Theories of Freedom

I present a diversity of theories of freedom which I compare and contrast. I begin with a brief summary of my own recently published theory, which I show to be superior to the other theories considered. I find that there are various weaknesses or errors in the other theories and that my own theory is the only one that gives an adequate explanation of why freedom, or a free society, is desirable.

I argue that a powers-based metaphysics radically reconfigures the existing free will problematic. This is different from claiming that such an approach solves the ill-conceived problems that emerge from Humean-Kantian default commitments.

Freedom, liberty and rights are terms that long have suffered from vagueness that allows a host of differing interpretations, most of them ideological and overly simplistic. Good, serious modeling descriptions of those terms would not overlook the necessary complexity involved in these social interactions. MacCallum’s idea of (political and social) triadic freedom is here extended to include resources, ability, externalities, benefits to the exerciser, and reasons for non-interference. Interference is described as a subset of freedoms with significant externalities. A right (...) is then described as a compound of a freedom protected by interferences. This provides a basis for the analysis of the game-theoretic economics of rights and when they will be produced. (shrink)

Este artículo brinda algunas respuestas y alternativas a ciertos problemas y propuestas en el área de la teoría democrática. El ensayo tiene como enfoque la cuestión de distinguir sistemas que pueden parecer democráticos sin serlo de sistemas realmente democráticos. Develando algunos actores disfrazados del discurso democrático en América Latina, el artículo argumenta que es preferible la regla de la mayoría como base para la identificación del bien común por medio del interés general, que reglas de minorías, consentimiento total o bases (...) constitucionales opuestas al gobierno de la mayoría. Esto se hace sin desestimar a las minorías ni las constituciones, ni lo ideal de la unanimidad. Simplemente las ubica. La investigación incluye una nueva respuesta al problema de la supuesta irracionalidad de la democracia identificada originalmente por Platón y después formalizada por Arrow. (shrink)

Our initial aim is to characterize, in a manner more precise than before, what John Rawls calls the “analytical” method of arrival at a list of basic liberties. As we understand it, this method employs one or more general conditions that, under any just social order whatever, putative entitlements must meet in order for them to be among the basic liberties encompassed, within some just social order, by Rawls’s first principle of justice (i.e., the liberty principle). We then argue that (...) the general conditions that feature in Rawls’s own version of the analytical method, which employ the notion of necessity, are too stringent. They ultimately fail to deliver as basic certain particular liberties that, we argue, should be encompassed within any fully adequate scheme of liberties. In order to address this shortcoming, we provide a significantly amended, disjunctive, general condition. This replaces Rawls’s necessity condition with a probabilistic condition and it also appeals to the principle of legitimacy. We defend our new approach both as apt to feature in applications of the analytical method and as adequately grounded in justice as fairness as Rawls articulates the theory’s fundamental ideas. (shrink)

Strong notions of free will are closely connected to the possibility to do otherwise as well as to an agent's ability to causally influence her environment via her decisions controlling her actions. In this paper we employ techniques from the causal modeling literature to investigate whether a notion of free will subscribing to one or both of these requirements is compatible with naturalistic views of the world such as non-reductive physicalism to the background of determinism and indeterminism. We argue that (...) from a causal modeler’s perspective the only possibility to get both requirements consists in subscribing to reductive physicalism and indeterminism. (shrink)

Medieval authors generally agreed that we have the freedom to choose among alternative possibilities. But most medieval authors also thought that there are situations in which one cannot do otherwise, not even will otherwise. They also thought when willing necessarily, the will remains free. The questions, then, are what grounds the necessity or contingency of the will’s acts, and – since freedom is not defined by the ability to choose – what belongs to the essential character of freedom, the ratio (...) libertatis. This article studies medieval theories of freedom without choice from William of Auxerre to William of Ockham and their background in Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux. (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)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Why Free Will is Real, by ListChristian. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. ix + 216.

In this article, I set out to prove that if, by following this basic intuition, we correctly understand human nature and organize our world according to the principle of cooperation, we can arrive at a world of social harmony. The current disharmony in the world, which can be observed especially in the field of politics and economics, is largely related to the erroneous modern Western philosophical assertions identifying the human being with an individual moved by desires and the will to (...) power, and the phenomenon of life with an endless conflict. These misconceptions have enormous practical implications on the picture of today’s world. I want to show that cooperation is an integral part of human nature, and that the society organized according to the requirements of our nature can become a truly harmonious and happy society. (shrink)

Some philosophers contend that concomitant ignorance preserves moral responsibility for wrongdoing. An agent is concomitantly ignorant with respect to wrongdoing if and only if her ignorance is non-culpable, but she would freely have performed the same action if she were not ignorant. I, however, argue that concomitant ignorance excuses. I show that leading accounts of moral responsibility imply that concomitant ignorance excuses, and I debunk the view that concomitant ignorance preserves moral responsibility.

