by Tim Sommers
Imagine a slave in ancient Rome with a very generous master. A master so, generous, in fact, that this slave lives their entire life doing as they choose and their master never once interferes with them. The liberal view of liberty, enshrined, for example, in the U.S. Constitution, is that liberty, or at least the most fundamental kind of political liberty, is the right to not be interfered with, especially by the government. This freedom not to be prohibited from or impeded in doing what one will is often called “negative liberty” – as opposed to “positive” liberty which implies the will (autonomy/self-directedness) and the means (money, for example) – and not just the absence of interference.
The point of the generous master hypothetical is that the slave seems to be free, in the negative, liberal sense; that is, free from interference, specifically, from their master. Yet surely, as a slave, even as the slave of a very, very generous master, one is not free. There must be something wrong, then, with the liberal idea that freedom is simply freedom from certain kinds of outside interference.
Political philosopher Phillip Pettit, who formulated this hypothetical, says, and it is hard to argue with him, that the slave is not free since the master could have interfered at any point – even though they didn’t. This kind of unfreedom he calls “domination” and, so, his account of freedom he calls “liberty as non-domination” or the “republican” theory.
Over the last twenty years, Pettit has been attempting to resuscitate, he says, “the republican viewpoint as a political philosophy.” He’s been developing a “neorepublicanism” which he thinks is founded on a significant theoretical difference between the republican and liberal views of political freedom.
Pettit thinks that his hypothetical generous master shows that the master and slave have a hierarchical relation, even if the dominant party never exercises their power. Arguably, the master still oppresses the slave without ever interfering with them.
The generous master hypothetical could provide one way of understanding the claim, most commonly made by those on the left, that some injustices (patriarchy, white supremacy, etc.) are “structural.” Roughly, that some injustices are not the result of the specific actions of particular individuals, but of how the social system works differentially for, or on, different groups over time. (The most pernicious kind of racism, on this view, might be racism without racists.)
But Pettit is thinking more of Ancient Rome and America in the 18th Century, than structural injustice or “relational egalitarianism” (the currently ascendant view that relational equality is more important than distributive equality). Petitt is thinking of a republic as a democracy with a constitution plus maybe a few other well-known structural features – like the separation of powers, the rule of law, and federalism. The fact that Petitt calls his pet view “republican” or “neorepublican” can be confusing, however, for two interconnected reasons.
One reason is that, here in the U.S. one of the two major parties is called the Republican party. But, at this point in history, the label “Republican” is just a label with no solid connection, or special claim on, philosophical republicanism, any more than the other party – the “Democrats” – have dibs on democracy (even though at this moment, they do, in fact, have dibs on democracy.)
That’s one confusing thing. Here’s the other. For decades now, politicians and pundits the U.S. have defended antidemocratic, or antimajoritarian, policies by claiming that America is “a republic and not a democracy.” Since there is no widely agreed on definition that draws a sharp line between a democracy and a republic, it doesn’t advance any policy debate, from either direction, to just point out that a particular policy is more or less majoritarian. When I discussed this in an earlier 3QD article, I left out Pettit’s neorepublicanism. That’s because the republican/liberal dispute is about liberty, while the republican/democracy distinction is about, maybe democracy, but really (on my view) the republican/democracy dispute is about nothing. I also seriously doubt that Mike Lee, Mike Johnson, or other republicans who have recently deployed the “this is not a democracy” dodge are thinking of Pettit’s’ theory.
But since Pettit’s view is interesting in its own right, let’s go back to it and say more about liberty. Like justice, everybody loves liberty in the abstract. It gets more complicated when one gets down to cases. As mentioned above, many political philosophers following Isaiah Berlin thought the important fissure was between “negative” liberty as noninterference and “positive” accounts of liberty. Berlin, “classical liberals,” libertarians and other defenders of the negative view argue that everyone should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as they don’t interfere with others. One problem with this is that almost anything anyone ever wants to do interferes with others, directly or indirectly. Another problem, is that everything depends on what you mean by “interfere.”
You could develop a more positive account of liberty in various ways. You could focus more on the need for people to learn to be autonomous in order to be free. Some recent feminists have argued, for example, for the need to “educate to autonomy” – to teach self-directness and choosing as a skill.
