invigilating republican liberty

INVIGILATING REPUBLICAN LIBERTY

BY GERALD LANG

Republican liberty, as recently defended by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner, characterises lib-erty in terms of the absence of domination, instead of, or in addition to, the absence of interfer-ence, as favoured by Berlin-style negative liberty. This article considers several claims made onbehalf of republican liberty, particularly in Pettit’s and Skinner’s recent writings, and finds themwanting. No relevant moral or political concern expressed by republicans, it will be contendedhere, fails to be accommodated by negative liberty.

For a long time, and in the wake of Isaiah Berlin’s seminal essay ‘TwoConcepts of Liberty’, the battle was between two concepts of liberty: neg-ative liberty and positive liberty.1 But those with some knowledge of thehistory of political thought would have been aware that another traditionof philosophical thought about political liberty — that of republican liberty— was in danger of falling into neglect. Recent work by Philip Pettit andQuentin Skinner has, at least to some extent, repaired that lacuna.2 Myaim here is to investigate certain aspects of Pettit’s and Skinner’s workwith a view to determining whether the lacuna was worth repairing. Myambition, more particularly, is to show that Berlin’s account of negativeliberty does not succumb to the criticisms made of it by Pettit and

1 See I. Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in his Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford UP,1969). (The essay, or a version of it, was first delivered as an inaugural lecture at theUniversity of Oxford in 1958).

2 See, especially, P. Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, (Oxford UP,1997); ‘Capability and Freedom: A Defence of Sen’, Economics and Philosophy, 17 (2001), pp. 1–20; ‘Keeping Republican Freedom Simple: On a Difference with Quentin Skinner’, Politi-cal Theory, 30 (2002), pp. 339–56; ‘Freedom and Probability: A Comment on Goodin andJackson’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 36 (2008), pp. 206–20; ‘Republican Freedom: ThreeAxioms, Four Theorems’, in C. Laborde and M. Maynor, eds, Republicanism and PoliticalTheory, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008); and Q. Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, (Cambridge UP,1998); ‘A Third Concept of Liberty’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 117 (2002), pp. 237–68;‘Freedom as the Absence of Arbitrary Power’, in Laborde and Maynor, Republicanism andPolitical Theory.

The Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 62, No. 247 April 2012ISSN 0031-8094 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2011.00015.x

© 2011 The Author The Philosophical Quarterly © 2011 The Editors of The Philosophical QuarterlyPublished by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford ox4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

Skinner. It will not be claimed that Berlin’s account is not exposed toother criticisms.

The essay unfolds in nine sections. In section I, I shall do some essen-tial stage-setting, distinguishing between negative liberty, positive liberty,and republican liberty. Section II reports Pettit’s recent argument — Irefer to it as the ‘Invigilation Argument’ — for the claim that Berlin-stylenegative liberty represents an unstable compromise between a narrower,Hobbesian account of negative liberty, and republican liberty. The Invigi-lation Argument is critically assessed in section III. In section IV, I slotthe division between negative liberty and republican liberty into a distinctconceptual division of the relevant territory proposed by Robert Goodinand Frank Jackson, and sketch worries for both negative liberty andrepublican liberty which arise from this taxonomy. I offer replies to theworry posed to negative liberty in section V, and consider the merits ofPettit’s reply to the worry posed to republican liberty in section VI. Insections VII–VIII, I shall test further republican responses. A brief conclu-sion is drawn in section IX.

I. THREE CONCEPTS OF LIBERTY?

Berlin’s justly celebrated essay argued both for the conceptual distinctive-ness of negative liberty and positive liberty, and for the greater impor-tance of negative liberty. Negative liberty is sometimes referred tosummarily as ‘freedom from’, and is constituted by the absence of inter-ference with an agent’s options. For many negative-liberty theorists,including Berlin, the relevant sort of interference is moreover either inten-tionally produced by acts of human agency, or at least bears a significantrelationship to the workings or effects of human agency. Positive liberty,by contrast, is sometimes summarised as ‘freedom to’, and is constitutedby an agent’s self-mastery.3

I will omit any further mention of positive liberty in what follows. Ber-lin’s notion of negative liberty, by contrast, will continue to play a keyrole. This is primarily for dialectical reasons; it is because Pettit’s andSkinner’s advocacy of republican liberty tends to be conducted by con-trasting republican liberty favourably against negative liberty.

3 The ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom for’ slogans are, of course, highly problematic: see G.MacCallum, Jr., ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’, The Philosophical Review, 74 (1967), pp. 312–34; C. Taylor, ‘What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty’, in A. Ryan (ed), The Idea of Freedom:Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin, (Oxford UP, 1979); and Skinner, ‘A Third Concept ofLiberty’, pp. 239–43, for good discussions of this issue.

