This chapter explores the relationship between homelessness and two prominent conceptions of liberty: positive liberty as self-actualization and negative liberty as non-interference. It sets out how scholars have approached the relationship between homelessness, property, and both forms of liberty. It demonstrates how unhoused persons tend to lack positive and negative liberty.

The Conclusion offers a critical assessment of Greek liberalism and its two main currents by placing them within the European liberal landscape of the nineteenth century. As it shows, Greek liberalism was not just rich in ideas and syncretic in character. It was also rich in the institutional mechanisms through which these ideas were formed and diffused. What is more, in the fluid circumstances of Greece, it was endowed with a peculiar strength, rendering it a profoundly transformative force. Apart from offering a comparison with other liberal agendas across Europe, the Conclusion also advances an argument regarding the long-term effects of this liberal moment even after its end.

Instead of treating freedom as a property of actions, as in the familiar negative-positive liberty framework, we should treat it as a property of persons, or more precisely of the social position that persons occupy. A liberal citizen is free by virtue of occupying two distinct and complementary social positions: that of being recognized as a responsible agent, and that of being granted a domain of nonresponsible conduct. This way of thinking improves on the positive liberty position by shifting our focus away from the metaphysical question of whether human beings “really” exercise agency and toward the practical question of when we should hold them responsible for the things that they do. It improves on the negative liberty position by providing a clear explanation of what it means for choice to be “unconstrained,” and why such choice is politically valuable.

This chapter analyzes the terminology of negative and positive liberty used in the book. The difference in the approach to freedom of expression can be considered through the prism of the “quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns.” The understanding of the role of the government in France as defining the content and limits of freedom of expression is an amalgam of elements of antiquity and modernity. It is reminiscent of the conception of the Ancients that the state incarnates prudence. In the United States, the spirit of the law on freedom of expression is closer to modernity and to natural rights philosophy. The historical heritage of absolute monarchy defined, on the imaginary level, the terms of the substitution of the nation for the king following the French Revolution. The American Revolution led to a conception of distrust toward the government. The central place of the law in the clauses that concern rights of the French Declaration shows trust toward the legislator to define the content and limits of liberty. The American declarations of rights, on the other hand, aim at guaranteeing rules, and transcend and limit ordinary legislative power.

In the introduction, I first set forth some statistics on the current state of unionization. I then go on to explain some important differences between the argument from equality and the argument from liberty, and the need to reclaim the argument from liberty from the Right if we are to adequately defend a number of progressive policies including unionization. I also discuss the difference between consequentialist moral arguments and arguments from right, and explain the role that empirical claims play in each. I explain the difference between ideal and “non-ideal” theory, between preinstitutional and postinstitutional rights, and how these differences relate to the debate over unionization. I introduce the idea that liberty is a very complex notion and identify three different concepts of what liberty might mean. I explain the difference between a concept and a conception and how this makes what we talk about when we talk about liberty even more complex. Finally, I introduce the main arguments included in each of the three main essays in the book and explain that, while the overall argument of the book concentrates on the situation in the United States, it also has application to other liberal capitalist democracies and applies to other issues besides unionization.