2 - Republican Freedom

Summary

Republicans have traditionally held that participation in or dependence on markets is incompatible with the enjoyment of republican freedom. Philip Pettit, departing from this tradition of thought, argues that markets do not pose a direct threat to republican freedom because they do not involve the imposition of an alien will. The distinction between intentionally and nonintentionally imposed constraints on which this line of argument rests dissolves once we treat freedom as a property of persons rather than actions: the salient question is not how a constraint was imposed, but whether its presence diminishes our fitness to be held responsible for what we do and is within the power of human beings to remove. It follows that while republicans may support the delegation of decision-making power to markets in order to limit the power of the state, they do not give us positive reason to value market freedom. A republican theory of freedom is therefore qualitatively different from a liberal one.