274 GERALD LANG

© 2011 The Author The Philosophical Quarterly © 2011 The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly

So what is republican liberty? We have seen that negative libertydefines liberty in terms of the absence of interference. By contrast, repub-licans define liberty in terms of the absence of domination, or the absenceof dependence, instead of the absence of interference.4 (Though ‘depen-dence’ tends to be Skinner’s term, and ‘domination’ Pettit’s, I think thesetwo terms can be treated pretty much as synonyms.)5 But what, in turn, isdomination?

Domination is an asymmetric relation of power between one agent andanother; it is the power that one agent has to interfere with the activitiesof another agent. Let us say that agent Blue enjoys domination over agentRed if Blue possesses this power to interfere with Red’s activities, and ifRed lacks any such power to interfere with Blue’s activities. For republi-cans, it is Blue’s mere possession of this power to interfere, rather thanthe actual exercise of that power, which abridges Red’s liberty. Whetheror not Blue exercises his power to interfere, Red is dominated, and is thusunfree. Think here of a slave and a kindly master. The master may bekindly disposed towards his slave, and offer little actual interference withher activities. Nonetheless, the master could, with impunity, interfere withevery detail of his slave’s life, if he were so disposed. For republicans, theslave is unfree even if she is not actually interfered with.

The existence of domination-without-interference constitutes one signif-icant point of contrast between Berlin-style negative liberty and republi-can liberty.6 A further difference between negative liberty and republicanliberty, at least on Pettit’s view, is that there can be interference-without-domi-nation. Non-corrupt and non-partisan laws, when properly enforced, andwhich track a subject’s interests, are held by Pettit not to abridge a sub-ject’s liberty. As indicated, the commitment to interference-without-domi-nation goes deeper with Pettit than with Skinner, which inclines me tofocus on the first axis of contrast, concerning domination-without-interfer-ence.7 In any case, what Pettit takes particular exception to — this is alsotrue of Skinner — is arbitrary interference, or interference which is not

4 Strictly speaking, there is a local dispute between Pettit and Skinner over this issue:Pettit thinks that the antonym of liberty is domination, whereas Skinner thinks that there isa joint antonym of liberty, comprising both domination and interference. For furtherdetails, see Pettit, ‘Keeping Republican Freedom Simple’. Neither of them makes too muchof this difference, however.

5 As does Pettit: see Pettit, ibid, p. 341.6 As it stands, this is rough: see section V for some necessary refinements.7 See I. Carter, ‘How are Power and Unfreedom Related?’, in Laborde and Maynor,

Republicanism and Political Theory, pp. 64–6, for some criticisms (to which I am broadly sym-pathetic). Pettit, ‘Republican Freedom’, pp. 127–8, offers a brief reply. Skinner has recentlyshown some cautious friendliness towards Pettit’s category of interference-without-domina-tion: see Skinner, ‘Freedom as the Absence of Arbitrary Power’, pp. 87–8.

INVIGILATING REPUBLICAN LIBERTY 275


guaranteed to be sensitive to a subject’s interests and which the dominat-ing agent can impose with impunity.

So far we have been focusing on what domination is. But Pettit andSkinner’s reasons for regarding domination with the derision they do can-not be fully appreciated without examining what they say about thebehaviour which is typically inspired by domination. This inglorious rep-ertoire of behaviour includes fawning, toadying, keeping one’s headdown, second-guessing, adapting one’s preferences in a slave-like way,thus falling into a docile and supine state, and so forth, and is explainedby the subject’s desire to get the dominating agent to refrain from actualinterference. Even if this kind of behaviour suffices to ward off interfer-ence from dominating agents, republicans think that it cannot be libertywhich is thereby preserved. As Pettit says:

We naturally think of the weakling who fawns or toadies or kowtows as the very

epitome of someone slavish and unfree. It would be outlandish to think that fawn-

ing might be a way to freedom.8

Two notes on terminology before I continue: first, I shall refer to‘republicans’ as those whose favoured concept of liberty is republicanliberty, and ‘liberals’ as those who favour Berlin-style negative liberty; andsecond, I will use ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ interchangeably.9

II. LIBERTY, ADAPTATION, AND INGRATIATION

In this section of the essay, I shall outline Pettit’s interesting recentattempt to show that negative liberty suffers from some sort of internallimitation, by which I mean a limitation that liberals would, by their ownlights, be aggrieved by, and which should serve to motivate them toembrace republican liberty instead. The argument aims to show that Ber-lin’s brand of negative liberty is an unstable compromise between aHobbesian construal of negative liberty (to which liberals are officiallyhostile) and republican liberty. For reasons which will become plain, Ishall subsequently refer to it as the Invigilation Argument.

