Questioning Republican Liberty
Questioning Republican Liberty: On the Conceptual Limits of Freedom as Non-Domination
I
This essay critically considers a view of freedom contained in the work of Pettit.[1] This view holds that the logical antonym of freedom is domination, where “Domination is subjection to an arbitrary power of interference on the part of another—a dominus or master—even another who chooses not actually to exercise that power.”[2] On this approach mere interference is a “secondary, conditioning evil”, whereas domination “compromises” freedom.[3] To expand: I am free if and only if I am not subject to (even the mere possibility of) being interfered with arbitrarily, but correspondingly if I am interfered with on a non-arbitrary basis then my freedom is “conditioned” but not “compromised”. What makes a specific act of interference an instance of my freedom being “conditioned” rather than “compromised” is precisely whether the interference is arbitrary, i.e. whether it is an example of domination. For example, if I live under the auspices of a non-arbitrary rule of law, then my freedom is “conditioned” by the laws that restrict (say) my available choices. By contrast, if I am ruled by the power of an arbitrary dictator then his laws “compromise” my freedom. In Pettit’s terminology in the first case I am rendered “nonfree” by the non-arbitrary laws, but in the second I am “unfree” due to the evil of domination (i.e. arbitrary power) which characterises the dictator’s laws.[4]
This view is illustrated by considering the position of slaves living under a benevolent master. Although the slaves are never actually interfered with, they still cannot be said to be free because the non-interference they enjoy rests upon the arbitrary power of their master, who at any moment could cease to be (benevolently) non-interfering. At one level, such slaves may lose their freedom by psychological self-limitation. Anticipating the possible potential actions of their masters, they take measures to prevent this: “In the traditional language, they will tend to toady and fawn, bow and scrape, placate and ingratiate—in a word, abase themselves; furthermore, they will censor everything they say and do, tailoring it to an assuaging effect”.[5] But the claim that the logical antonym of freedom is domination cuts deeper. It posits that even if a person does not know she is subject to the possibility of arbitrary interference, she is nonetheless in the position of a slave (we might say following Skinner that she is “existentially” in the condition of slavery), and is therefore unfree.[6] The mere fact, even if unbeknownst to the individual, that she lives at the whim of an arbitrary master is enough to make this true.
The example of the slave owes much to the work of Skinner, who claims to have retrieved a “neo-Roman” tradition of thinking about freedom as non-dependence upon arbitrary power.[7] Skinner has accepted Pettit’s formulation of freedom’s logical antonym being non-domination as the most accurate construal of what “neo-Roman” republican thinkers believed.[8] However, Skinner shies away from explicitly committing himself to this view of freedom, instead arguing for its cogency on behalf of its (historical) proponents.[9] This is a distinction of significance, as I hope to show.
I now consider a take on Pettit’s formulation of freedom as non-domination that I term the “uncompromising republican” position. This holds that because the logical antonym of freedom is domination, freedom just is non-domination; that insofar as one is dominated one is pro tanto unfree, and insofar as one escapes domination one is free. My aim is to cast various doubts upon this view.
