Defining the Domain: Freedom and Oppression in the Social Sphere

Abstract

Traditional social contract theory aims to account for individual freedom, but concerns about the legitimacy of and obligations to the state have largely preoccupied liberal theorists with political aspects of freedom. What goes largely unexamined is how living with others can interfere with individual freedom even when politcal safeguards, such as nondiscrimination laws, are in place. This does not mean that traditional contract theory does not discuss matters of the social sphere. But the notion of the social is either tightly connected to the political sphere so that its unique sense gets obscured, or the “social” is cast in terms of institutions and so is too abstract to capture what is actually social in and about the social sphere—sociality. I claim that what makes the social contract social is the assumption that it exists because of interpersonal interaction. I focus on this aspect of social contract to set out the distinct form of freedom—social freedom—that belongs to lived sociality.KeywordsIndividual FreedomPrivate SphereSocial SpherePolitical SphereSocial OppressionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.