Moralized Selves: Liberty and Self-Government in the Multicultural State

Dissertation, Stanford University (2002)
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Abstract

Liberty allows some tradeoffs: freedoms can be restricted for the sake of a greater overall freedom. I argue that the process of balancing freedoms, deciding which freedoms will trump others, requires us to respect citizens' moralized selves, the specific set of cultural values they hold and their beliefs about how they came to hold those values. ;I offer a "resource-position definition of non-interference," according to which freedom is the lack of hindrance by others with our ability to use our extant resources to accomplish valued tasks. But this definition cannot tell us which freedoms we ought to protect and which to override. Instead, liberty entails an "acceptance condition," which requires that citizens must accept at least in principle any diminution of their freedom. If people have control over the political institutions by which their freedoms are restricted, then an overall system for prioritizing freedoms can be accepted by them, and hence can be legitimate. ;In short, citizens must restrict themselves autonomously. The autonomous person is characterized by "self-regulation", a general ability to regulate herself according to those values she holds to be more central while leaving unfulfilled her less central values when these two levels conflict. But, I argue, the source of those values can be both individual and interpersonal: people can embrace and revise their values on their own or in interaction with others. Autonomous persons are agentic with respect to their values, but agency comes in different forms. ;If we agree that there are different ways to live autonomously, we will be better able to address cultural demands for exemption from certain laws: even if some enforced community norms seem to take away the right to change values at the will of the individual, we need not be alarmed. Such restrictions can be consistent with liberty, so long as the community's institutions are self-governing and protect the freedoms necessary to value interpersonally. A system of liberty, after all, can justify the overriding of some freedoms for the sake of others

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