Volume 26, Number 2
December 2023
ARTICLE

Republican Freedom and Liberal Neutrality

Volume 26, Number 2, December 2023, Pages 325–348
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v26i2.2777
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Abstract

Institutions promoting republican freedom as non-domination are commonly believed to differ significantly from institutions promoting negative freedom as non-interference. Philip Pettit, the most prominent contemporary defender of this view, also maintains that these republican institutions are neutral between the different conceptions of the good that characterize a modern society. This paper shows why these two views are incompatible. By analyzing the institutional requirements Pettit takes as constitutive of republican freedom, I show how they also promote negative freedom by reducing overall interference. To avoid this result, republican institutions must be more restrictive and require that citizens conform to a life of political engagement. But then republican freedom will not be a neutral ideal. Rejecting negative freedom therefore means sacrificing neutrality.
Copyright © 2023 Lars J. K. Moen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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