8 Pettit, ‘Freedom and Probability’, p. 216.9 There is another form of negative liberty, proposed by H. Steiner, An Essay on Rights,

(Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), ch. 2; I. Carter, A Measure of Freedom, (Oxford UP, 1999); Carter,‘How are Power and Unfreedom Related?’; and M. Kramer, The Quality of Freedom, (OxfordUP, 2003), according to which agents enjoy liberty with respect to an option if it is notimpossible for them to attain that option. I lack the space here to show whether and howthis purer form of negative liberty differs from Berlin’s negative liberty, and whether itescapes republican criticism, but hope to deal with it in other work.

276 GERALD LANG


I begin by reproducing (with some very minor amendments) the follow-ing diagram from Pettit (Table A):10

Table A tabulates four scenarios, or cases, concerning Blue’s interac-tion with Red. Red is assumed to have two (and only two) choices: to dox, or to do y. And Blue manifests one of two (and only two) dispositions:to interfere with Red’s choosing x, or to interfere with Red’s choosing y.Pettit’s argument then unfolds, as I see it, in roughly the following way. (Ireport it largely without critical intervention at this stage.)11

The easy cases here are cases 1 and 4. According to both liberals andrepublicans, cases 1 and 4 unproblematically involve non-freedom, or theabsence of liberty, since in each of these cases Red chooses that veryoption which Blue is disposed to interfere with.

The problematic cases are cases 2 and 3. In each of them, Red choosesan option which Blue is not disposed to interfere with. So what makesthese cases problematic? To see why, we start with a construal of negativeliberty which makes them straightforwardly unproblematic. On thereceived interpretation of Hobbes’ view of political liberty, the onlyobstructions to liberty which matter are obstructions to an agent’s actuallypreferred options.12 In case 2, Red is disposed to choose x, but Blue is notdisposed to interfere with her. Since there is no obstruction to Red’s actu-ally preferred option, Hobbesian negative liberty is in no position to regis-ter any way in which Red is not free. (The same goes for case 3).

Berlin famously rejected Hobbes’ particular construal of negative lib-erty on the grounds that a theory of liberty which registers only obstruc-tions to an agent’s actually preferred options will be forced to describeadapted preferences, in certain circumstances, as freedom-preserving, oreven freedom-enhancing.13 The standard example here is someone whoadapts to her enslavement by losing her desire to do the things which her

Blue is disposed to interfere with x, not y interfere with y, not x

Red is disposed to 1. choose x 2. choose x

Red is disposed to 3. choose y 4. choose y

Table A

10 See Pettit, ‘Freedom and Probability’, p. 210; I have simply changed the names ofthe agents and labelled the four quadrants.

11 See Pettit, ibid, pp. 210–16; I have also been guided by Pettit, ‘Capability and Free-dom’, pp. 5–8.

12 See T. Hobbes, Leviathan, R. Tuck (ed) (Cambridge UP, 1996, ch. 21) (Originally pub-lished in 1651). I take no view here on the accuracy of the attribution.

13 See Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, p. xxxviii.



enslavement prevents her from doing. Intuitively, this alteration in herpreferences does not cause her to have any more liberty than she alreadyhad. Slaves who lose their desire to be free do not thereby lose theirchains. Berlin’s approach to liberty thus displays sensitivity to externalobstacles, but not to alterations in a subject’s preferences.

With these points in mind, let us revisit cases 2 and 3. As we know,Hobbes deems these cases not to involve any infringement of libertybecause no interference with Red’s actual choices is involved. But imaginethat we were starting with case 1. Hobbes, like everyone else, would haveno problem in judging case 1 to involve the absence of liberty. Imaginealso that Red’s preferences now adapt in such a way that Red ends up incase 3: Red loses her disposition to choose x, and gains a disposition tochoose y. Hobbes would be forced to describe that episode as involving amove from non-freedom to freedom. Since Berlin is in dispute withHobbes over this point, Pettit concludes that he had better demur overthe classification of case 3. (A structurally identical story, which assumedthat we were starting from case 4, could be constructed for case 2). Pettitsuggests that, in view of this demurral, Berlin will now have no choicebut to deny that Red enjoys free choice in cases 2 and 3. Berlin couldadd — as does Pettit — that Red acts freely in these cases, since Red isnot forced either to choose x in case 2, or to choose y in case 3. But Red’schoices between x and y in cases 2 and 3 are not free; that verdict wouldreflect the discredited, Hobbesian approach to these matters.

