The Free, the Unfree and the Excluded by Phillip Cole

Author:Phillip Cole [Cole, Phillip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General
ISBN: 9780429801143
Google: iqubDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-09T04:08:58+00:00

Section 4.6 -- Conclusion

This chapter distinguished between three conditions of liberty: the Non-interference Condition; the Autonomy Condition; and the Power Condition. It has examined the Autonomy Condition — the possession of the ability to make rational choices concerning the best options open to one, given one's plan of life and social context. It defended the place of the Autonomy Condition within the theory of freedom against an attack based upon Berlin's critique of positive liberty, by arguing firstly that Berlin's critique has been misrepresented, and secondly that to the extent that Berlin does criticise the idea of positive liberty, the Autonomy Condition can be characterized in a way that meets that criticism.

The concept of rationality was examined, to see whether a 'minimal and meagre' model of rationality would be sufficient to fulfil the Autonomy Condition, or whether a richer notion of rationality was required. It was concluded that while the minimal model had political attractions, there were also good reasons to prefer a richer model of rationality. Finally, Dahrendorf's notion of 'life chances' was examined to give substance to the notion of a range of options from which the autonomous agent can choose. It was concluded that options needed to be embedded within a community, and that the autonomous agent must be a member of a community — positionless people lack genuinely meaningful options. The exclusion of people from membership of the community deprives them of the opportunity to make genuinely meaningful choices, and so deprives them of their autonomy. Therefore the autonomy of the agent does not only rest on their power of rational decision-making, their self-understanding — it also rests upon the nature of the community, and the opportunity to be an active participant in that community. The freedom of the agent therefore rests upon the opportunity to be an active member of the community. Freedom is not the absence of social context — it is the presence of a certain form of social context, a context that ensures the three kinds of conditions of freedom. Therefore the theory of freedom must be concerned with the social context of action, and to that extent touches upon the question of social justice. One aspect of a theory of social justice must be a concern with the freedom of the members of the community. How this theory of freedom shapes a theory of social justice is explored in Part 3 of this book.

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