This article is a review of the contemporary ‘leftist’ republican project. The project stands on two legs, and we examine them both in turn. The first leg is a novel reading of history. This reading suggests, on the one hand that, contrary to some popular assumptions, republicanism does have a leftist, even a radical stream. But on the other hand, it also suggests that several authors and movements that did not self-identify as republicans actually did, in fact, employ a characteristically (...) republican thinking. The second leg of the project is a normative one. It is essentially an attempt by political philosophers to demonstrate that there is something in republican theory from which all these leftist, even radical streams spring forth. Primarily, it is suggested that it is republicanism’s sensitivity to the freedom-restricting role of great inequalities of power that provides the normative resource for the development of a characteristically republican critique of capital and capitalism. We briefly review the main arguments in favor of these claims, and also, as a conclusion, raise a few challenges that the ‘leftist’ republican project potentially faces. (shrink)

Finally published 34 years after his death, Foucault's book Confessions of the Flesh sheds new light on the debate about freedom and power that shaped the reception of his works. Many contributors to this debate argue that Foucault's theory of power did not allow for freedom in the 'genealogical phase,' but that he corrected himself and presented a solution to the problem of freedom in his later works, especially through his reflection on ancient ethics and technologies of the self in (...) volumes two and three of History of Sexuality, as well as the concept of parrhesia. In contrast to this view, I argue that Confessions of the Flesh shows that a concept of freedom as self-critical hermeneutics that aims at identifying a foreign power within the subject was only developed in Foucault's analysis of Christian practices of penance and confession. This interpretation of Confessions of the Flesh opens a new field of inquiry into the genealogy of critique and both the repressive and emancipative effects of truth-telling and juridification. (shrink)

Cualquier propuesta de alternativa a la democracia representativa, sea para mejorarla, sea para sustituirla por otro tipo de forma política, debería de tomar en cuenta dos tipos de restricciones para que la alternativa en cuestión tenga mayores probabilidades de éxito. Al primer grupo de restricciones los llamaremos factores limitantes de la conducta humana, mientras que al segundo grupo los llamaremos funciones impropias de esa forma política, es decir, las funciones que no debería tener. Tanto los factores limitantes de la conducta (...) humana como las funciones impropias de una forma política son restricciones sobre lo que realmente, es decir, no utópicamente, podríamos hacer para mejorar a la democracia y en general a la gobernabilidad de las sociedades. Esas restricciones, que a continuación señalaré, constituyen los argumentos que me llevan a plantear la siguiente tesis: la democracia representativa puede y debe ser mejorada al reducir su alcance económico, político y social, pero continúa siendo una mejor opción de gobierno que cualquier alternativa, incluyendo la demarquía. (shrink)

Niels Jørgen Cappelørn, Alastair Hannay, Bruce H Kirmmse, David D Possen, Joel D S Rasmussen, and Vanessa Rumble working with the Princeton University Press and the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen have produced this huge work with facsimiles etc. The review comments on Kierkegaard's shrewd observations which are applicable today in the New Media World of information skews in a COVID 19 world. Further; Kierkegaard's attack against mediocrity is commented on. This review finds Kierkegaard on St (...) Augustine of Hippo as immature. It is another thing that Kierkegaard's observations and this reviewer's extrapolations from them are not yet part of the New Media Studies's mostly platitude-filled webinars. How long will we go on about Marshall McLuhan? At least let us now learn from that most sharp of ironists: that the Press will be the Press and its mostly about optics. One wonders still how, Kierkegaard misread so much Augustine? Well, no man is an island and Kierkegaard tried to be an anonymous Christian. An impossibility. (shrink)

