternalism (Sect. 2). In Sect. 3, I distinguish between a person’s freedom at a point in time and its intrapersonal distribution and explain how this distinction matters for discussions of paternalism. In Sect. 4, I discuss different standards for intrapersonal distribution and show that none is plausible. In Sect. 5, I return to freedom-based theories of distributive justice and paternalism. 1 One of the classic sources is (Berlin 1969b) . See Carter et al. (2007) for an anthology of the many different concepts and conceptions of freedom. 2 Although Fleurbaey (2005) writes on a related question to do with opportunities across time. 2 Justice and paternalism Before delving into the theoretical arguments of this article, let me add some context by outlining two debates for w (...truncated)


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Andreas T. Schmidt. An unresolved problem: freedom across lifetimes, Philosophical Studies, 2016, pp. 1413-1438, Volume 174, Issue 6, DOI: 10.1007/s11098-016-0765-5