The Concept of Individual Freedom

Abstract

This chapter concerns the concept of individual freedom, the relationship between the concept of freedom and the concept of autonomy, and the relationship between an agent’s freedom of choice and that agent’s values. It begins a search, continued in the following chapter, for a specific conception of freedom which is fit to play the role of a guiding moral and political value. After examining the negative concept of freedom—freedom from constraint—it considers the question of whether any other concept of freedom is necessary or useful. Both Isaiah Berlin’s attempt to formulate a positive concept of freedom, and more recent attempts to define “third” concepts of freedom, are found to collapse into specific aspects of a suitably general negative concept. John Christman’s argument that the concept of autonomy is a positive concept of freedom is then critiqued, and sufficient reason is found for keeping the two concepts distinct. The chapter concludes with a critique of Matthew Kramer’s attempt to provide a value-neutral account of the extent of an individual’s freedom.