While the image of the slave as the antithesis of the freeman is central to republican freedom, it is striking to note that slaves themselves have not contributed to how this condition is understood. The result is a one-sided conception of both freedom and slavery, which leaves republicanism unable to provide an equal and robust protection for historically outcast people. I draw on the work of Frederick Douglass – long overlooked as a significant contributor to republican theory – to show (...) one way why this is so. Focusing the American Revolution, the subsequent republican government established new political institutions to maintain the collective interests of the whole population. The political revolution was held in place by processes of public reason that reflected the values and ideas of the people that had rebelled. The black population, however, had not been part of this revolution. After emancipation, black Americans were required to accept terms of citizenship that had already been defined, leaving them socially dominated, subject to the prejudices and biases within the prevailing ideas of public discourse. Douglass argued that republican freedom under law is always dependent on a more fundamental revolution, that he calls a ‘radical revolution in thought’, in which the entire system of social norms and practices are reworked together by members of all constituent social groups – women and men, black and white, rich and poor – so that it reflects a genuinely collaborative achievement. Only then can we begin the republican project of contestatory freedom as independence or non-domination that today’s republicans take for granted. (shrink)

Urban animals can benefit from living in cities, but this also makes them vulnerable as they increasingly depend on the advantages of urban life. This article has two aims. First, I provide a detailed analysis of the concept of captivity and explain why it matters to nonhuman animals—because and insofar as many of them have a (non-substitutable) interest in freedom. Second, I defend a surprising implication of the account—pushing the boundaries of the concept while the boundaries of cities and human (...) activities expand. I argue for the existence of the neglected problem of pervasive captivity, of which urban wildlife is an illustration. Many urban animals are confined, controlled and dependent, therefore often captive of expanding urban areas. While I argue that captivity per se is value-neutral, I draw the ethical and policy implications of harmful pervasive captivity. (shrink)

Liberal and republican conceptions of freedom differ as to whether freedom consists in noninterference or non-domination. Pettit defends the republican non-domination conception on the grounds that one can be unfree without being interfered with if one is dominated, and that one can be interfered with yet free if not dominated. I show that these claims mistake the scope of actual interference. In particular, I show that cases said to involve unfreedom without interference do involve interference, and that cases said to (...) involve freedom despite interference— in particular, cases involving government regulations—are cases in which some interference is outweighed by protection from even greater interference. The liberal noninterference conception of freedom, therefore, can account for what Pettit claims can only be accounted for by freedom as non-domination. (shrink)

A standard liberal claim is that freedom of choice is not only instrumentally valuable but also intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable for its own sake. I argue that each one of five conditions is plausible if freedom of choice is intrinsically valuable. Yet there exists a counter-example to the conjunction of these conditions. Hence freedom of choice is not intrinsically valuable.

Hawthorne toys with the view that ascriptions of free will are context-sensitive. But the way he formulates the view makes freedom contextualism look like a non-starter. I step into the breach for freedom contextualism. My aim is twofold. On the one hand, I argue that freedom contextualism can be motivated on the basis of our ordinary practice of freedom attribution is not ad hoc. The view explains data which cannot be accounted for by an ambiguity hypothesis. On the other hand, (...) I suggest a more plausible freedom contextualist analysis, which emerges naturally once we pair the assumption that freedom requires that the agent could have acted otherwise with a plausible semantics of "can" statements. I'll dub the resulting view Alternate Possibilities Contextualism, or APC, for short. In contrast to Hawthorne's view, APC is well-motivated in its own right, does not beg the question against the incompatibilist and delivers a context parameter which allows for a wide range of context shifts. I conclude that, far from being a non-starter, freedom contextualism sets an agenda worth pursuing. (shrink)

In the Preface to the Discourses Machiavelli laments that the greatness of the ancients is “rather admired than imitated” by his contemporaries and expresses the belief that recurring to past examples would be most beneficial to those interested in “ordering republics, maintaining states, governing kingdoms, ordering the military and administering war, judging subjects, and increasing empire” (D I 2.2). Machiavelli is indeed persuaded that the laws governing human nature are unchangeable, and that the ancients can be imitated, since the causes (...) for their actions and the reasons for their choices are the same that determine the conduct of the contemporaries. Thus, an analysis of Titus Livy’s work on the Roman republic might shed light on the weaknesses and strengths of existing governments and encourage men to the emulation of past greatness. More specifically, such an analysis would make clear that the greatness of Rome lied in that both the city and its citizens enjoyed a high level of freedom. In fact, the city had sovereign power over itself and other cities, rather than being ruled by others. Besides, no social group had enough power to overcome the others: people were able to foster their interests by participating in the civic life of the city and by protesting against those public decisions which they found contrary to their interests. But what did this freedom exactly consist in? In other words, does Machiavelli conceive freedom as non-interference, or rather as non-domination, by others? Moreover, does he consider participation and contestation as constitutive of liberty, or rather instrumental to it? In this paper, I will first present Philip Pettit’s account of three alternative conceptions of liberty and indicate which of them might have been endorsed by Machiavelli. I will then consider the issue of contestations and tumults and of their role within the polity. I will argue not only that Machiavelli endorses a republican view of freedom but also that, in contrast to Pettit, he maintains contestations and tumults to be instrumental to freedom, rather than constitutive of it. I will conclude by claiming that Machiavelli’s and Pettit’s different stance on the value of tumults and contestations reflects the kind of freedom as non-domination in which they are interested in. Pettit supports a more democratic form of republicanism, in which not only groups but also individuals must be able to contest given decisions. By contrast, Machiavelli endorses a republicanism in which power must be distributed among different political figures within a polity. Dissensions are seen as a means for one of these figures, i.e. the multitude, to raise its voice when its interests are damaged by public decisions. In Machiavelli’s view, the end to which a state should aim is to be great, for which it needs to be free only at the collective level. Different means might be employed in order to realise this aim. Tumults are just one of them: the one that made Rome a great city, worthy of being imitated. (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 paper sketches a new version of the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics, the clustered-minds multiverse, that has been presented in detail elsewhere. It briefly shows why it grants us with free will and reflects upon the possibilty of singular-universe explanations of free will. It also critically comments upon S. Sarasvathy's 'choice matters,' one of the other contributions to this mini symposium.