Though Berlin’s anti-Hobbesianism will force him to deny that Red’schoices in cases 2 and 3 are free, we still need an account of what makesRed’s choices in these cases unfree. After all, by hypothesis, Red’s choicesin these cases are not rendered unfree by Blue’s actual interference withher. Pettit’s suggestion is that Red’s choices are rendered unfree by Blue’sinvigilation of her choices. ‘Invigilation’ is a term of art in this debate: ifBlue invigilates Red, Blue enjoys the ability to interfere with Red’schoices if he so wishes, in the attempt to get Red to act in a way pre-ferred by Blue. Invigilation is therefore a species of domination; domina-tion takes the form of invigilation in cases where Blue uses, or is preparedto use, his power over Red to see to it that Red chooses some specificcourse of action which Blue favours. It follows that invigilation is consis-tent with non-interference, but may require interference in just those cir-cumstances where it looks to Blue as though Red will not pursue theoption which Blue wishes her to pursue.14 What immediately follows from

14 Notice the structural similarity between invigilation cases and so-called ‘Frankfurtcases’: see H. Frankfurt, ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’, Journal of Philoso-phy, 66 (1969), pp. 829–39.

278 GERALD LANG


all of this is that, if Blue invigilates Red’s choice between x and y, then noactual interference into Red’s choice by Blue is required in order for Red’schoice between x and y to be rendered unfree. This is of crucial impor-tance to Pettit’s republican strategy.

The argument is almost complete. The final stage concerns ingratia-tion. Just as Berlin disapproves of Hobbes’ concession to freedom byadaptation, Pettit thinks that Berlin should, on similar grounds, be equallyperturbed by freedom by ingratiation. Now freedom by ingratiation is adistinct category from freedom by adaptation, and has strikingly differentdescriptive features. If Red successfully ingratiates herself with Blue, thenshe will not be interfered with by Blue, whether she chooses x or y. Free-dom by adaptation, by contrast, proceeds against a fixed background ofBlue’s disposition to interfere or not interfere. In adaptation cases, unlikeingratiation cases, Blue is not represented as being potentially biddable.For these reasons, then, ingratiation is a more genuinely interactive processthan adaptation. What is more, adaptation and ingratiation are clearlyasymmetrical in the sense that whilst in adaptation behaviour Red seeksto align her own dispositions with Blue’s dispositions, in ingratiationbehaviour Red seeks to align Blue’s dispositions with her — that is, Red’s— dispositions.

Nonetheless, a certain normative symmetry between adaptation andingratiation does suggest itself. First, both adaptation and ingratiationare processes which Red might engage in, whether consciously or sub-consciously, in order to reduce the probability of Blue’s interfering withher; and second, both of these processes intuitively seem, not just deeplymorally problematic, but to involve the operation of factors which areinimical or irrelevant to liberty. As Pettit observes, if we feel that theachievement of liberty-only-given-adaptation is ‘too circumscribed andcontingent’ to be a morally comfortable one, that same verdict will nat-urally be extended to the achievement of liberty-only-given-ingratia-tion.15 The resulting deficiency of Berlin’s account, as Pettit sees it, isthat it does not have anything to say about the badness of ingratiation,as opposed to the badness of adaptation. It is therefore incomplete. Ifliberals are going to go to the trouble of distancing themselves from theHobbesian account in order to accommodate the badness of adaptation,they should be prepared to go one step further, and embrace therepublican account, in order to accommodate the distinct badness ofingratiation.

15 Pettit, ‘Capability and Freedom’, p. 7.



III. BLOCKING THE INVIGILATION ARGUMENT

What should liberals make of the Invigilation Argument? A significantproblem sets in with Pettit’s contention that the liberal’s differences withHobbes must be registered in and through the denial that Red’s choicesin cases 2 and 3 are free. The facts of the matter are actually morenuanced than Pettit’s response suggests.

Consider case 2. On Pettit’s view, liberals are committed to denyingthat Red’s choice of x in case 2 is free because if, counterfactually, shechose y, Blue would interfere with her. Red therefore lacks a free choicebetween x and y. Now the liberal need not dispute that Red does indeedlack a two-way power in case 2 to determine whether she attains x orattains y, and so her choice between x and y is not free (whether sheknows it or not).16 But we need to be keeping our eye, not just on Red’schoice between x and y, but on her access to each of these options, on whichthe facts about the degree of freedom of Red’s choice supervenes. Liber-als are entitled to say that, in case 2, Red’s access to x is free (because itis unobstructed), and Red’s access to y is not free (because it would beobstructed were Red to choose y). Because Red lacks free access to y incase 2, her choice between x and y in case 2 can also be judged to beunfree. (Exactly the same sort of story can be given for case 3). So factsabout whether Red’s choices are free supervene on facts about whetherRed enjoys unobstructed access to the options which comprise thosechoices.

