bruin - 2009 - liberal and republican freedom

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Liberal and Republican Freedom*

Boudewijn de Bruin

Philosophy, University of Groningen

I. INTRODUCTION

THE revival of republican thought has prompted several liberal theorists tocompare their notion of freedom as non-interference with the republicanideal of non-domination. Liberals have tried to accommodate the latter ideal,

contending that the liberal notion of freedom can describe all that republican

freedom can, except that whichin their viewno notion of freedom should be

able to describe anyway.1 Republicans object to this argument, defending the

cogency and irreducible originality of their concept of freedom (also called

antipower, non-domination, or neo-Roman freedom).2 The ensuing

exchange of ideasstill ongoing and very livelyshows increasing analytic

clarity in both camps. jopp_334 418..439

This article adds to the debate by presenting a new counterargument against

republican freedom. I start by investigating three relations between liberal andrepublican freedom: (i) Logical Equivalence, or the question whether republican

freedom entails liberal freedom (and vice versa); (ii) Degree Supervenience, or

*Warmest thanks are due to Matthew Braham, Govert den Hartogh, Martin van Hees, FrankHindriks, Jan-Willem van der Rijt and Bruno Verbeek, to the anonymous referees of this Journal andits editor, Robert Goodin, and to the audiences in Amsterdam and Groningen to whom I presentedthis paper in 2006 and 2007. I have benefited enormously from the gracious and detailed writtencomments by Ian Carter, Matthew Kramer and Philip Pettit which have helped to shape the views I

defend in this essay.1Ian Carter,A Measure of Freedom(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and How are powerand unfreedom related? Republicanism and Political Theory, ed. C. Laborde and J. Maynor(Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), pp. 5882. Robert Goodin, Folie rpublicaine, Annual Review ofPolitical Science, 6 (2003), 5576. Matthew Kramer, The Quality of Freedom (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2003) and Liberty and domination, Republicanism and Political Theory, ed.C. Laborde and J. Maynor (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), pp. 3157. Kristjan Kristjnsson, Is theresomething wrong with free action? Journal of Theoretical Politics, 10 (1998), 25973.

2Philip Pettit,Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1997) and Republican freedom: three axioms, four theorems, Republicanism and PoliticalTheory, ed. C. Laborde and J. Maynor (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), pp. 10230. Iseult Honohan,CivicRepublicanism (London: Routledge, 2002). Christian List, Republican freedom and the rule of

law, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 5 (2006), 20120. Quentin Skinner, Liberty BeforeLiberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Freedom as absence of arbitrarypower, Republicanism and Political Theory, ed. C. Laborde and J. Maynor (Oxford: Blackwell,2008), pp. 83101. Jean-Fabien Spitz, The concept of liberty in a theory of justice and its republicanversion,Ratio Juris, 7 (1993), 33147. Maurizio Viroli,Republicanism(New York: Hill and Wang,2001).

The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 17, Number 4, 2009, pp. 418439

2009 The Author. Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2009.00334.x


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whether changes in the degree (amount, quantity) of republican freedom are

mirrored by changes in the degree of liberal freedom (and vice versa); and (iii)

Epistemological Priority, that is, whether knowledge about arrangements of

republican freedom presupposes knowledge about arrangements of liberal

freedom.If Logical Equivalence holds, liberals are right to claim that republicans have

not introduced a new concept of freedom. It is easy to see, though, that Logical

Equivalence does not hold (Section III). If Degree Supervenience holds, liberals

can maintain that while republican freedom is a new concept of freedom,

fostering or promoting it is not very different from fostering or promoting liberal

freedom. Degree Supervenience does not hold either though (Section IV), and as

a result two straightforward counterarguments against republican freedom fail.

In this article I present a new counterargument. First, I argue that the relationof Epistemological Priority holds: knowing something about arrangements of

republican freedom presupposes that you know something about arrangements of

liberal freedom (Section V). Using Epistemological Priority, I show that the benefits

claimed for republican freedom over and above liberal freedomit minimizes

the need for strategic deference, it minimizes uncertainty, and it minimizes

subordinationcan be accounted for in purely liberal terms (Section VI).3

While close in spirit to critical evaluations of republicanism by authors such

as Ian Carter and Matthew Kramer, this essay is concerned with argumentsthat differ from theirs in a variety of ways. Ignoring subtle yet significant

dissimilarities between their respective views, Carter and Kramer both present an

equivalent-judgments thesis to the effect that while republicans and liberals

disagree about the precise analysis of freedom, they give very similar answers

to questions about degrees and distributions of freedom.4 Liberals maintain that

in the few cases where there is disagreement, the republicans misuse the term

freedom.5 While there is much to recommend this line of argumentation, it might

lead some republicans to respond that it reduces the debate to one of terminology,

not substance. In contrast to Carter and Kramer, I accept the republican

terminology and develop an argument that cannot be countered by playing the

terminology card.6

II. PRELIMINARIES

Philip Pettit defines republican freedom as the negation of domination:

non-domination. AgentTdominates agentSif and only ifThas the capacity

3These supposed benefits are discussed in Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 8590.4The term equivalent-judgments thesis is due to Carter, How are power and unfreedom

related, p. 59.5Carter, A Measure of Freedom, pp. 2434.6Carter, How are power and unfreedom related, p. 59 observes that republicans would have to

show that the equivalent-judgments thesis isfalse, but that this would force them to adopt a positiveconcept of freedom as autonomy.

LIBERAL AND REPUBLICAN FREEDOM 419


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to interfere, on an arbitrary basis, in certain choices Sis in a position to make.7

Interference, for Pettit, is a form of more or less intentional obstruction, caused

by human actions, which makes the situation of the dominated party worse.8

What matters is thatT couldinterfere withS if she wanted to, not thatTis or is

not disposed to interfereshe need not even have the slightest inclination to doso. The capacity for interference, moreover, has to be a capacity to interfere

arbitrarily, which means that it is subject just to the arbitrium, the decision

or judgment, of the [dominating] agent. It is chosen at the agents

pleasure . . . without reference to the interests, or opinions, of those affected.9

This does not mean that TdominatesS wheneverTcan perform certain actions

that go against the interests ofS. Even though, according to Pettit, interference as

such already constitutes a worsening of someones situation by definition, not all

capacities to perform actions that worsen someones situation are capacities forarbitrary interference. IfTs worsening ofSs situation is to count as an arbitrary

worsening, it has to be the case that T was not forced to track the relevant

interests ofS in her decision to interfere.10

To belabor the point, it is instructive to consider what it means to act against

someones interests in a non-arbitrary fashion. The standard case in point is

imprisonment. It typically goes against a persons interests to put her in jail; it

worsens her situation. Yet, Pettit suggests, if a criminal is put in jail this is not an

arbitrary form of intervention. First, it is not arbitrary because the judge whosentenced the prisoner to jail does not incarcerate the prisoner at her own

pleasure, as her decision is backed by a well-functioning, well-enforced legal

system affording the possibility of review. Even a legal system that works

properly may be tyrannical, though, so the laws underlying the judges verdict

must in addition be grounded in decisions made in the shared or common

interests of the citizens. No definition of republican freedom will work until one

has specified criteria governing the interests that are relevant here, as well as

criteria about the acceptability of the collective decision procedures determining

such interestsand it is the business of a defender of republican freedom to spell

this out in detail.11 For our current purposes, however, we need not delve deeper.

