The Liberty of the Liberty Principle

Res Publica - Mill’s Liberty Principle aims to protect ‘social’ freedom, which is traditionally understood as negative freedom. I argue that Mill’s conception of social...     

Liberty as the Absence of Imposed Cost: The Libertarian Conception of Interpersonal Liberty

This paper argues for a non-moral interpretation of the libertarian conception of interpersonal liberty as 'the absence of imposed cost.' In the event of a clash of imposed costs, observing such liberty entails ' minimising imposed costs'. Three fundamental criticisms are examined: strictly interpreted, this would logically imply genocide in practice; it is impractically unclear and moralised; it could entail mob rule of some kind. Self-ownership and private property are then non-morally derived merely from applying this formula in a state of nature. Various subsidiary issues arise throughout.     

The Gift of Law: Liberty,Legitimacy and Autonomy in The Social Contract

Abstract

I examine Rousseau’s claim that any given will can be either itself or another, and cannot be commuted (to representatives, for example), through an investigation of liberty and legitimacy in The Social Contract, with respect to which Rousseau elaborates his notion that we prescribe laws to ourselves. Through an examination of the logic of the general will, I attempt to show that, while the theory of legitimacy is radical, it is faced with serious problems that concern the identification of the we (or the I) that is supposed to be prescribing laws to itself, and that when we are (I am) supposedly doing so, the identity of the will is far from clear.     

The Fair Value of Economic Liberty

In Free Market Fairness, John Tomasi tries to show that ‘thick’ economic liberties, including the right to own productive property, are basic liberties. According to Tomasi, the policy-level consequences of protecting economic liberty as basic are essentially libertarian in character. I argue that if economic liberties are basic, just societies must guarantee their fair value to all citizens. And in order to secure the fair value of economic liberty, states must guarantee that citizens of roughly similar dispositions and talents are roughly equally able to use their economic liberties to develop and pursue a conception of the good. This, I will argue, is a very demanding standard that requires aggressive taxation and redistribution.     

自由、宽和与法的精神:孟德斯鸠关于政治宽和的讨论

在孟德斯鸠笔下,宽和政府是作为专制主义的对立面出现的,有别于专制主义下的极端平等及其简单而脆弱的社会结构。宽和政府能够使不同维度的权力均得到考量,并形成结构复杂多元、具有内在稳定性的政制与社会秩序。作为一名亲英派,孟德斯鸠尝试借助英国宪制这一具体的政体形态来展现宽和政府得以形成的机制,并由此勾连出自由与宽和的内在联系,揭示出人的自由意志经由法的规约而形成的内在约束对于维系宽和精神的实质性作用,并据此阐发了封建贵族适度而有原则的独立精神及其所涵育的自由精神。在此基础上最终阐明了"宽和"的新意涵,即立法者如何保存、维持、协调政制与民情的技艺。