Foucault's theory of power and subjectification challenges common concepts of freedom in social philosophy and expands them through the concept of 'freedom as critique': Freedom can be defined as the capability to critically reflect one's own subjectification, and the conditions of possibility for this critical capacity lie in political and social institutions. The article develops this concept through a critical discussion of the standard response by Foucault interpreters to the standard objection that Foucault's thinking obscures freedom. The standard response interprets (...) Fou-cault's later works, especially The Subject and Power, as a solution to the problem of freedom. It is mistaken, because it conflates different concepts of freedom that are present in Foucault's work. By differentiating these concepts, this paper proposes a new institutionalist approach to solve the problem of freedom that breaks with the partly anarchist underpinnings of Foucault scholarship: As freedom as critique is not given, but itself a result of subjectification, it entails a demand for 'modal robustness' and must therefore be institutionalized. This approach helps to draw out the consequences of Foucault's thinking on freedom for postfoundationalist democratic theory and the general social-philosophical discussion on freedom. (shrink)

Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been interpreted as a general warning against state intervention in the economy.1 We review this argument in conjunction with Hayek’s later work and discern an institutional thesis about which forms of state intervention and economic institutions could threaten personal and political freedom. Economic institutions pose a threat if they allow for coercive interventions, as described by Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty: by giving someone the power to force others to serve one’s will by (...) threatening to inflict harm, in the absence of general rules of conduct. According to the logic of the argument, welfare-state provisions are not coercive insofar as they do not allow the identification and discriminatory treatment of individuals. By contrast, we claim that a structure of coercion is likely to emerge from the command-and-control nature of protectionist institutions and immigration restrictions currently advocated by the radical right. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a form of free will fallibilism. Unlike the free will realist who is fully persuaded that we have sufficient evidence of freedom to justify holding individuals morally responsible for what they do and imposing punishment, and unlike the free will skeptic who is fully persuaded that we do not have enough evidence to believe that we face a future of open alternatives, the free will fallibilist will believe that we have enough evidence to justify a (...) belief in freedom for some purposes but not for others. Along the way I argue that deliberation-compatibilism of the sort recently defended by Pereboom is subject to a very familiar sort of counterexample. The question that concerns me the most is whether punishment—this brutal institution that disposes of the lives of countless of our most vulnerable citizens—can be justified. I think it cannot, precisely because there is not sufficient evidence that human beings are free to choose between branching alternatives and so deserve to be treated like that. At least, if there is such justifying evidence it is more or less completely balanced by evidence that all events including human actions have causes. Moreover, I find compatibilism utterly unpersuasive. At the same time, I believe that I am a free agent; what I do is in large part up to me. I believe that the explanation of action cannot be reduced to causal explanation, and I believe that the logic of action requires a notion of branching time. I have two pictures of the universe; which of the two pictures I may rely upon will depend upon just what it is that I intend to do. Between the problem that preoccupies me, punishment, and my day-to-day choices, there is a wide gap. There are a lot of choices that, on the axis of justification, fall in between the two, many of them choices about how to treat those around us: whether to snub a friend who has insulted me, whether to castigate her, whether to reward a kind act with praise. Where to draw the line is a topic for another paper. The only principle that right now seems to me firm enough to act upon is this: the greater the likelihood of doing harm, the less likely the choice is to be justified. (shrink)