Before proceeding, I turn briefly to an epistemic issue concerning republican

freedom that plays an essential role in a large part of the essay. Republicans

believe that as a matter of empirical truth the occurrence of relations of

7Pettit, Republicanism, p. 52.8Pettit,Republicanism, p. 53. Kramer,The Quality of Freedom, pp. 1335 observes that requiring

the worsening to be intentional is problematic. The argument I present in this article also extends toa definition of republican freedom that drops this requirement.

9Pettit, Republicanism, p. 55.10Pettit, Republicanism, p. 52 (emphasis mine). Cf. Pettit, A Theory of Freedom: From the

Psychology to the Politics of Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 1389 for adefinition in terms of avowable interests.

11See Pettit,Republicanism, passim, and Pettit, The determinacy of republican policy: a reply toMcMahon,Philosophy and Public Affairs, 34 (2006), 27583. An earlier article is Pettit, Freedomas antipower, Ethics, 106 (1996), 576604.

420 BOUDEWIJN DE BRUIN


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domination and non-domination is completely open and transparent to the

agents involved and to many of the bystanders.12 IfTdominatesS, thenS and T

and all other relevant agents know that. Not only that, they also know that they

know, and know that they know that they know, and so on. It is common

knowledge amongS,Tand the bystanders thatThas the capacity arbitrarily tointerfere withS. Moreover, whenever such capacities are absent, the fact that they

are absent is common knowledge, too. In other words, republican unfreedoms

and republican freedoms are common knowledge. I call this condition Common

Knowledge of Republican Freedom (CKR).13

III. LOGICAL EQUIVALENCE

Gerald MacCallum analyzed freedom as a relation between an agent Swho is freefrom constraintsc to perform an action a, and thus showed that the apparent

dichotomy of negative and positive freedom, famously defended by Isaiah Berlin,

is not one of logical form.14 Rather it should be cast in terms of the kind of objects

that one considers to be agents, constraints and actions. A similar lesson can

be drawn to enlighten the debate between liberals and republicans. As

non-interference and non-domination both involve agents, constraints and

actions, MacCallums triadic analysis also applies to their concepts of freedom. 15

Since both concepts are concerned with the same sort of agents and the samesort of actions, the disagreement centers round what counts as constraints.

Republican freedom takes capacities for arbitrary interference as constraints;

liberal freedom, by contrast, takes physical barriers established by humans (or

dispositions to establish such barriers) as constraints.16 As a result, liberal and

republican freedom are clearly different within MacCallums schema:

12Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 5861.13CKR is not part of the definition of republican freedom, because it arises in most cases, but

not in all. If T has the capacity to modify Ss preference for a particular brand of canned soupby subliminal advertising during a break in a baseball game, T dominates S according to Pettitsdefinition, but only few people may know that.

14Gerald MacCallum, Negative and positive freedom, Philosophical Review, 76 (1967),31234. Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958). MacCallum alsoincluded becomings in the third relatum.

15Pettit suggests (personal communication) that as a fourthrelatumin the relation one could adoptthe standing protection against others that republican free agents may receive. This may be moreappropriate analytically, but it would make a claim against Logical Equivalence trivial (three- andfour-place relations can never be equivalent). A stronger claim results therefore if we assume thatrepublican freedom fits in the MacCallum scheme, and then argue against Logical Equivalence.

16Ian Carter, Positive and negative liberty, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative, posted Oct. 8, 2007, notes that liberalsmay disagree about thetypesand sourcesof constraints of freedom. With respect to type I follow thepure negative theorists, taking only physical obstructions as constraints, excluding psychologicalbarriers in the agents themselves, but allowing for dispositions (on the part of interfering agents) toestablish physical barriers. With respect to source, my argument works for a definition of freedomthat sees as constraints only those obstacles for which an agent can be held causally responsible, butalso for a definition taking intentionally erected actions as sources of constraints. Roughly, then, thedefinition I use here is a standard negative liberal one according to which an agent S is liberally freeto perform an action a whenever there is no agent Twho physically blocks S from performing a or



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The two propositions S is liberally free to perform a and S is republican free toperform a are not logically equivalent.17

The precise argument is straightforward yet instructive. If Sue cannot reach home

because the police are blocking the road to search a house linked to criminal

activities, she is physically obstructed from reaching home and the obstructions

are created by human actions. Liberally unfree, she is nevertheless free in the

republican sense of the word, because the police do not interfere arbitrarily.18 The

conclusion is that liberal freedom is not a necessary condition for republican

freedom. To show that it is not a sufficientcondition, consider a case in which

Tania can arbitrarily bar Sue from going home, but in fact does not do so. Sue

does not face any physical obstructions, is liberally free to go home, and will

reach home whenever she attempts to, but all the same she is not republican free

to go home.19

IV. DEGREE SUPERVENIENCE

Logical Equivalence does not hold, and hence one straightforward liberal

argument against republican freedom breaks down. In this section I investigate

a second such argument. If Degree Supervenience holds, liberals can maintain

that while republican freedom is a new concept of freedom, any change in the

distribution of republican freedom is reflected by a change in the distribution ofliberal freedom.20 But Degree Supervenience does not hold, and as a result a

second straightforward counterargument against republican freedom fails.

A propertyPsupervenes on a propertyQif and only if it is necessarily the case

that if two worlds differ quaP they also differ quaQ, or equivalently, if it is not

who possesses the disposition so to block S. The arguments presented here apply, then, not only tothe definitions of Carter and Kramer, but also to those of: Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty; Friedrichvon Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (London: Routledge, 1960); David Miller, Constraintson freedom, Ethics, 94 (1983), 6686; Felix Oppenheim, Political Concepts: A Reconstruction(Oxford: Blackwell, 1981); and Hillel Steiner,An Essay on Rights (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).

17More precisely, these two propositions are not logically equivalent without extra assumptions.Boudewijn de Bruin, A note on Lists modal logic of republican freedom,Politics, Philosophy andEconomics, 7 (2008), 3419 proves an equivalence result adopting two extra modal axioms (theplausibility of which may be questioned, of course).

18The use of human intervention is not essential. The argument still runs if we assume that Sue isconstrained by heavy rainfall. Pettit, Republicanism, p. 56n would say that the rainfall does notcompromise Sues freedom, but only conditions it in the sense of narrowing the available choiceoptions. Kramer, The Quality of Freedom, p. 3 defines liberal freedom to perform an action asbeing able to perform it, and liberal unfreedom as, roughly, not being able to do it because ofhuman intervention. Cf. Steven Wall, Freedom, interference and domination,Political Studies, 49(2001), 21630.