To raise the question of whether Red’s choice of x in case 2, and Red’schoice of y in case 3, are free simpliciter makes it appears that the liberal’sparticular emphasis on actual interference must be irrelevant to the ques-tion of how we are to understand the frustration of Red’s free choices incases 2 and 3. And that is simply not the case. The liberal apparatus doesnot need to be enhanced or replaced, and the connection between inter-ference and the absence of liberty upon which liberals insist does notneed to be severed.

Of course, that still leaves us with adaptation and ingratiation, andwith the question of whether the liberal can register their liberty-insultingcharacter. But it seems to me that liberals can perfectly well accommo-date the liberty-insulting character of these phenomena. As far as adapta-tion is concerned, a liberal analysis of what is going on at the subveningor the ‘access to options’ level — the level which focuses on facts about

16 Strictly speaking, it is Red’s actual attainment of y, rather than her choosing (to pursue) y,which is frustrated by Blue, since, by assumption, Blue’s intervention is triggered preciselyby Red’s choices. I take it that Pettit would not be hostile to this minor clarification.

280 GERALD LANG


which of Red’s options are obstructed or not obstructed by Blue — pro-vides all the information we need. It does not matter, for the purposes ofthis analysis, whether Red, as a result of adaptation, loses her dispositionto pursue the options which Blue obstructs. If an option which was hith-erto available to Red is blocked by Blue, then Red is less free than shewas, even if she is no longer disposed to pursue the blocked option.

What about ingratiation? The relevant worries, it seems to me, may bestraightforwardly tackled within a plausible extension of the liberal frame-work, which concerns burdened options.17 Burdened options are optionswhich are secured by costs — of ingratiating and self-abasing behaviour— which would not be incurred if Red did not have to produce suchbehaviour in order to enjoy access to them. Liberals can note that Red’sattainment of x-without-ingratiation is blocked by Blue; that is one optionwhich Red does not have. And liberals can note the greater costs incurredby Red by her attainment of x-but-only-as-a-result-of-ingratiation as com-pared to her attainment of x-without-ingratiation. Those costs may includeRed’s fear or uncertainty of what Blue will do, the conscious effort whichRed must expend in order to appease or impress Blue, and so on.18

IV. LIBERTY, COMPLACENCY, AND NEUROSIS

In this section I wheel in some useful conceptual-taxonomical apparatusintroduced by Robert Goodin and Frank Jackson.19 Goodin and Jacksonmake a three-way distinction between actualism, which analyzes the loss ofliberty in terms of actual interference to a subject’s options; probabilism,which analyzes the loss of liberty in terms of the probability of actual inter-ference with a subject’s options; and, finally, possibilism, which analyzes theloss of liberty in terms of possible interference to a subject’s options.

Goodin and Jackson defend probabilism, and point to some obviousproblems with actualism and possibilism. Interestingly, both negativeliberty and republican liberty appear at first blush to face embarrassment

17 I take this useful term from Pettit: see, for example, Pettit, ‘Freedom and Probability’,p. 212. For more on these issues, see Carter, A Measure of Freedom, esp. chs. 7–8; Carter,‘How are Power and Unfreedom Related?’; Kramer, The Quality of Freedom, esp. ch. 2; andM. Kramer, ‘Liberty and Domination’, in Laborde and Maynor, Republicanism and PoliticalTheory.

18 For a slightly different and useful style of exposition which emphasises combinationsof freedoms, see Carter, ibid, esp. pp. 237–45; Kramer, ibid, ch. 5; and Kramer, ibid,pp. 34 ff.

19 See R. Goodin and F. Jackson, ‘Freedom from Fear’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35(2007), pp. 249–65.



from the non-probabilist options: negative liberty faces embarrassment byactualism, and republican liberty faces embarrassment by possibilism.

Let us start with negative liberty, which counts only actual interferencesas liberty-reducing. If one cares about liberty, however, it is plainly not justactual interference with a subject’s options we should be concerned with,particularly when there was a high antecedent probability of that interfer-ence; we should also be concerned to reduce the probability of interfer-ence. Liberals therefore seem complacent. Call this the Complacency Worry.

Republicans are saddled with the worry that, because they do notrequire any actual interference to sustain the verdict that a subject’sliberty has been compromised, they must count every possibility of interfer-ence as an actual reduction of liberty. And this looks simply neurotic. Callthis the Neurosis Worry.

I shall now look at these worries in turn.

V. ARE LIBERALS COMPLACENT?

Do liberals, complacently, object only to actual interferences with liberty?I do not think so. This is well-trodden ground, so my remarks can affordto be relatively brief. There are three relevant points. The first two ofthem have already, in effect, been relied upon in my reply to Pettit’sInvigilation Argument, but it is worth restating and clarifying them here.