II
Targeting those “who hold that not all instances of interference diminish freedom, but only those instances that are also instances of domination”, Wall deploys the counter-example of “the illiberal rule-following government.”[10] Imagine a government that is meticulously non-arbitrary in the formulation and execution of laws, but in the process enacts a huge number of regulations that interfere continuously with the day-to-day lives of citizens, such that they cannot get out of bed without their freedom being extensively “conditioned” (as Pettit would have it) by the laws of the non-arbitrary state power. Although the interference is ex hypothesi non-arbitrary, Wall suggests that such levels of interference constitute a serious offence against freedom regardless: “this government restricts the freedom of its subjects to a greater extent than a rule-following government that was more liberal. To be sure, the extra measure of interference in question is not an instance of domination, but it clearly reduces freedom.”[11]
Wall however anticipates a republican “rescue manoeuvre” based on Pettit’s distinction between freedom being “conditioned” and “compromised”:
Such interference, [the republican theorist] can say, is a conditioning factor, not a compromising factor, of freedom. This, in turn, provides him with a ready response to my counterexample. He can reply: ‘The problem with the illiberal rule-following government is not that it diminishes freedom, but rather that it reduces the range of choices over which subjects can enjoy their freedom.’[12]
Wall takes this reply to be inadequate, and deploys a counter-argument against it. This further depends upon Wall developing the (as he sees it) likely republican reply. The republican is made to say “that non-domination and ‘enjoyment of non-domination’ are constituent parts of a single value. Freedom just is the complex whole that includes both non-domination and the enjoyment of non-domination.”[13] Wall’s republican then argues that freedom is measured along two separate dimensions – ‘intensity’ and ‘extent’ – where the former refers to domination and the latter to what Wall calls “enjoyment of non-domination”.[14] Accordingly, the republican claims that freedom is diminished more by domination than by the reduction of the enjoyment of non-domination (i.e. it is worse to live under arbitrary, dominating government than under an extremely interfering but non-arbitrary government). Yet to this Wall has a powerful rejoinder. How do we balance or weigh these two constituent parts? And moreover, why is domination classed as more reductive to freedom than reduction of the enjoyment of non-domination without begging the question? Ultimately Wall sees freedom as non-domination pushed to the point of collapse:
[I]f one claims that increasing the enjoyment of non-domination should always take priority over reducing domination, then one’s view will be hard to distinguish from the view that holds that, from the standpoint of freedom, what really matters is interference and the threat of interference. In this way, freedom as non-domination would come close to collapsing into freedom as non-interference.[15]
Yet it is not clear that the republican reply must be as Wall characterises it. Consider our “uncompromising republicans” who claim that freedom just is non-domination. Wall’s counter-example relies upon an appeal to intuitions about freedom; his non-arbitrary but highly illiberal government, with its incessant interference, apparently intuitively strikes us as an example of freedom being reduced, even though the interference is not characterised by any domination. Yet the uncompromising republican might reply: so much the worse for our intuitions, for the intuitions Wall appeals to are wrong. Our uncompromising republican argues that because the logical antonym of freedom just is domination – as established by (for example) the Pettit arguments sketched above – this shows that the correct response to Wall is neither to jettison the claim that freedom just is non-domination, nor to attempt to draw subsidiary qualitative distinctions. It is to hold firm and repeat that the illiberal interfering government whilst “conditioning” freedom and offending against it in a “secondary” way is ex hypothesi not reducing (or rather “compromising”) freedom at all, and that Wall’s claim that the level of non-arbitrary interference “clearly reduces freedom” is a bare assertion he is not entitled to. That is, the republican acknowledges that her position is counter-intuitive – but concludes that our intuitions are at fault.
I will return to this uncompromising republican reply, but first I wish to consider a separate criticism of freedom as non-domination levelled by Kramer.[16] Kramer hypothesises a community, the population of which lives alongside a giant who is larger, swifter, stronger and more intelligent than them all. This giant could arbitrarily subjugate the people, if he so desired. However (Kramer insists) the giant is gentle; despite being fully aware that he has the capacity to become a dominator he “loathes the idea of becoming a tyrant; his principle desire is to seclude himself altogether from his community.”[17] Kramer takes the gentle giant to be a counter-example to the view that the mere possibility of arbitrary interference reduces one to the status of a slave who is therefore in a condition of unfreedom. Because the giant is gentle and has no inclination whatsoever to dominate his compatriots, Kramer claims it is wrong to say that the giant dominates the people, or that they are unfree.