19Pettit, Negative liberty, liberal and republican, European Journal of Philosophy, 1 (1993),1538 contains a definition of republican freedom as resiliently realized non-interference that hasfallen into desuetude. It is clear that with this definition republican freedom entails liberal freedom,but not the other way round.

20The presupposition that degrees of overall freedom can be measured is warranted given anemerging literature on measures of freedom. See, e.g., Carter, A Measure of Freedom, and Kramer,The Quality of Freedom. Neither of them argues for full Degree Supervenience, though.



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possible that there is a P-difference without a Q-difference.21 Against Degree

Supervenience I argue, then, that it is possible that two worlds are different qua

republican freedom without being different qua liberal freedom.22

Consider two worldsvandw. In both worlds Sue can push a button to call the

elevator of her apartment building, which is the only way for her to get to herapartment. In worldv Tania stands in front of the elevator, blocking the button,

but as soon as Sue approaches the button Tania gives way. In contrast to what

this phrasing suggests, though, Tania is not a subservient assistant, for she has all

the physical and psychological power to bar Sue from taking the elevator, and the

current state of anarchy in the country does not impose any legal restrictions on

her dealings with Sue. But while Tania has the capacity arbitrarily to interfere

with Sues going home, she never actually bars her from pressing the button.

Worldw, in turn, is different only in that Tania does not inhabit it, and as resultof this Sue has a strictly greater degree of republican freedom in w than in v.

While in w she has any republican freedom she has in v, she has the extra

republican freedom to push the button and go to her apartment.23

But although the degree of Sues republican freedom is different in the two

worlds, she has the same degree of liberal freedom; there is no difference with

respect to pushing elevator buttons, nor is there any difference with respect to

other actions.24 To see this, note that while in w Sue cannot (of course) talk to

Taniain the sense that no one can talk to someone who is absentthat does notconstitute an unfreedom according to a negative, liberal concept of freedom,

21Note that (P-difference Q-difference) is logically equivalent to (P-difference Q-difference).

22A number of arguments put forward in the literature come close to arguing against DegreeSupervenience. See, e.g.: Pettit, Negative liberty, liberal and republican, p. 19; Pettit,Republicanism, pp. 738; Pettit, Republican freedom: three axioms, four theorems, pp. 1116;Skinner,Liberty Before Liberalism, p. 70; Skinner, Freedom as the absence of arbitrary power, pp.96100. For arguments in favor of it, see: Carter, A Measure of Freedom, p. 240; Carter, How arepower and unfreedom related? pp. 6971; Kramer, The Quality of Freedom, pp. 10524; Kramer,Liberty and domination, pp. 4150. The republican arguments show no sensitivity to the fact thatchanges in republican freedom often entail changes in liberal freedom. The liberal arguments show noawareness of the fact that changes in republican freedom do not necessarilyentail changes in liberalfreedom. The equivalent-judgments thesis is to the effect that republicans and liberals agree quiteextensively in their judgments concerning freedom, but this thesis allows for exceptional cases inwhich differences in republican freedom are not mirrored by changes in liberal freedom. UnlikeDegree Supervenience, the equivalent-judgments thesis concerns judgments about freedom ratherthan degrees of freedom, and it is not implied by my arguments. Yet, to the extent that failuresof Degree Supervenience are rare, the equivalent-judgments thesis is compatible with DegreeSupervenience. Determining the exact extent, however, is an empirical issue.

23The kind of supervenience used here is global supervenience to the effect that for any twoworlds v and w, if v and w have the same distribution of P-properties, they also have the samedistribution ofQ-properties. This assumes that there is a bijection between the domains of worlds vand w. See Robert Stalnaker, Varieties of supervenience, Philosophical Perspectives, 10 (1996),199206. The present example can be easily (though slightly artificially) modified to fit this format.Both worlds have two apartment buildings. World v remains as in the argument. World w does notremove Tania, but places her in front of the elevator of the second apartment building. (Just movingTania to a place far away from Sue does not work as she will lose the republican freedom to push anelevator button.)

24The truth of this statement is independent of whether degrees of freedom involve ordinal orcardinal measurements.



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because in w she can still perform the action (utter the words) that in v would

constitute talking to Tania (no one interferes with Sues doing that). Nor is Sues

freedom decreased in that she can no longer carry her piano upstairs with Tania,

for this concerns group freedom, not individual freedom (and anyway, no one

interferes with the group doing that).25 This establishes the following claim:

The degree of republican freedom does not supervene on the degree of liberalfreedom.

The converse relation of Degree Supervenience does not hold either; liberal

freedom does not supervene on republican freedom. To defend this claim I show

that itispossible that two worlds are different qua liberal freedom without being

different qua republican freedom. The argument can be given quickly. Imagine

two worlds v and w where Tania has the capacity arbitrarily to interfere withSues going home. Being Sues master inv, Tania is genuinely disposed to exercise

this capacity. In w, by contrast, Tania is Sues friend and will not interfere. By

stipulation, Sue has the same degree of republican freedom in v andw, for even

though Tania likes Sue in w, Tania still dominates her. Yet Sue has different

degrees of liberal freedom. In vTania cannot go home; in wshe can.26 Thus we

find:

The degree of liberal freedom does not supervene on the degree of republican

freedom.

V. EPISTEMOLOGICAL PRIORITY

Neither Logical Equivalence nor Degree Supervenience hold, and this means that

two straightforward ways to criticize republican freedom are closed. I now turn

to an investigation of a third relation between liberal and republican freedom,

that of Epistemological Priority.27 I show that if someone possesses knowledge

about arrangements of republican freedom she also possesses knowledge aboutarrangements of liberal freedom. In the next section I show how Epistemological

Priority can be used in an argument against republican freedom.

A disclaimer first. The claim that knowledge about republican freedom

presupposes knowledge about liberal freedom does not apply to knowledge

obtained by testimony. If a reliable source tells me that Tania dominates Sue, and

if I do not have more information concerning Sue and Tania, then this entails

nothing at all about my knowledge of arrangements of liberal freedom. So the

25Carter, A Measure of Freedom, p. 230 considers a related case in terms of group freedom.26If one is unwilling to grant probability one interference in world v, the claim is still valid, but

now only for cardinal measures of freedom taking care of probability: the degree of liberal freedominvis less than the degree of liberal freedom inw, because there is a higher probability of interferencein v than in w. Carter, A Measure of Freedom and Kramer, The Quality of Freedom incorporateprobabilistic judgments in their measures of freedom.

27Martin Davies, The philosophy of language, The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, 2ndedn, ed. N. Bunnin and E. P. Tsui-James (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), pp. 90146.



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scope of the claim is rather knowledge based on perception, inference and

statistical reasoning: primary knowledge.28

This is no serious restriction, though. First, much of our knowledge about

domination is based on our own observations and is consequently primary.