First, there is a potential unclarity in the scope of actual interferenceswith liberty. To say that liberals count only actual obstructions as liberty-reducing does not mean that only actual obstructions to actually chosenoptions count as liberty-reducing. Obstructions presented to options whichremain unchosen abridge an agent’s liberty every bit as much as obstruc-tions presented to options which are actually chosen. What follows fromthis point is that, in a sense, liberals are just as much concerned with pos-sible interference as republicans are. But the focus of their respective con-cerns is different. Liberals affirm that the subject suffers a reduction ofliberty in all and only those possible worlds — it needs to be emphasisedthat these worlds need not be actual worlds — in which her options areinterfered with, whereas republicans affirm that the subject also suffers areduction of liberty in possible worlds in which the subject is not interferedwith, just as long as there are other possible worlds in which the subject isinterfered with.20 (Just how far away the interfered-with worlds must be

20 Talk of possible worlds in this connection is just an expository device for the presen-tation of the modal claims; I am not committed to any particular metaphysical theory forthe realisation of these modal claims.

282 GERALD LANG


from the not-interfered-with worlds in order to be able to say that thesubject suffers a reduction of liberty in the latter worlds is, of course, themain business of the Neurosis Worry: see section VI).

The second point, which has also already been mentioned in connec-tion to Pettit’s Ingratiation Argument, concerns burdened options, oroptions to which a cost or penalty has been attached. These options arestill available for choice, but they are more costly than they were, or atleast more costly than they would be without the attachment of that costor penalty. Invigilated options fall into the category of burdened options,in that they are secured by costs — of ingratiating and self-abasing behav-iour — which would not be incurred if Red did not have to produce suchbehaviour in order to enjoy unrestricted access to them. It is clear thatnegative liberty would appear to possess the relevant modal sensitivity todetect many bad-making aspects of invigilated options. There will alwaysbe differences between Red’s access to x-without-ingratiation and Red’saccess to x-but-only-as-a-result-of-ingratiation which reveal the latter to beburdened.

I turn now to the third point, which engages with what would appearto be Goodin’s and Jackson’s central concern. So far we have been deal-ing with options which, by implication, are determinately obstructed, ordeterminately not obstructed. But we do not always know whether ouroptions are going to be obstructed.21 Most often, we must instead operatewith beliefs regarding the probabilities of their being blocked. Do liberalshave the resources to deal with such probabilities? The crucial questioncan be put like this: are liberals committed to thinking that the absence ofactual interference with Red’s actual options, no matter how antecedentlyprobable Blue’s interference with Red’s options was, leaves Red fully free?That would certainly seem to warrant a charge of complacency. But Ibelieve this form of the Complacency Worry can be quickly dispatched.

The worry against liberals is this: if the loss of liberty, understood asactual interference with a subject’s options, is morally or prudentially sig-nificant, then it is rational for us to be exercised by the prospect or threatof such interference; and the more probable such interference is, themore exercised we should be by the prospect of its actualisation. But theworry, thus stated, simply outlines its own solution. Liberals are surelyentitled to say that, because actual interference matters so much, the pros-pect of actual interference also matters a great deal, albeit in a derivative

21 I have put the point in epistemic terms, which seems to me to be more pertinent tothis debate: see E. Barnes and R. Cameron, ‘The Open Future: Bivalence, Determinism,and Ontology’, Philosophical Studies, 146 (2009), pp. 291–309 for a good discussion of themetaphysical issues.



way. As I understand the liberal account, probable but non-actual inter-ference with a subject’s options is not, for liberals, abrogative of liberty;only actual interference leads to a loss of liberty. But if one cares aboutthe loss of liberty, then it is rational to care about the probable loss of lib-erty, and it is also rational to take steps to eliminate or reduce the proba-bility of that loss. A sensible resulting policy22 will be to rank those threatsin terms of the probability of their actualisation (as Goodin and Jacksonsuggest). A concern for the resilience of non-interference can therefore beeasily accommodated by the liberal.23 If we care about liberty, understoodas non-interference, it is rational for us to care about the existence ofthreats to interference, and it is rational to attempt to eliminate or at leastto minimise such threats.

Note, finally, that it is a further commitment, and one which is neitherembraced nor eschewed by the liberal qua liberal, to hold that the risk ofharm — understood here as the risk of actual interference with a subject’soptions — is itself a form of harm. Whatever one has to say about thoseinteresting and important issues will need to be settled by further debate.24

VI. ARE REPUBLICANS NEUROTIC?

I now turn to the Neurosis Worry for republicans, which has beenexplored in detail by Pettit.