Skinner offers an illuminating reply. He notes that for the republican holding that domination is the logical antonym of freedom the mere possibility that the giant could interfere with the people is all that matters – the fact that he is not inclined to do so is irrelevant. If it were the case that the giant really offered “no prospect” of interfering with the people – “if this were somehow rendered impossible” – then the republican is happy to say that the giant does not reduce liberty at all: “the community is wholly free, for it is wholly free of the giant’s arbitrary power”.[18] By contrast, if there remains even the mere possibility that the giant could arbitrarily interfere “then the republican will want to insist that the community is wholly enslaved”.[19] After all, and as we saw earlier, if the logical antonym of freedom is domination then one is rendered unfree (and is “existentially” a slave) simply by being subject to arbitrary power. This remains so even if the potential dominator shows no inclination to dominate whatsoever.
Yet this rejoinder carries a high a price. If the logical antonym of freedom is domination, and one is rendered unfree by the mere possibility of being dominated, this has surprising upshots. Notably, every adult woman presently in a consenting relationship with a stronger man must properly said to be dominated by that man, even if he never actualises his dominating power, nor shows any inclination to do so. Indeed, each such a woman is the slave of her partner (and vice-versa in situations where dominating ability is reversed). When so re-described, the claim that freedom just is non-domination appears unacceptable; surely it is manifestly wrong to claim that all women who are weaker than their partners necessarily occupy the status of slaves and are thereby unfree?
Yet we here reach an interesting parallel with the case of Wall’s illiberal non-arbitrary government. For the claim that freedom just is non-domination to be sustained our uncompromising republicans must again entrench their heels and reject the intuitions telling against their conceptual claim. They must bite the analytic bullet and say that women are in the position of slaves vis-à-vis stronger men, and any intuitions suggesting otherwise are misleading. It is this uncompromising republican rejection of countervailing intuitions that we must consider.
III
This essay now changes tack. I am unable to provide straightforward counter-arguments against the uncompromising republican position that common intuitions should be recast to fit republican theory. Instead I wish to offer some embryonic considerations for why the uncompromising republican position might be called into question. We begin by returning to the historical record.
Larmore has demonstrated that there exists no clear historical dichotomy of “liberals” versus “republicans” upholding two rival theories of freedom.[20] For example, Locke – typically seen as a founder of the liberal tradition, even when avoiding Skinner’s “myth of prolepsis”[21] – is labelled a republican by Pettit, largely due to his dictum “that [law] ill deserves the Name of Confinement which hedges us in only from Bogs and Precipices.”[22] Similarly Constant, a central figure in the French liberal tradition, held that “modern” liberty “is the right to be subject only to the laws, such that one cannot be arrested, detained, executed, or mistreated in any way by virtue of the arbitrary will of one or more individuals”.[23] This, Larmore remarks, “seems so clear an expression of the republican idea of freedom as the absence of domination that one might think it had been taken from…Pettit’s own book.”[24] Similar points are made by Jennings, who has highlighted Tocqueville’s concerns regarding the tyranny of the majority and its ability to restrict freedom by psychologically enslaving the very “souls” of individuals, subjecting them to a pernicious form of despotism without actually interfering with their lives.[25]
As it stands, observing that past thinkers employed the concept of freedom in diverse ways, some of them more receptive to considerations of non-domination than others, has no immediate bearing upon modern conceptual debates. The maelstrom of intellectual history may indicate simply that previous thinkers were confused, and that only recently have we grasped the truth of freedom as non-domination. But reflecting upon the contested and complex history of political thought may nonetheless reveal alternative, constructive, approaches to contemporary political-theoretic problems. I conclude by offering a sketch of how such a possibility might in future be developed.
In his Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas[26] Skinner argued against the possibility of “unit ideas”, central analyses that all (great) political thinkers address themselves to but which are transcendent of any and all concrete political contexts. Instead, Skinner claimed, there are only political thinkers making arguments in contexts; agents responding to their circumstances and inherited conceptions, intending to affect political change via their pronouncements and publications. Accordingly, there is “no history of the idea to be written…only a history of its various uses, and of the varying intentions with which it is used.”[27]
The consequences of Skinner’s methodological work are famously far-ranging and I here consider just one potential application. If Skinner is correct and there are no “unit ideas” but only arguments made in contexts, then freedom cannot be (or pertain to) a “unit idea”. It must instead be an amalgam of the differing uses to which arguments about freedom have been put in our inherited intellectual histories, whilst simultaneously being characterised by contemporary usage in political arguments by modern theorists and practical political agents acting in concrete circumstances. Connectedly, our intuitions about freedom will a fortiori not track a “unit idea”. Rather, our intuitions will reflect (in part) the ideas of a long legacy of political thinkers who deployed competing, and at times perhaps incompatible, conceptions of freedom, as well as being conditioned by the concrete and conceptual contexts we ourselves deploy arguments about freedom in.