Moreover, even if we obtain knowledge about domination by testimony, thisultimately has to be grounded in primary knowledge, because a chain of

epistemic agents testimonially transferring knowledge about a proposition

always needs a prime mover with primary knowledge about the proposition.

The claim, then, is that primary knowledge about arrangements of republican

freedom presupposes primary knowledge about arrangements of liberal freedom.

The first step in defending this claim is to show that primary knowledge about

domination presupposes primary knowledge about unequal distribution of

resources. Correlating resource inequality and domination is, in fact, part andparcel of the republican literature:

The resources in virtue of which one person may have power over another areextraordinarily various: they range over resources of physical strength, technicaladvantage, financial clout, political authority, social connections, communalstanding, informational access, ideological position, cultural legitimation, and thelike. They also include the resource of being someonesay, the only doctor or policeofficer aroundwhose help and goodwill the other may need in various possibleemergencies. They even include the resource of perceived intractabilityat the limit,

perceived irrationalitythat enables someone to drive a hard bargain. . . .Such resources tend to be prominent and detectable by those to whose

disadvantage they may be deployed, and . . . this helps ensure that where one personhas any dominating power over another, in virtue of an inequality in such resources,it is a matter of common knowledge that that is so.29

To obtain knowledge about Tanias capacity for arbitrary interference with Sue,

I have to know that there is resource inequality between Sue and Tania, and I

have to know that the fact that there is resource inequality entails that there is

domination. The first element is clear:(1) There is a situationx of which I know that x is a particular instance of resourceinequality affording more to Tania and less to Sue.

The second element postulates knowledge about the republican tenet from the

above quotation, that is, knowledge about a certain empirical regularity

correlating resource inequality and domination:

(2) I know that for all situations x and all agents S and T, x is an instance of

resource inequality affording more to Tand less to S wheneverx is an instance ofdomination ofS by T.30

28Robert Audi, The sources of knowledge, The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology, ed.P. Moser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 7194.

29Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 5960.30A probabilistically more sophisticated rendering of (2) is cast in terms of the statistical

correlation between the two random variables measuring resource inequality and domination, but



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If these two conditions are met, it follows that I have knowledge of a particular

instance of republican unfreedom:

(3) There is a situation x of which I know that x is a particular instance of

domination of Sue by Tania.Where can we find knowledge about liberal freedom? Statement (1) clearly

presupposes no knowledge about liberal freedom. As it is assumed that I do

not obtain knowledge by testimony, I obtain the knowledge described in (1) by

perceiving, for instance, Sues frail build in comparison with Tanias, the

difference in financial clout between them, or their different social status, but

not their respective freedoms. This does not mean that resource inequality can

always be read off so easily. Evidence about resource inequality between

Tania and Sue due to Tanias perceived intractability, as Pettit mentionsin the earlier quotation, has to refer to Sues way of perceiving Tania.

While Tania may seem intractable to me, this appearance does not form a

resource inequality between Sue and Tania as long as Sue is perfectly

able to make sense of Tania; Sue, too, would have to find Tania intractable.

But even so, the knowledge embodied in (1) is no knowledge about

interference.31

Turning to (2), we first have to understand the specific epistemic access human

beings have to capacities; for while resource inequality can be established without

further ado, primary knowledge about capacities requires a detour.

A perfectly general example illustrates this. Suppose I want to know whether

zebra finches can sing at lower frequencies if their testosterone levels increase.

While I have direct perceptual access to the intake of hormones, my epistemic

access to a finchs capacity to sing certain frequencies goes via observations:

recordings of birds actually singing. As a result, to make a claim about the

correlation between testosterone and capacity for singing lower frequencies is to

make an inductive generalization that is based on a finite set of observations of

increased testosterone levels in certain zebra finches and the actual singing ofparticular frequencies.32

this does not increase analytical precision in the present case. Republicans hold that (almost) all casesof resource equality go together with domination. Since, moreover, both random variables only taketwo values (yes or no), the correlation coefficient will be (almost) equal to one, thus entailingthat my rendering of (2) is valid in (almost) all cases. An advantage of my formalization is that itbrings out the logical dependence of the propositions more clearly.

31The logical form of (1) is $xKnow RI(x, Tania, Sue) featuring de reknowledgeofa particularinstance of resource inequalityxto stress that I have primary knowledge about x.De dictoknowledgeas in Know $x RI(x, Tania, Sue) would be appropriate if my knowledge were based merely onsomeone telling methatthere is resource inequality between Tania and Sue, or my concluding it fromcertain general facts in a way that does not conserve primariness of knowledge.

32Jeffrey Cynx, N. Jay Bean and Ian Rossman, Testosterone implants alter the frequency range ofzebra finch songs, Hormones and Behavior, 47 (2005), 44651. Plenty of other examples could begiven relating, for instance, air temperature to athletic achievements, IQ to academic potential, ormusic to memory capabilities.



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Similarly, (2) represents an inductive generalization based on a finite set of

observations about instances of resource inequality that were significantly often

accompanied by instances of actual arbitrary interference.33 As an intermediate

claim we thus find:

Primary knowledge about republican unfreedom to perform a-like actionsentails primary knowledge about actual instances of resource inequality thatwere significantly often accompanied by arbitrary interference with a-likeactions.34

While this goes some way to arguing for the main claim of this section, it is not

enough for a full argument. The reason is the notion of arbitrariness. To

progress, it is instructive to look at the differences between interference under

resource inequality and interference under resource equality. It is plain that

under resource equality interference by no means becomes impossible. If Sue

and Tania are of equal physical strength, Tania can still push Sue from the

sidewalk by surprise, and even if Tania is one of many doctors in town, Tania

can still decide to help Sue only if Sue pays double the normal fee. But there

is a difference. In situations of resource equality, Sue can counter. Countering

sometimes means striking back, as in the case of two pedestrians of equal

strength; sometimes it means sidestepping Tania, as in the case of Sue turning

to another doctor in town; and it is precisely due to resource equality that Sue

can counter Tanias interfering actions.35 The claim now is that arbitraryinterference is interference that cannot be countered. To summarize in a second

intermediate claim:

33This is reflected in the logical form of (2), Know "x"S"T(RI(x, T, S) Dom(x, T, S)). Thisstatement ranges overallinstancesx and individuals S and T(it is an inductive generalization), butit is backed by observations of only finitely many such x,S and T. (If I had observedall, then thederestatement "x"S"TKnow (RI(x,T,S) Dom(x, T,S)) would be appropriate.) In particular, theobservations will probably not include resource inequality between Sue and Tania. To compare, I haveseen hundreds of black ravens (observation of correlation) and conclude that all ravens are black(inductive generalization). I now hear a raven croak and conclude it is black, even though I have nevereven seen it.