To tackle the worry, Pettit endorses an account he calls ‘boundedprobabilism’.25 One half of this account will be of interest to liberals aswell as republicans. Pettit argues compellingly that pure probabilismshould be unattractive to both liberals and republicans, since it takes noaccount of adaptation. To put the point in terms of the options repre-sented in Table A — see section II — pure probabilists such as Goodinand Jackson will aim to reduce the sum of two probabilities: the probabil-ity of Red’s doing x multiplied by the probability of Blue’s interfering withx, and the probability of Red’s doing y multiplied by the probability of

22 With one major caveat: see the discussion of Pettit’s ‘bounded probabilism’ in sec-tion VI.

23 This phrase was originally used by P. Pettit, ‘Negative Liberty, Liberal and Republi-can’, European Journal of Philosophy, 1 (1993), pp. 15–38: see also see Carter, A Measure of Free-dom, p. 237, and Skinner, ‘A Third Concept of Liberty’, p. 262, n. 121.

24 I cannot go further into these issues here: see J. J. Thomson, ‘Remarks on Causationand Liability’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 13 (1984), pp. 101–33 and D. McCarthy, ‘Liabilityand Risk’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 25 (1996), pp. 238–62 for pertinent discussion.

25 See Pettit, ‘Freedom and Probability’, pp. 216–20, for the details; cf. Pettit, ‘Republi-can Freedom’, pp. 122–5.

284 GERALD LANG


Blue’s interfering with y. That is unappealing to Pettit, because it wouldallow the resulting sum to be lowered by Red’s adaptive behaviour.(Imagine that Blue is much more likely to interfere with Red’s doing x thanwith Red’s doing y. It would then follow that the likelihood of Blue’sinterfering with Red will be substantially lowered by the enhanced likeli-hood of Red’s doing y, rather than x.) To remedy pure probabilism’ssolicitousness towards adaptation, Pettit urges that information aboutwhether Blue is going to do x or to do y must be deemed non-probabilisti-cally relevant. On this view, it does not matter what the probability is ofeither Red’s doing x or of Red’s doing y; what matters is the probabilityof Blue’s interfering with Red in the event that Red does x, and the proba-bility of Blue’s interfering with Red in the event that Red does y.26

In my view, liberals should have no quarrel with the story so far. ButPettit thinks that republicans need to secure a further enlargement of therange of non-probabilistically relevant information, in order to discountingratiation behaviour, as well as adaptation behaviour. To do that, prob-abilistic information about changes in Blue’s dispositions — specifically,Blue’s disposition either to maintain enchantment with Red’s ingratiatingbehaviour or to lose enchantment with it — must also be left aside. Pettitdoes permit pure probabilism to deal with threats which fall outside theprivileged, non-probabilistic area of ingratiation and adaptation: hisexamples of merely outlying potential risks to liberty include the suddenmaterialisation of some powerful, menacing agent, or the sudden eleva-tion of a hitherto powerless agent into a powerful and potentially threat-ening one. In these cases, republicans can take standard probabilistremedies, which should release them from the Neurosis Worry.27

This further, distinctly republican, extension of bounded probabilism,from adaptation to ingratiation, does not ring true to me. Similarly, Pet-tit’s distinction between merely outlying potential risks to liberty andactual infringements of liberty seems unstable. No sharp cut-off points arein the offing here, since what I shall call sudden corruption possibilities areeverywhere.28

26 Pettit flags up some technical difficulties at this point, which are concerned with theinterpretation of subjunctive versus conditional probabilities: see Pettit, ‘Freedom and Prob-ability’, p. 217, n. 26. I will refrain from exploring these particular difficulties in order toexplore another tension in the republican view which would persist even if they were satis-factorily resolved.

27 This line of argument appears to constitute a weakening of the position upheld inPettit, Republicanism.

28 These possibilities are mentioned in passing by Carter, ‘How are Power and Unfree-dom Related’?, p. 70.



Let me explain using a pair of cases. Consider, first, the Red and WhiteCase, in which Red has to ingratiate herself with White in order to ensurethat she is not interfered with. For Pettit, this is a case which straight-forwardly reduces Red’s liberty. Now consider the Red and Black Case, inwhich, as it happens, Red does not have to ingratiate herself with Black inorder to avoid interference. So, for Pettit, the Red and Black Case is onewhich does not involve any actual loss to Red’s liberty. Rather, it involvesa merely potential threat to Red’s liberty, which can be handled in thestandard probabilist way. The key point, for Pettit, is that there is a cru-cial normative asymmetry between the ingratiating behaviour which Redactually has to produce in the Red and White Case, and the contingentabsence of ingratiating behaviour in the Red and Black Case.

