Volume 69, 2018
Political Philosophy
Robert B. Talisse
Pages 399-403
A Challenge for Republicanism
Republicans hold that freedom is non-domination rather than non-interference. This entails that any instance of interference that does not involve domination is not freedom-lessening. The case for thinking of freedom as non-domination proceeds mostly by way of a handful of highly compelling cases in which it seems intuitive to say of some person that he or she is unfree despite being in fact free from interference. In this essay, I call attention to a kind of case which directs attention to what seems to me to be a highly counterintuitive element of the republican conception of freedom. The challenge to republicanism is that of providing a compelling response to this kind of case.