34The point is subtle as (3) embodies knowledge about a capacity not based on an observation ofan instantiation of that capacity. Rather, knowledge about the existence of the capacity is derivedfrom (1) and (2), and it might seem that a similar derivation could yield knowledge about theexistence of capacities in (2) itself. This is true, but then (2) would itself require a second-orderinductive generalization. This generalization would in turn either have to be based on observations ofinstantiations of capacities, or require a third-order inductive generalization, etc. This process ofinvoking higher-order inductive generalizations cannot continue infinitely, because primaryknowledge ultimately has to be based on observation. Without loss of generality I assume that thefirst-order inductive generalization (2) subsumes all observations on which these subsequenthigher-order generalizations are based.

35One definition of arbitrariness is to the effect that arbitrary actions are not forced to track therelevant interests of the people concerned. See, e.g., Pettit, Republicanism, p. 55. If relevance can bedefended independently of the concepts of resource, capacity and interference, then a liberal can graspit without being committed to republican freedom. In that case I can safely leave it out of myargument. If, on the other hand, it cannot be defined independently, then the concept of republicanfreedom is circular. I take it not to be circular, though, and conceptualize it in terms of counterability.Also see Pettit, Republican freedom: three axioms, four theorems.



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Primary knowledge about republican unfreedom to perform a-like actions entailsprimary knowledge about actual instances of resource inequality that weresignificantly often accompanied by non-counterable interference with a-like actions.

As much as primary knowledge about capacities rests on knowledge about actual

instantiations of capacities, knowledge about non-counterable interference is

ultimately grounded in knowledge about non-countered interference. The

knowledge captured by (2) depends, then, on an inductive generalization over a

finite number of observations of cases in which resource inequality co-occurred

significantly often with non-counteredinterference. If in a significant number of

cases of resource inequality the better endowed agent interferes with the less well

endowed agent, and the latter agent does not counter, then this is evidence that

resource inequality is correlated with capacity for non-counterable, arbitrary

interference.This, of course, involves knowledge about arrangements of liberal freedom. It

presupposes, to be precise, knowledge about the liberal unfreedom to perform

the a-like action that the interferer blocks, and knowledge about the liberal

unfreedom to perform another action that would counter the interferers

blocking of the performance of an a-like action. It is, for instance, knowledge

about the fact that a doctor can interfere with a patient obtaining treatment for

a standard fee, and knowledge about the fact that she cannot visit any other

doctor who would give her the treatment for the standard fee. All in all, the claimdefended in this section is:

Primary knowledge about republican unfreedom to perform a-like actions entailsprimary knowledge about actual instances of resource inequality that weresignificantly often accompanied by (i) interference with a-like actions and (ii)interference with actions countering interference of a-like actions.

This establishes that primary knowledge about arrangements of republican

unfreedom presupposes primary knowledge about liberal unfreedom. What

about knowledge about freedom? There is an interesting interpretative issue herethat complicates matters a little. To see this, letp be the proposition that no one

at allcan interfere with Sues going home, and let qbe the proposition that, even

though no one can arbitrarily interfere with Sues going home, someone can

interferenon-arbitrarily. Now, if I know that Sue is republican free to go home,

does this mean that I have knowledge of a disjunction of two propositions,

so that Know (p q) fully describes my epistemic state? Or does it mean that I

have knowledge (more detailed than the first reading) about one of two

non-disjunctive propositions, so that either Know p, or Know q fully describesmy epistemic state?36 There seems to be no reason in principle to prefer one

reading over another, so I consider both.

36Know(p q) does not entail (Knowp Knowq). That you know that either McCain or Obamawill win the US presidential elections does not necessarily entail either that you know that McCainwill win, or that you know that Obama will. This interpretative issue does not arise with respect to



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If we take it that knowledge about republican freedom is knowledge about a

disjunction of two propositions, then deleting the ins and uns from (1), (2)

and (3) yields a representation of how I arrive at knowledge about republican

freedom. Clearly the inductive generalization involving resource inequality can

no longer be used, so a new inductive generalization has to be made on thebasis of observations of resource equality significantly often accompanied by

non-interference (see propositionp) or countered interference (see propositionq),

and this presupposes knowledge about liberal freedom and about liberal

unfreedom to perform some action together with liberal freedom to perform

relevant countering actions.

If, alternatively, knowledge about republican freedom is knowledge about

one of two non-disjunctive propositions, then this inductive generalization does

not contain enough information. It does not make a difference between thekind of resource equality that entails non-interference (proposition p) and the

kind that entails non-arbitrary interference (proposition q). Two inductive

generalizations are needed in that case, one relating resource equality of kind

P and non-interference, the other relating resource equality of kind Q

and non-arbitrary interference. Furthermore, to make this effective, (1)

has to be modified not only to characterize the present situation as one of

resource equality, but also to specify whether it is resource equality of kind P

or Q.This sounds rather technical, but it is of course nothing other than

distinguishing between such situations as when someone is sitting in her

living room (kind P), and situations such as when someone is shoplifting

(kind Q), and while again (the modified version of) statement (1) does

not presuppose knowledge about liberal freedom, the inductive generaliza-

tion cannot get off the ground without knowledge about non-interference.

What is true for the earlier inductive generalization applies here, too: to relate

resource equality of kind P to non-interference presupposes knowledge

about liberal freedom, and to relate resource equality of kind Q to non-

arbitrary interference presupposes knowledge about liberal unfreedom to

perform some action together with liberal freedom to perform relevant

countering actions. Thus we find:

Primary knowledge about republican freedom to perform a-like actions entailsprimary knowledge about actual instances of resource equality that weresignificantly often accompanied by (i) non-interference with a-like actionsand/or (ii) interference with a-like actions and non-interference with countering

actions.

knowledge about republican unfreedom. Knowledge that Tania has the capacity to interfere with Suedoes not plausibly entail knowledge about whether she will interfere or not. (If it did, it would directlyconstitute knowledge about liberal freedom, and the present argument would be much shorter.) Seealso the third reply to minimization of uncertainty.



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VI. SUPPOSED BENEFITS OF REPUBLICAN FREEDOM

OVER LIBERAL FREEDOM

Republicans maintain that republican freedom has certain benefits that liberal

freedom lacks; it leads, they claim, to a minimal need to display strategicdeference, minimal uncertainty, and minimal subordination. In this section I

show that these benefits are not uniquely republican as they can be understood in

purely liberal terms.

A. MINIMIZATION OF THE NEED FOR STRATEGIC DEFERENCE

The first supposed benefit of republican freedom is that it minimizes the need

to display strategic deference. The inhabitants of republican worlds have more

rarely to resort to placating the powerful and pleasing their superiors than

those of liberal worlds, it is claimed, and they can accomplish their goals

significantly more often without the toadying and currying characteristically

loathed by republicans. In a maximally liberal world l, the republican argument

goes, various third agents may possess capacities for arbitrary interference,

and it is exactly the exercise of capacities for arbitrary interference that one

can often successfully allay by displaying strategic deference. In a maximally

republican worldr, however, there will be far fewer such agents and far fewer

such capacities, and therefore one will not as often be forced to keep aweather eye on the powerful, as Pettit puts it, and turn to displays of

deference.37

Although the liberal retort to this claim does not appeal to Epistemological

Priority, I mention it as it informs the replies to the next two supposed benefits

of republican freedom, and also because it sheds more light on Degree

Supervenience. Suppose that in some world v the number of cases where

individuals have to show strategic deference is rather extensive, and that,

for instance, Sue has to write three elaborate letters to her superiors inorder to be able to go on vacation. Then, the liberal argues, world v is not the

maximally liberal world, for we can easily extend Sues freedom by giving her

the option of going on vacation after calling her superiors only once. This

is a significant increase in Sues freedom (and if it represents any decrease of

her superiors freedoms at all, it is only minor), and is therefore fully justified

from the liberal point of view. The maximally liberal world, that is, contains

far fewer possibilities for arbitrary interference than republicans tend to

believe.

