The republican ideal of political liberty

Abstract

‘The crucial moral opposition’, Alasdair Maclntyre has recently claimed, ‘is between liberal individualism in some version or other and the Aristotelian tradition in some version or other. Part of the significance of the republican tradition analysed in this book lies in suggesting that this is a false dichotomy. I should like to end by underlining this point, seeking to do so by way of concentrating on the ‘republican’ theory of political liberty. I want in particular to focus on two distinctively ‘republican’ claims about liberty which are apt to be dismissed as paradoxical or merely confused, but which ought I think to be seen as constituting a challenge to our received views on the subject. First a word about what I mean by speaking, as I have just done, about our received views on political liberty. I have in mind the fact that, in recent discussions of the concept among analytical philosophers, one conclusion has been reached which commands a remarkably wide measure of assent. It can best be expressed in the formula originally introduced into the argument by Jeremy Bentham and recently made famous by Isaiah Berlin. The suggestion is that the idea of political liberty is essentially a negative one. The presence of liberty is always marked by the absence of something else; specifically, by the absence of some element of constraint which inhibits an agent from being able to act in pursuit of his or her chosen ends, from being able to pursue different options, or at least from being able to choose between alternatives.

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