In this article, I query whether participation in the labour market can hinder neo-republican freedom as non-domination. I briefly present the view of Philip Pettit on the topic, based on the distinction between offering a reward and threatening a punishment. I compare it to the analysis of labour republicans, recently reconstructed by Alex Gourevitch, according to whom, the exclusion of a group of individuals from the control of productive assets represents a form of structural domination. Then, I explain why I (...) take a position that is different from both. I hold that capitalist structural domination leads only to exploitation, not interpersonal domination. In doing this, I consider two objections that might be raised against my argument. The first one is based on incomplete contracts and on a possible ideal benchmark for job offers. The second one challenges the supposed arbitrariness of unequal property relations within the capitalist social system. (shrink)

For those who maintain that free will is incompatible with causal determinism, a persistent problem is to give a coherent characterization of action that is neither determined by prior events nor random, arbitrary, lucky or in some way insufficiently under the control of the agent to count as free action. One approach—that of Roderick Chisholm and others—is to say that a third alternative is for an action to be caused by an agent in a way that is not reducible to (...) event causal terms. A different approach than the Chisholmian appeal to primitive substance causation is one that, instead, involves causal relations purely among events. This paper presents a particular event-causal indeterminist account of free action, describing both its attractions and recent objections to it, and then proposes a revised version, with the aim of supporting the plausibility of an event-causal indeterminist approach to free will. (shrink)

Robert Kane’s libertarian theory of freedom is frequently attacked in the free will literature by the “luck objection”. Alfred Mele’s articulation of the objection is a very influential formulation as it captures the spirit of Kane’s critics and their complaint with Kane’s view. Mele argues that without a contrastive explanation that highlights aspects of the agent their free choices are reducible to luck. I argue that the lack of a contrastive explanation does not establish that there is no explanation for (...) self-forming actions. Building on the explanation that Kane offers in his rebuttal, I claim that there are neglected dimensions to Kane’s view that, when put together, mitigate the force of the objection. These elements are value experiments, teleological intelligibility and liberum arbitrium voluntatis. I claim that through adopting a narrative view of the self, we can place value experiments in a broader teleological framework that allows us to see self-forming choices are not just a matter of luck. (shrink)

This edited volume focuses on what Hannah Arendt famously called “the raison d’être of politics”: freedom. The unique collection of essays clarifies her flagship idea of political freedom in relation to other key Arendtian themes such as liberation, revolution, civil disobedience, and the right to have rights. -/- In addressing these, contributors to this volume juxtapose Arendt with a number of thinkers from Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls and Philip Pettit to Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon and Geoffroy de Lagasnerie. They also (...) consider the continuing relevance of Arendt’s work to some of the most dramatic events in recent years, including the current global refugee crisis, the Arab uprisings of the 2010s, and the ongoing crisis of liberal democracy in the West and beyond. -/- Contributors include Keith Breen, Joan Cocks, Tal Correm, Christian J. Emden, Patrick Hayden, Kei Hiruta, Anthony F. Lang Jr., Shmuel Lederman, Miriam Leonard, Natasha Saunders, William Smith, and Shiyu Zhang. (shrink)

This book sets out to re-examine the foundations of Thomas Hobbes’s political philosophy, and to develop a Hobbesian normative theory of international relations. Its central thesis is that two concepts – anarchy and authority – constitute the core of Hobbes's political philosophy whose aim is to justify the state. The Hobbesian state is a type of authority (juridical, public, coercive, and supreme) which emerges under conditions of anarchy ('state of nature'). A state-of-nature argument makes a difference because it justifies authority (...) without appeal to moral obligation. The book shows that the closest analogue of a Hobbesian authority in international relations is Kant's confederation of free states, where states enjoy 'anarchical' (equal) freedom. At present, this crucial form of freedom is being threatened by economic processes of globalisation, and by the resurgence of private authority across state borders. (shrink)

Libertarians in the contemporary free will debate find themselves under attack from two angles. They face the challenge of defending the necessity of indeterminism for freedom against the philosophical mainstream position of compatibilism. And second, they are increasingly forced to argue for the very possibility of indeterministic free will, in the face of the so-called luck objection. Many contemporary libertarians try to overcome the second problem by adopting the causal theory of action. We argue that this move at the same (...) time undermines their ability to answer the first challenge. On the basis of this, we suggest that CTA might be a theory of action that is biased towards compatibilism. We thus argue that the best strategy for the libertarian is to insist that intentional action itself requires indeterminism. Recent agent-causal accounts offer a promising way of developing such an alternative libertarianism, but we argue that they currently suffer from problems similar to the ones we identify for the event-causalist. If we are correct, then this has an important implication for the contemporary free will debate: action theory should take centre stage. (shrink)