38

37Pettit, Republicanism, p. 86.38This does not contradict the argument against Degree Supervenience. While changes in

republican freedom are not in allcases reflected by changes in liberal freedom (or vice versa), I amconcerned here with a very specific kind of case, namely, where someone is perfectly capable ofreaching her goals, but only via the detour of strategic deference, and removing the detour not onlyincreases republican, but also liberal freedom.



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B. MINIMIZATION OF UNCERTAINTY

The idea underlying the second benefit of republican freedom, minimization of

uncertainty, is that inhabitants of republican worlds will face significantly less

uncertainty with respect to the actions from which they can choose than doinhabitants of liberal worlds. A maximally liberal worldlcontains more actions

about which the inhabitants do not know whether they can perform them than

a maximally republican worldr, because supposedly inlnumerous third agents

may possess capacities for arbitrary interference, of which one can never exactly

predict whether they will be exercised or not. Inr, by contrast, there are far fewer

such agents and far fewer such capacities, and therefore one does not face such

uncertainty as frequently. Or so republicans argue.

There are four liberal replies. The first copies the reply to the previoussupposed benefit of republican freedom. The second considers a maximally

liberal world land a maximally republican world r under the assumption that

there is Common Knowledge of Republican Freedom (CKR) in both worlds;

it is shown that republican freedom only minimizes uncertainty if CKR obtains.

The third reply considers l and r under the assumption that in r there is

CKR, while in l the analogous assumption of Common Knowledge of Liberal

Freedom (CKL) obtains, thus arriving at the remarkable conclusion that, under

these assumptions, liberal freedom minimizes uncertainty. The fourth reply,finally, uses Epistemological Priority to show that CKR (which the second reply

showed to be necessary so that the argument from minimization of uncertainty

can be run) is grounded in knowledge about liberal freedom.

1) The first reply just repeats the reply to the first supposed benefit of

republican freedom, casting doubt on the claim that the number of capacities for

arbitrary interference in lis as high as the republicans suggest. So let us turn to

the second reply.

2) The second reply grants republicans the view of the number of capacities

for arbitrary interference in worldsland r, but points out that the minimization

of uncertainty is a consequence not of the specific concept of freedom that is

maximized in r (non-domination), but of the specific epistemic assumption

(CKR). Without CKR, that is, land r score equally on uncertainty.

To see how CKR fulfills its function, consider Sue and Tania living in world l.

Suppose that Tania has the capacity arbitrarily to interfere with Sues going home

and assume that in world rthis capacity does not exist. If CKR obtains in both

worlds, Sue knows in l about the presence of Tanias capacity arbitrarily to

interfere with her going home, and she knows in r about the absence of thatcapacity. Indeed, inlthe assumption of CKR does not give Sue much knowledge.

Knowing that Tania has a capacity for arbitrary interference does not as such

mean knowing whether she will exercise that capacity, and as a result Sue remains

completely uncertain inlabout whether she will face any interference from Tania

in her going home.



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In r, however, the assumption of CKR does give Sue some extra

knowledgeprovided we interpret knowledge about republican freedom in the

non-disjunctive wayfor Sues knowing that Tania cannot arbitrarily interfere

with her going home then entails that either:

Sue knows that p, that is, she cannot be interfered with at all,

or

Sue knows that q, that is, she can be interfered with non-arbitrarily, but notarbitrarily.39

If in r Sue knows that p, then she definitely knows more than she knows in l

(under the assumption that there is CKR in l), for as we saw, although she knows

inlthat Tania possesses a capacity for arbitrary interference, she does not knowwhether Tania will exercise it. Sue does not know in lwhether she will succeed

in going home if she tries, but in r she knows she will succeed. This is clearly an

increase in certainty.

If, on the other hand, Sues knowledge about republican freedom entails that

Sue knows that q, this constitutes more certainty than she has in lonly if Sue

knows how to estimate the likelihood that non-arbitrary interference takes place.

She may have such knowledge, for instance, when she observed that police

officers block roads when they are engaged in crime scene investigation or when

there are accidents (and not when they are checking incorrectly parked cars, say).

But such knowledge does not directly ensue from CKR.40 Furthermore, full

certainty is rare here, due to a systematic asymmetry between the information of

ordinary citizens and, say, the police.

Nonetheless, it is true that in a maximally republican world there is less

uncertainty than in a maximally liberal worldprovided, of course, that there is

CKR in both worlds and that knowledge about republican freedom is interpreted

as a relatively detailed epistemic state involving knowledge about one non-

disjunctive proposition rather than about a disjunction of two propositions.Liberals may remain unconvinced, however, as long as this benefit is due to

additional epistemic assumptions rather than to the concept of republican

freedom itself.

3) Yet even if liberals license the introduction of epistemic assumptions, they

could reasonably object to the precise assumption of CKR. While it is fair to

assume CKR in a republican world, it is unnatural, the third reply states, to

assume common knowledge of republican freedom in a liberal world. The

39The conjunction of Know(p q) and Know(p , q) entails that Knowq. Here and elsewhere Iassume that Sue does not face any natural obstacles, and that she knows this.

40Such knowledge is grounded in primary knowledge correlating interference to certain situations(accidents, etc.), and non-interference to others, and thus on knowledge about liberal freedom andunfreedom.



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comparison ought to be between a maximally republican world r where CKR

obtains and a maximally liberal world lwhere there is common knowledge of

liberalfreedom (CKL).

Such an alternative comparison does not support the benefit of minimization

of uncertainty, though. Clearly, Sues knowledge in r(with CKR) is what it wasbefore; either she knows that p (she cannot be interfered with at all), or she

knows thatq (she can be non-arbitrarily interfered with, but not arbitrarily). So

let us turn tol. As Sue is either liberally free to go home or not in that world, CKL

in lentails that either:

Sue knows that s, that is, she will not be interfered with,

or

Sue knows that t, that is, she will be interfered with.41

But with these assumptions Sue does not have less certainty in lthan in r; she

possibly has evenmorecertainty. To see this, first observe that knowledge about

p and knowledge about s yield the same level of certainty. In both cases Sue

knows she can go home.42 Moreover, if she knows that t, then she also has

complete certainty, because she then knows for sure that she cannot go home.

