The basic liberties: An essay on analytical specification

Stephen K Mcleod,Attila Tanyi

doi:10.1177/14748851211041702

Stephen K Mcleod, Attila Tanyi

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/14748851211041702

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Abstract

We characterize, more precisely than before, what Rawls calls the ‘analytical’ method of drawing up a list of basic liberties. This method employs one or more general conditions that, under any just social order whatever, putative entitlements must meet for them to be among the basic liberties encompassed, within some just social order, by Rawls’s first principle of justice (i.e. the liberty principle). We argue that the general conditions that feature in Rawls’s own account of the analytical method, which employ the notion of necessity, are too stringent. They ultimately fail to deliver as basic certain particular liberties that should be encompassed within any fully adequate scheme of liberties. To address this under-generation problem, we provide an amended general condition. This replaces Rawls’s necessity condition with a probabilistic condition and it appeals to the standard liberal prohibition on arbitrary coercion by the state. We defend our new approach both as apt to feature in applications of the analytical method and as adequately grounded in justice as fairness as Rawls articulates the theory’s fundamental ideas.

Highlights

While it is widely held that some liberties are more important than others, there has been considerable controversy about which liberties count as basic and which do not
In defining what it is for a liberty to be basic, instead of appealing, as Rawls does, to a purported modal relationship between the basic liberties and the full and informed exercise of the moral powers in the two fundamental cases, we introduce the idea of mitigating against risk, above a certain threshold, to the full and informed exercise of the two moral powers
Restrictions on market-strategic advertising, even if these are legally imposed, can be consistent with the principle of legitimacy and need not amount to arbitrary coercion. This is because reasonable and rational people may agree with Rawls (2005 [1993]: 365) that market-strategic advertising can be socially wasteful. Both the question as to which liberties are basic and the nature of the analytical method of specifying the basic liberties are significantly under-theorized in the literature

Summary

Introduction

While it is widely held that some liberties are more important than others, there has been considerable controversy about which liberties count as basic and which do not. Some theorists have held that such moral rights as the right to engage in sit-ins and mass picketing during strikes, or to participate in other forms of direct action, do not count as, and can take priority over, freedoms that liberals tend to regard as basic (Gourevitch, 2018; Raekstad and Rossi, 2021). There is a prominent and ongoing controversy about whether certain laissez-faire economic freedoms qualify, as Tomasi (2012a, 2012b) argues, as basic liberties.. There is a prominent and ongoing controversy about whether certain laissez-faire economic freedoms qualify, as Tomasi (2012a, 2012b) argues, as basic liberties.1 Such controversies have important consequences for political philosophy and its applications.

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Conclusion