I present some aspects of Sein und Zeit’s phenomenology of possibility as a key feature of Heidegger’s theoretical confrontation with the crisis of European culture. I draw from paragraphs 73-74 for an inquiry into the relation between possibility and historicity within the structure of the Dasein. Specifically, I consider the concept of repetition in light of Heidegger’s idea that authentic historicity is to be grounded in temporality. Many interpreters found the concept of repetition to be the mark of a conservative (...) conception of history. However, I argue that this is not the case. The concrete act of repetition involves all moments of the temporal horizon – even the future. If we can find our concrete possibilities of action only within our contingent historical situation, the act of repetition is always also a decision for a certain contingent future. This future is radically unpredictable. It is neither identical to the (repeated) possibility of the past, nor definable through rigid normative laws or dogmatic political positions. I then examine the concept of being-towards-death as a heuristic instrument for the task of historical decision. I argue that this ontological structure allows for a critical use of Sein und Zeit’s fundamental ontology. By deciding towards our death, we decide towards the entirety of our existence. This decision is a possible response to the crisis of culture: in front of the rationalization, the atomization and disenchantment of our experience of the world, we can react by perpetually trying to invent new possible forms of reconciliation between the values of our historical Gemeinschaft and the essential novelty of the future. I conclude by presenting Richir’s Phénoménologie et Institution symbolique as an elaboration of this suggestion and as a path for a possible renewal of Heidegger’s critical phenomenology of possibility. (shrink)

A prominent objection to non-cognitive moral bio-enhancements is that they would compromise the recipient’s ‘freedom to fall’. I begin by discussing some ambiguities in this objection, before outlining an Aristotelian reading of it. I suggest that this reading may help to forestall Persson and Savulescu’s ‘God-Machine’ criticism; however, I suggest that the objection still faces the problem of explaining why the value of moral conformity is insufficient to outweigh the value of the freedom to fall itself. I also question whether (...) the objection is compatible with Neil Levy’s parity principle. Accordingly, I go on to consider an alternative relational freedom-based objection to NCMBEs that aims to explain the fundamental moral importance of the freedom that NCMBEs would violate. I argue that although this strategy might allow the critic of NCMBEs to bypass a powerful criticism of Harris’ objection, it also weakens the freedom-based objection’s compatibility with the parity principle. (shrink)

Wie können Freiheit und Widerstand innerhalb von Foucaults Theorie der Macht und Subjektivierung konzipiert werden? Karsten Schubert liefert die erste systematische Rekonstruktion der sozialphilosophischen Debatte um Freiheit bei Foucault und eine neue Lösung für das Freiheitsproblem: Freiheit als die Fähigkeit zur reflexiven Kritik der eigenen Subjektivierung – kurz: Freiheit als Kritik – ist das Resultat von freiheitlicher Subjektivierung in politischen Institutionen. Der Band zeigt so die Konsequenzen von Foucaults Freiheitsdenken für die Demokratietheorie und die allgemeine sozialphilosophische Freiheitsdiskussion auf.

In der Debatte um Freiheit bei Foucault wird das „Freiheitsproblem“ verhandelt: Wie können Freiheit und Widerstand innerhalb von Foucaults Theorie der Macht und Subjektivierung konzipiert werden? Der Aufsatz leistet eine Rekonstruktion und interne Kritik der besten Interpretationsstrategien von Foucaults Werk, die die Lösung dieses Problems zum Ziel haben, und entwickelt dabei eine neue These: Freiheit als Fähigkeit zur reflexiven Kritik der eigenen Subjektivierung ist abhängig von freiheitlicher Subjektivierung durch politische Institutionen. Die Interpretationsstrategien werden systematisch unterschieden und anhand der Arbeiten exemplarischer (...) Vertreter_innen diskutiert: 1. Foucault ist kohärent, 2. Foucault korrigiert sich, 3. Foucault kritisiert kohärent, 4. Foucault ist nicht genug. Gegen Lemke wird argumentiert, dass Freiheit nicht durch eine anarchistische, sondern nur durch eine institutionalistische Foucault-Lesart bestimmt werden kann. Mit Saar wird gezeigt, dass das Ziel einer eindeutigen Definition von Freiheit im Gegensatz zur Methode der genealogischen Kritik steht und nur im Rahmen der normativen politischen Theorie verfolgt werden kann. In Auseinandersetzung mit Allen wird argumentiert, dass Freiheit nicht in linken Bewegungen verortet werden kann, sondern nur in demokratischen Institutionen. (shrink)