Only knowledge aboutqgives less than full certainty. While Sue probably has the

expertise to estimate the likelihood of non-arbitrary interference to some extent,knowledge that non-arbitrary interference is possible does not reach the degree of

full certainty. In fact, if CKR entailed that each agent is always completely certain

about the likelihood of non-arbitrary interference, common knowledge of

republican freedom would be entirely equivalent to common knowledge ofliberal

freedom. This is a conclusion republicans ought to resist, for they have to allow,

for example, for the possibility that Sue, speeding on a highway at night and

seeing a police officer engaged in crime scene investigation, does not know for

sure whether the officer will exercise her capacity for non-arbitrary interference.

As a result, with analogous epistemic assumptions, inhabitants of a maximally

liberal world have no less certainty than those of a maximally republican world.

A republican might object that unlike CKR, the assumption of CKLentailing

in the example that Sue knows for sure what the police officer will dois

unrealistic. But that would miss the arguments point. The second reply to the

supposed benefit of minimization of uncertainty is that this benefit follows from

the epistemic assumption of CKR, not from the very concept of republican

freedom. Granting the acceptability of introducing additional epistemic

assumptions, the third reply objected that, as much as it makes sense to

41Knowledge of a disjunction does not give any knowledge in the case of liberal freedom, so thenon-disjunctive reading is the only plausible one.

42The subtle modal difference between knowledge ofp(will not) and knowledge ofs(cannot)is immaterial here.



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investigate CKR in republican ideal worlds, it makes sense to investigate

CKLthe analog for liberal freedom of CKRin liberal ideal worlds.

4) With non-analogous epistemic conditions, republican worlds may have

more certainty than liberal worlds; with analogous epistemic conditions, it is

the other way round. But the liberal can even grant non-analogous epistemicconditions, and turn to a fourth reply. This is to the effect that the knowledge that

arises under CKR in a maximally republican world can be accounted for in purely

liberal terms. Given the previous work on Epistemological Priority and on the

logical form of knowledge about republican freedom, the argument can be brief.

As we saw, Sues knowledge about republican freedom under the non-disjunctive

interpretation is either knowledge about p or it is knowledge about q. Such

knowledge, now, is grounded in two inductive generalizations, one correlating

resource equality of kind P to non-interference, and one correlating resourceequality of kindQ to countered interference. But that is knowledge about liberal

freedom, and similar argumentation shows that this also holds for the disjunctive

reading of knowledge of republican freedom. If, to conclude, inhabitants of

republican worlds have more certainty than those of liberal worlds, then the

knowledge that affords these higher degrees of certainty is just knowledge about

arrangements of liberal freedom.

C. MINIMIZATION OF SUBORDINATION

The third benefit of republican freedom, minimization of subordination, is

supposed to be that inhabitants of a maximally republican world rsignificantly

more often feel that they are of equal status than inhabitants of a maximally

liberal worldl. While most inhabitants ofr can supposedly look each other in

the eye without any need to bow and scrape, in la significant number of

individuals feel subordinated.43

There are two ways for the liberal to reply.

1) The first is again an analog of the earlier observation that the number of

capacities for arbitrary interference in lmay not be as high as the republicans

suggest, and that as a result subordination in l and r may be comparably

extensive. If Tania can arbitrarily interfere with Sue and if there is some chance

that Tania will exercise this capacity, then liberals too can describe the situation

as less than optimal and as one in which Sues freedom is restricted.

Subordination, in other words, is liberal unfreedom.

2) Yet republicans can take issue with this response on the ground that it

leaves untouched cases where there is zerogenuinely nilprobability ofinterference. Republicans hold the view that Tania subordinates Sue even when

43Pettit,Republicanism, p. 87. Whether or not this kind of effect can indeed be demonstrated is amatter for empirical psychology. For the sake of argument I grant the republican that this is in factthe case. See also Jan-Willem van der Rijt, Republican dignity: the importance of taking offence,Law and Philosophy (forthcoming).



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there is a genuine zero probability that she actually interferes. Since liberals

evaluate such a situation as one of freedom (Sue will not encounter any

interference), maximizing liberal freedom does not necessarily minimize

subordination. Or so the republicans demur.

One way for the liberals to respond to this objection is to argue that the casesthe republicans invokedo not actually involve genuine zero probability. As such

argumentation has to remain dependent on the specific details of the cases, I here

offer a completely general reply to the effect that zero probability casescan never

arisein genuinely republican contexts.44

To start with, it is important to see that, as before, the republican argument

for the supposed benefit of minimization of subordination requires that

arrangements of republican freedom and unfreedom are common knowledge

(CKR). To see this, suppose that Tania subordinates Sue. If Sue does not knowthat Tania subordinates her, Sue will not have any problem looking Tania in the

eye. Tania may of course find Sues looks audacious or presumptuous, but that

again depends on an additional level of CKR, namely, whether Tania herself

knows that she dominates Sue. So for there to be genuine subordination, Sue has

to know about Tanias capacity for arbitrary interference, Sue has to know that

Tania knows that Sue knows about the capacity, and so on, showing that all levels

of CKR are required.45

A second thing to note is that there is nothing conceptually or empiricallyamiss with capacities that have a zero probability of being exercised, and in fact

something of this sort was exploited in the arguments about Logical Equivalence

and Degree Supervenience.46 To borrow an example from Isaac Levi, that it is

physically possible for someone to run a four-minute mile is completely consistent

with there being zero probability that she will actually accomplish such a feat. 47

As a result, an argument that zero probability cannot arise in cases that are

relevant to the issue of minimization of subordination has to refer to specific

characteristics of these cases.

And indeed it does, for the argument is precisely that zero probabilities are

impossible when CKR comes into play. The argument about Epistemological

Priority revealed that knowledge about republican unfreedom rests on knowledge

about an actual instance of resource inequality and knowledge about an

inductive generalization correlating resource inequality and non-countered

interference. Now, clearly, not all observations about resource inequality are

observations of non-countered interference, but if a sufficiently large number of

cases show non-countered interference, this is evidence to the effect that in all

44Carter, A Measure of Freedom, pp. 2434. Kramer, The Quality of Freedom, pp. 13843.45Pettit, Republicanism, pp. 878 explicitly acknowledges as much.46Primary knowledge of that capacity is then impossible, of course.47Isaac Levi, The Enterprise of Knowledge: An Essay on Knowledge, Credal Probability, and

Chance(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1980), pp. 2412.



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observed cases there was acapacityfor non-counterableinterference.48 (This line

of reasoning is embodied in the two intermediate claims from the previous

section.) Evidence underlying the claim that resource inequality entails capacity

for arbitrary interference is thus a set of observations of resource inequality of

which a sufficiently large number show actual non-countered interference. Tostart the argument against zero probability subordination, assume that in 75% of

the cases I observed actual non-countered interference. Then I am justified in

holding two claims. First, there is a claim about resource inequality and

republican unfreedom:

(1) There is resource inequality whenever there is a capacity for arbitraryinterference.

