We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Part II - Critical Legal Moralism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2023
Personal liberty can be viewed through the lens of the good or the right. Do we value liberty because it is part of our good, or a means to our good, or do we value it because it is our right to have it? This chapter considers the value of liberty from the standpoint of the good. The ethical environmentalism defended in previous chapters, it argues, must be sensitive to the value of liberty as a personal good. In an important sense, people only lead good lives if they lead free lives. The chapter begins with the common idea that there is, or ought to be, a general presumption in favor of liberty. It next considers deeper ideals of liberty, such as autonomy or authenticity, that can be appealed to in order to explain liberty’s value. These deeper ideals are shown to be genuine ideals but their value is qualified in ways that are not widely appreciated. The chapter concludes by considering expressive or conventional reasons for opposing coercive or manipulative liberty-reducing interventions. It argues that these reasons require a deeper explanation, and one that pulls us beyond the value of liberty understood as a personal good.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