Neorepublicans like Philip Pettit and Frank Lovett claim that neorepublicanism provides a superior normative research program compared to egalitarian-liberalism. Particularly, they argue that neorepublicanism offers a better justification of redistributive policies, which are normally associated with egalitarian-liberalism. According to Lovett and Pettit, the neorepublican justification is superior because it rests on parsimonious theoretical assumptions and is more suitable to persuade people of redistributive institutions. We contest these claims on the grounds of methodological and substantive moral reasons. We argue that the (...) neorepublican arguments claiming rhetorical effectiveness and parsimony rest on methodological presuppositions that reflect an unattractive understanding of political philosophy. Additionally, since neorepublicanism lacks a (thin) theory of the good, it does not provide a sufficient basis for justifying redistributive policies. (shrink)

组文章试图让我们了解我们是如何从理论上没有错觉的。在接下来的三组中,我评论了阻碍可持续世界的三个主要错觉——技术、宗教和政治合作团体。人们相信社会可以由他们拯救,所以我在书的其余部分里提出一些建议,说 明为什么通过短文和著名作家最近出版的书的评论,这是不可能的。 -/- 美国和世界正处于人口过度增长的崩溃过程中,大部分在上个世纪,现在全部归功于第三世界人民。消耗资源,增加40亿人口,将使工业文明崩溃,使饥饿、疾病、暴力和战争达到惊人的规模。数十亿将死去,核战争几乎可以 肯定。在美国,由于大规模移民和移民再生产,再加上由示威的诡计造成的虐待,这大大加速了。堕落的人性无情地把民主和多样性的梦想变成了犯罪和贫穷的恶梦。崩溃的根本原因是我们与生俱来的心理无法适应现代世界,这 导致人们把不和伦比的人当作他们有着共同的利益。再加上对基础生物学和心理学的无知,导致部分受过教育的控制民主社会的人产生社会工程错觉。很少有人明白,如果你帮助一个人,你伤害了别人——没有免费的午餐,任何 人消耗的每一件东西都会破坏无法修复的地球。因此,各地的社会政策是不可持续的,一个个、没有严格控制自私的社会将崩溃为无政府状态或独裁。如果不进行戏剧性和立即的变化,就不可能阻止美国或任何遵循民主制度的国 家的崩溃。因此,我的文章"民主的自杀"。现在很清楚,统治中国的七大社会路径正在赢得第三次世界大战,所以我的总结文章。唯一更大的威胁是人工智能,我在最后一段简要地评论了它 .

America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century, and now all of it, due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 4 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. The earth loses at least 1% of its topsoil every year, so as it nears 2100, most of its food growing capacity (...) will be gone. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America, this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a nightmare of crime and poverty. China will continue to overwhelm America and the world, as long as it maintains the dictatorship which limits selfishness. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests. The idea of human rights is an evil fantasy promoted by leftists to draw attention away from the merciless destruction of the earth by unrestrained 3rd world motherhood. This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else—there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. The most basic facts, almost never mentioned, are that there are not enough resources in America or the world to lift a significant percentage of the poor out of poverty and keep them there. The attempt to do this is bankrupting America and destroying the world. The earth’s capacity to produce food decreases daily, as does our genetic quality. And now, as always, by far the greatest enemy of the poor is other poor and not the rich. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. (shrink)