This is a claim about a capacity. Second, there is a claim about the likelihood ofactualinterference:

(2) If there is resource inequality, then there is a 75% chance of actualnon-countered interference.

This reveals that while the knowledge embodied in CKR has to be grounded in

observations supporting an inductive generalization about resource inequality

and actual non-countered interference, these observations are incompatible with

assigning zero probability to actual interference in cases of resource inequality. If

I have seen non-countered interference in 75% of the cases of resource inequality,

I can conclude that there is a capacity for arbitrary interference, but I cannot

simultaneously hold the view that there is zero probability of interference in

this particular case. The evidence underlying knowledge about domination is

inconsistent with assigning zero probability to actual interference.

It may be objected that in some cases we do have additional evidence that there

is zero probability of interference, but an investigation of how to deal with such

a case of conflicting evidence reveals that this does not refute my argument.

Suppose I have adopted the belief that there is resource inequality between Sueand Tania, that I have made an inductive generalization about resource inequality

and non-countered interference, but that I also have some evidence to the effect

that there is zero probability of Tania interfering with Sue. What should I do?

There are (at least) three ways to stay consistent. First, I can give up the inductive

generalization. But for this to be rational theadditionalevidence underlying the

zero probability claim has to be genuinely stronger than the evidence underlying

the inductive generalization, and since the inductive generalization is a central

idea of republican thought, this move is unattractive in the context of the present

48That not all cases of resource inequality are cases of interference is notdue to the fact that thereis no strict correlation (such as when the administration of certain medication goes together in many,but not in all cases, with curing a certain disease). Rather it is due to the fact that the capacity forarbitrary interference is not in all cases exercised (such as when the administration of testosterone tozebra finches goes together with a capacity to sing low frequencies, even though finches with increasedtestosterone levels will not actually sing in all cases).



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argument. Conversely, I can give up my belief in the additional evidence precisely

on the grounds that the inductive generalization about resource inequality and

republican unfreedom is backed by a large number of observations, but here

liberals may object that such belief revision would be biased toward

republicanism.The simplest and least damaging thing to do, then, is just to give up the belief

that the present situation is one of resource inequality; statement (1), that is. In

fact, this way to revise beliefs is arguably the most rational one. The evidence

underlying the inductive generalization involves a large number of observations,

and if the additional evidence about zero probability is any good, it also has to

be based on a significant number of observations. One just cannot reasonably

form beliefs aboutprobability(zero and non-zero probability alike) if the sample

space is small. By contrast, the observation that the present case is one of resourceinequality is a one-shot judgment, not backed by a large reservoir of evidence.

As a result, if there is an indication that the probability of actual interference is

zero in a certain case, then a rational epistemic agent holding on to the inductive

generalization gives up on the one-shot judgment. She sticks, that is, to the

inductive generalization; she sticks to the additional evidence that there is zero

probability of actual interference, but she discards the belief that there is resource

inequalityand this is how she remains consistent.

A second objection could be raised, however, to the effect that the argumentonly involves subjective probabilitiesreflecting beliefsand that nothing is

said about whether in reality there may be any zero probability cases of

subordination. But the argument applies equally well to objective probabilities,

because it can be shown that in situations where CKR obtains there cannot be

objective zero probability of interference. The idea is simply that if the data on

which the beliefs are formed are primary (not involving hallucinations, and so

on), observing that there is non-countered interference in 75% of the cases of

resource inequality just suggests that the objective probability of non-countered

interference in situations of resource inequality is 75%. In other words, the

subjective probability estimates are just equal to the objective probabilities. True,

the objective probability could only be ascertained with full confidence if we had

access to (finitely or even infinitely many) instances of resource inequality; and if

from now on resource inequality were no longer accompanied by non-countered

interference, the objective probability would turn from 75% to zero.49 But

this would lead us to sever the connection between resource inequality and

domination that, as we saw, republicans are unwilling to give up, so the present

argument can safely ignore such possibility. Furthermore, additional evidencecould certainly support zero probability, but as in the case of subjective

probabilities, this would indicate that there is, in fact, no resource inequality.

49This is true for frequentist interpretations of probability, but not necessarily for propensityand Bayesian interpretations. See Donald Gillies, Philosophical Theories of Probability (London:Routledge, 2000).



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Granting the republicans what can be granted, no objective zero probability of

interference is possible in a situation in which CKR is satisfied.50

Primary knowledge about republican unfreedom is inconsistent with assigning

subjective zero probability to actual interference, and cannot be satisfied insituations where there is objective zero probability of interference.

All in all, if there is non-zero probability of subordination, both liberals and

republicans have reasons to increase freedom. If there is zero probability, then

CKR does not hold. As I have argued, however, without CKR the third supposed

benefit of republican freedom does not arise. This leads to the conclusion that the

benefit of minimization of subordination is as much a benefit of liberal as of

republican freedom.

VII. CONCLUSION

In this article I started by looking at three relations between liberal and

republican freedom. I argued against two of them (Logical Equivalence and

Degree Supervenience), and in favor of one of them (Epistemological Priority): to

know something about arrangements of republican freedom presupposes that

you know something about arrangements of liberal freedom. Turning to a

critique of the republican position, I considered the three benefits that adherents

of republican freedom claim their concept possesses over and above those of

liberal freedom: that it minimizes the need for strategic deference; that it

minimizes uncertainty; and that it minimizes subordination. I showed that

republican freedom only possesses the latter two benefits if there is common

knowledge of arrangements of republican freedom, and using the reasoning from

the argument about Epistemological Priority I showed that these benefits are not

uniquely republican. In fact, their necessary and sufficient conditions can be

phrased in purely liberal terms. An independent argument revealed that the first

benefit can be understood in liberal terms.While I did not examine the relation of Normative Priority between liberal and

republican freedom, I believe that the work presented in this article may be of

help here. Ian Carter has suggested that liberal freedom is normatively prior to

republican freedom in that liberal freedom gives normative reasons for favoring

republican freedom, but not vice versa.51 Liberals, the argument goes, can defend

republicaninstitutions simply to the extent that they favor liberalfreedom, and

Carter suggests that this extent could be rather broad. While the plausibility of

50This does not rule out that there are situations in which there is zero probability of exercising acapacity for arbitrary interference. In fact, such cases figure in my attacks on Logical Equivalence andDegree Supervenience. What the present argument shows is that these cases cannot at the same timesatisfy CKR based on primary knowledge.

51Carter, How are power and unfreedom related? p. 81. Cf. Lena Halldenius, Liberty and itscircumstances: a functional approach, New Waves in Political Philosophy, ed. B. de Bruin andC. Zurn (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 1939.



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this suggestion depends on empirical claims about how good actual republican

policies are at increasing liberal freedom, the argument presented in this article to

the effect that the benefits of republican freedom can be understood in liberal

terms underscores the prima facie plausibility of Carters view.


bruin - 2009 - liberal and republican freedom

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