These tentative suggestions may therefore cast doubt upon the uncompromising republican claim that freedom just is non-domination. That claim implies that freedom is a “unit idea”, defined by a logical antinomy between freedom and domination, discoverable by definitional analysis independent of political context or contested intellectual inheritance. Insofar as one is sceptical of “unit ideas” the claim that freedom just is non-domination is vulnerable. Furthermore, when thought experiments privilege countervailing intuitions over the view that freedom just is non-domination it appears our intuitions should be favoured. For if there are no “unit ideas” there will be no higher court of appeal about the validity or truth of political concepts than our carefully considered self-reflections and critical intuitions.[28]
Yet these remarks allow a point of wider significance to be inferred. I have concentrated on offering reasons to doubt the “uncompromising republican” claim that freedom just is non-domination. Yet something should now be said in favour of the republican view, albeit in less polemical form than that advanced by our uncompromising republicans. Critics such as Kramer and Gaus argue that freedom as non-domination either collapses into “pure negative” freedom, or because it is open to counter-examples of the sort considered above that it therefore fails outright.[29] Similarly, although Wall argues that freedom as non-domination has its place, this is only insofar as it informs an allegedly superior understanding of freedom as being able to plan choices.[30] Yet given what has been suggested above, such criticisms may go too far. For if the concept of freedom is an inherited amalgam of competing conceptions, developed in specific contexts, by political actors (including those in the present), attempting to win arguments over time, then we would expect that in certain circumstances freedom as non-domination occupies a rightful place in our thinking.
Accordingly the paradigmatic republican example of the un-interfered with slave assumes great importance. That the concept of freedom as non-domination was developed precisely in reference to the case of slavery – by especially the Roman and neo-Roman thinkers that Skinner cites – helps explain why freedom as non-domination remains intuitively appealing when illustrated with such examples. Freedom as non-domination is best-suited to such contexts – it was, after all, developed specifically in reference to them. Connectedly, political thinkers have repeatedly returned to the case of slavery to illustrate the core intuition undergirding freedom as non-domination (which is itself partly inspired by the example of slavery): that liberty can be lost even if one is not interfered with. In the history of ideas this has been recognised not just by “republicans”, but also by “liberals” such as Constant and Tocqueville. And insofar as we inherit a contested intellectual history that includes uses of the concept of freedom as non-domination, this concept possesses a justified place in our thinking.
The claim that an un-interfered with slave nonetheless remains unfree is likely to strike many as intuitively plausible – and this is what we should expect, given that it is precisely the sort of situation in which freedom as non-domination has the most purchase and the longest historical pedigree. By contrast, the structurally identical situation of the weak woman not interfered with by her stronger partner does not strike us as an example of unfreedom (or slavery). My tentative concluding suggestion, therefore, is that if we are able to take seriously, and reconcile ourselves to, the view that there is no “unit idea” of freedom but only the historical and contemporary application of varying concepts of freedom, made in arguments in differing contexts, then the intuitive asymmetry between structurally identical cases might appear a perfectly natural and un-troubling consequence of the fact that differing concepts of freedom have purchase in different contexts. More generally, whilst it will be going too far to say that freedom just is non-domination, it does not follow that there is no place for freedom as non-domination in our political thinking. The unfreedom of the unmolested slave shows that there is.