Or you could develop a positive account by focusing on the material basis of freedom. It’s hard to care too much about liberty on an empty stomach. More to the point, does a right to free speech only protect one from government interference, as opposed to, say, big tech algorithms and content moderation? Doesn’t free speech require, even in the era of social media, at least some minimum material support? “Freedom of the press is guaranteed,” A.J. Liebling famously said, “only to those who own one.”
Berlin, et al objected to attempts to defend “positive” liberty as essentially a communist trick. Self-development provided by the state is not freedom, it’s inculcating an ideology. And having some of Elon Musk’s money makes you freer, but it does so by violating Musk’s liberty.
Gerald MacCullum said the problem is this bivalent (negative/positive) thinking and we need to see freedom as having three parts. “Any liberty,” John Rawls said paraphrasing MacCullum, “can be explained by a reference to three items: the agents who are free, the restrictions or limitations which they are free from, and what it is that they are free to do or not to do.”
This is fractally complicated, however, in real life. What counts as a restriction or limitation, for example? If standup comedy is forbidden by the government, obviously that’s a restriction on my freedom to become a standup comedian. But what if it’s not illegal, but there are tons of people who are going out of their way to prevent comedians from doing stand-up – including protests at shows? Or what if most people just don’t care for it anymore? What if YouTube won’t show clips of stand-up bits or Netflix standup specials? Does my own inability to make people laugh, count as a restriction? If I can’t afford to support myself as a comedian when I am starting out, is that an obstacle to my free choices? What if the reason I can’t support myself is that the vast majority of people live in deep poverty? Substitute the word “obstacle” for “restriction” and ask if, in a free society, are there is any collective obligations to assist people with certain obstacles? The moral is that there is no value free, or neutral, account of free speech – or freedom in general.
Any claim about the presence or absence of freedom, in any given situation, will make certain claims about what counts as an agent, especially an autonomous agent, what counts as a restriction, constraint, obstacle, or limitation on their freedom, and what counts as a purpose that the agent can be described fairly as either being free or unfree to carry out.
So, recall, the generous master never tells his slaves what to do, but he oppresses them. How? Well, he has the power to compel the slave, even if he doesn’t compel him. But if Superman (or Dr. Manhattan) really existed, on this account, he would be oppressing everyone all the time. After all, he could basically interfere with anybody (with the possible exception of Lex Luther), anywhere, at any time, and make them do what he wants (even Luther eventually). But it doesn’t seem right to say that Superman oppresses us by his very existence. (On the other hand, maybe, it does. Allan Moore says superheroes are “essentially fascist.”)
One response is that what’s crucial to the republican view is not the physical ability to compel someone, but the existence of social relations (and roles) that put some under the power of others by giving, and defending, them a certain social role. The fact that the generous master occupies this social role is problematic, no matter how they act.
Consider, however, this variation on the generous master hypothetical discussed by Frederick Hayek and Berlin. Am I free if I live under a dictatorship, as long as the dictator, for whatever reasons, happens to never interfere with me? I think this fails as an objection to the liberal view in an illuminating way. Liberals can consistently say, yes, I am free if I am never interfered with, but society is not free. It’s a dictatorship. The question is how to set up a society which is free, not one under which, if you are very, very lucky, you might be free.
Perhaps, liberals can bite the same bullet in the generous master hypothetical and say, yes, the slave is free, but just by luck. However, of course, the master and slave don’t stand in relation to each other as free and equal. The reason for that is going to be in the background social circumstances which make one a master and another a slave.
The real question for Pettit is what kind of background conditions – from a neorepublican point of view – are required to make society free in his “domination” sense? Pettit mentions democracy, constitutionalism, and the separation of powers. This, to me, is a little disappointing as a proposal for a novel vision of liberty; i.e., it’s not novel. It suggests that behind non-domination might be liberal liberty in drag. “It remains to be seen,” political philosopher Ian Carter says, “whether the republican concept of freedom is ultimately [even] distinguishable from the negative concept, or whether republican writers on freedom have not simply provided good arguments to the effect that negative freedom is best promoted, on balance and over time.”
So, maybe, Pettit has pretty much the same problem as other defenders of “republicanism.” It’s not clear what the difference between republicanism and liberal democracy is supposed to be.