อเมริกาและโลกอยู่ในกระบวนการของการล่มสลายจากการเติบโตของประชากรมากเกินไป, ส่วนใหญ่ของมันสำหรับศตวรรษที่ผ่านมา, และตอนนี้ทั้งหมดของมัน, เนื่องจากผู้คนในโลกที่ 3. การบริโภคทรัพยากรและการเพิ่มขึ้นของ3พันล้าน๒๑๐๐จะยุบอารยธรรมอุตสาหกรรมและนำเกี่ยวกับความอดอยาก, โรค, ความรุนแรงและสงครามในขนาดส่าย. แผ่นดินโลกสูญเสียอย่างน้อย 1% ของดินในทุกปี, เพื่อให้เป็น nears ๒๑๐๐, ส่วนใหญ่ของความสามารถในการเจริญเติบโตของอาหารจะหายไป. พันล้านจะตายและสงครามนิวเคลียร์เป็นทั้งหมดแต่แน่นอน.ในอเมริกา,นี้จะถูกเร่งอย่างรุนแรงโดยคนเข้าเมืองข นาดใหญ่และอพยพการสืบพันธุ์, รวมกับการละเมิดที่ทำได้โดยประชาธิปไตย. มนุษย์จะเปลี่ยนความฝันของประชาธิปไตยและหลากหลายเป็นฝันร้ายของอาชญากรรมและความยากจน จีนจะยังคงครอบงำอเมริกาและโลกตราบเท่าที่มันรักษาระบอบเผด็จการซึ่งจำกัดความเป็นที่ต้องการ สาเหตุรากของการล่มสลายคือความไม่สามารถของจิตวิทยาของเราที่จะปรับตัวให้เข้ากับโลกสมัยใหม่ซึ่งจะนำผู้ค นให้ปฏิบัติต่อบุคคลที่ไม่เกี่ยวข้องเหมือนกับว่าพวกเขามีความสนใจร่วมกัน ความคิดของสิทธิมนุษยชนเป็นจินตนาการที่น่าสนใจที่ส่งเสริมโดย leftists ที่จะดึงความสนใจออกไปจากการทำลายความปรานีของแผ่นดินโดยไม่ยับยั้งการเป็นมารดาของโลกที่3 นี้, บวกกับความไม่รู้ของชีววิทยาพื้นฐานและจิตวิทยา, นำไปสู่วิศวกรรมทางสังคมที่ถูกลบออกของการศึกษาบางส่วนที่ควบคุมสังคมประชาธิปไตย. ไม่กี่เข้าใจว่าถ้าคุณช่วยคนคนหนึ่งที่คุณเป็นอันตรายต่อคนอื่น—ไม่มีอาหารกลางวันฟรีและทุกรายการเดียวที ่ทุกคนใช้ทำลายแผ่นดินนอกเหนือจากการซ่อมแซม. ดังนั้นนโยบายทางสังคมทุกที่จะไม่ยั่งยืนและหนึ่งโดยหนึ่งในสังคมทั้งหมดโดยไม่มีการควบคุมที่เข้มงวดในคว ามเป็นที่ต้องการจะยุบเข้าไปในความโกลาหลหรือเผด็จการ ข้อเท็จจริงพื้นฐานที่สุดเกือบจะไม่เคยกล่าวถึงว่ามีทรัพยากรไม่เพียงพอในอเมริกาหรือโลกที่จะยกระดับเปอร ์เซ็นต์ที่สำคัญของคนยากจนออกจากความยากจนและเก็บไว้ที่นั่น ความพยายามที่จะทำเช่นนี้คือ bankrupting อเมริกาและทำลายโลก ความสามารถของโลกในการผลิตอาหารลดลงทุกวัน, เช่นเดียวกับคุณภาพทางพันธุกรรมของเรา. และบัดนี้, เช่นเคย, โดยไกลศัตรูที่ยิ่งใหญ่ที่สุดของคนยากจนเป็นคนยากจนและไม่ร่ำรวย. ไม่มีการเปลี่ยนแปลงอย่างมากและทันที, มีความหวังสำหรับการป้องกันการล่มสลายของอเมริกา, หรือประเทศใดๆที่ต่อไปนี้ระบบประชาธิปไตย.

Interjú az Új Symposion örökségéről, Jugoszláviáról, a vajdasági magyarság baloldali radikális hagyományáról, az avantgárdról stb.

Liberal incompatibilism considers the causal determinism governing all events of the world as a serious obstacle to human freedom.Thus, they seek a way of protecting human freedom with one of these three different approaches: 1. Non-causal account or simple indeterminism, 2. Event causal account or indeterministic causation of events. 3. Agent causation account. In this research, we study the views of the main theorists of these three ideas and criticize them. Then, according to the definition of free will, based on (...) two principles: possible alternatives at the moment of choice and active control of the agent in relation to the act, we will show that it only the agent causation account that succeeds in providing a sensible picture of man’s freedom in action; because the other two views have neglected the role of the agent in controlling and directing action, and have reduced voluntary action merely to an accidental and random event. Agent causation refutes the monopoly of the role of causality for phenomena and claims that the agent is not only passive and affected by events occurring around him but essentially and with his causal powers is at least the creational cause for one of the mental events that initiates the process of realizing the external act. Therefore, despite causal determination, he is truly free, and the direction and control of his actions is in his hands. (shrink)