[1] I draw mostly upon Pettit 2002, a restatement and elucidation of the argument given in Pettit 1997. Pettit has recently altered his terminology (see Pettit 2008) to speak of “alien control” rather than “domination”. However, his underlying commitments are broadly continuous, and it will be helpful to retain the more established terminology.
[2] Pettit 2002, p.340.
[3] Ibid., p.342, p.352.
[4] Ibid., p.347.
[5] Ibid., p.348.
[6] Skinner 2008, p.96.
[7] Skinner 1998, pp.1-59.
[8] Skinner 2008, p.84.
[9] Ibid., p.84 cf. Skinner 1998 passim.
[10] Wall 2001, p.223.
[11] Ibid., p.223.
[12] Ibid., p.224.
[13] Ibid., p.225.
[14] Ibid., p.225.
[15] Ibid., p.226.
[16] Kramer 2008.
[17] Ibid., p.47.
[18] Skinner 2008, p.97.
[19] Ibid., p.97.
[20] Larmore 2001.
[21] Skinner 2002, p.74.
[22] Locke 1960, p. 305.
[23] Benjamin Constant quoted in Lamore 2001, p.236.
[24] Lamore 2001, p.236.
[25] Jennings 2010, p.14, p.17,
[26] Skinner 2002, pp.57-89.
[27] Ibid., p.85.
[28] One need not, however, descend into crude relativism. The statement “freedom just is non-interference” is manifestly a more plausible claim than “freedom just is the possession of sea-shells” precisely because one claim is more responsive to our political contexts and inherited concepts than the other. That freedom may be a complex construct of inherited intellectual histories and political experiences relative to context will not mean that all constructs are equal.
[29] See Gaus 2003 pp.65-74, which appears to conclude that because Pettit’s construal of republican freedom is open to counter-example, it therefore must be rejected tout court. The central argument of Kramer 2008 is essentially that republican conceptions of freedom can be subsumed into a properly construed pure negative liberty analysis.
[30] Wall 2001, pp.226-229.
Bibliography
Gaus, Gerald F. (2003). ‘Backwards into the Future: Neo-Republicanism as a Post-Socialist Critique of Market Society, Social Philosophy and Politics 20, pp.59-91.
Jennings, Jeremy (2010). ‘Despotism after Liberalism’, lecture presented at the University of Munich, 9 February 2010, cited here with kind permission of the author.
Kramer, Matthew H. (2008 ). ‘Liberty and Domination’ in Republicanism and Political Theory, eds. Cecile Laborde and John Maynor, Oxford, (Blackwell Publishing), pp.31-57.
Larmore, Charles (2001). ‘A Critique of Philip Pettit’s Republicanism’, Philosophical Issues 11, pp.230-243.
Locke, John (1960). Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett, Cambridge, (Cambridge University Press).
Pettit, Philip (1997). Republicanism – A Theory of Freedom and Government, Oxford, (Oxford University Press).
(2002). ‘Keeping Republican Freedom Simple – On a Difference with Quentin Skinner’, Political Theory 30, pp.339-356.
(2008). ‘Republican Freedom: Three Axioms, Four Theorems’ in Republicanism and Political Theory, ed. Cecile Laborde and John Maynor, Oxford, (Blackwell Publishing), pp.102-130.
Skinner, Quentin (1998 ). Liberty Before Liberalism, Cambridge, (Cambridge University Press).
(2002). Visions of Politics, Cambridge, (Cambridge University Press).
(2008). ‘Freedom as the Absence of Arbitrary Power’ in Republicanism and Political Theory, ed. Cecile Laborde and John Maynor, Oxford, (Blackwell Publishing), pp.83-101.
Wall, Steven (2001). ‘Freedom, Interference and Domination’, Political Studies 49, pp.216-230.
Here’s some I made earlier « Bad Conscience said,
August 22, 2010 at 3:17 pm
[...] New nerd posts: why Aristotle’s “mistake” about justice may not have been as stupid as is often supposed; why Hobbes is certainly not as stupid as some of his critics suppose; and why a certain take on “Republican” freedom may be more stupid than some of its proponent… [...]