I am not convinced by Pettit’s conviction that these cases are qualita-tively different. This is for the simple reason that, in the Red and BlackCase, Black might suddenly change — he might suddenly switch from some-one whose non-interference was not previously dependent upon anyingratiating behaviour from Red to someone whose non-interference isnow dependent upon Red’s ongoing production of a stream of ingratiat-ing behaviour.

Now I do not deny that there may be a special badness, or cost to well-being, in the Red and White Case, which is absent in the Red and BlackCase. After all, Red does not have to engage in any ingratiating, self-abas-ing, fingers-crossed behaviour in the Red and Black Case. What I deny isthat the two cases carry qualitatively different implications for liberty. Evenin the Red and Black Case, the plain facts of the matter are that Red’sbehaviour or appearance might trigger a change in Black’s disposition, withthe result that Red might then have to ingratiate herself with Black inorder to avert Black’s interference with her options. So even in the Redand Black Case, Red is never really safe from the possibility that the needfor her to engage in ingratiating behaviour is just round the corner. Evenwhen Red is not engaging in ingratiating behaviour, the behaviour she isengaging in may be having the effect either of keeping the need for futureingratiating behaviour at bay, or of enhancing the probability that shemay have to engage in such behaviour at some point in the future inorder to maintain secure access to her options. For these reasons, the dif-ferences between the Red and White Case and the Red and Black Casemust be counted as differences of degree, not differences in kind.

So why is Pettit so impressed by a supposed asymmetry between theRed and Black Case and the Red and White Case? Why isn’t resilientnon-interference enough for republicans? This is the question I will nowattempt to make further progress on.

286 GERALD LANG


VII. WHY ISN’T RESILIENT NON-INTERFERENCEENOUGH?

As we have seen, liberals have plenty of resources to mobilise against theComplacency Worry. But Pettit and Skinner are convinced that the result-ing coverage is incomplete. Skinner contests the claim that the republicananalysis is only, at bottom, concerned with the resilience of non-interfer-ence in the following passage:

I am not talking about resilient non-interference, nor indeed about interference or

non-interference of any kind. I am talking about the predicament of those who rec-

ognise that they are living in subjection to the will of others, and I am … claiming

that the mere fact of living in such a predicament has the effect of placing limits

on our liberty. [It follows that] this is unquestionably … an alternative theory of

liberty, since it … claim[s] that freedom can be restricted and constrained in the

absence of any element of interference or even any threat of it.29

The charge is further amplified in the following passage:

[Republican theorists of liberty] do not take it to be the case… that anyone living

in servitude will be stopped or penalised if they behave in insufficiently humble or

furtive ways. Rather they maintain that the situation in which slaves find them-

selves is that, while they may be stopped or penalised, they may be left entirely

unconstrained.30

These passages gather together different worries. One of Skinner’s worriesseems to be that there is a conceptual gap between the slave’s productionof ingratiating behaviour, to whatever degree, and the master’s interfer-ence with her. That gap will not always obtain: sometimes, just as Skin-ner says, ingratiation will have the effect of warding off interference. Butwhenever this gap does obtain, it will obtain for one, and only one, oftwo substantive types of reason, and neither type of reason discredits theliberal line of argument.

Skinner’s first possible reason for claiming that liberals fail to offer fullyadequate coverage is that the slave’s unfreedom is generated merely bythe standing possibility that her master interferes with her, where theexistence of this standing possibility is held to be perfectly consistent withthe non-emergence of actual interference at any time, or in any circum-stances. Liberals need to refer to actual interference somewhere in theiranalysis of unfreedom; Skinner’s response, in effect, is that no reference to

29 Skinner, ‘A Third Concept of Liberty’, pp. 262–3. Skinner also describes the ‘resil-ience of non-interference’ interpretation as ‘rather patronising’ (ibid., p. 262), though I’mnot sure why.

30 Skinner, ‘Freedom as the Absence of Arbitrary Power’, p. 98; emphases added.



actual interference needs to be made, and that liberals cannot, therefore,fully explain the badness of merely possible interference.

If this is Skinner’s reasoning, it is askew. To say that the master’s inter-ference with the slave is possible is to say that the master’s interferencewith the slave is possibly actual, which is equivalent to saying that the mas-ter would interfere with her in certain circumstances if those circumstancesactually obtained. So we can move, quite uncontroversially, and drawingupon only the appropriate modal platitudes, from the claim that the mas-ter’s interference is merely possible to the claim that, in certain circum-stances, the master’s interference would be actual. This gives liberals allthe conceptual materials they need for their distinctive ways of registeringthe loss of liberty, and it demonstrates that Skinner’s resistance to theirline of argument on these particular grounds needs to be withdrawn.31

The second reason is that the master may be simply insensitive to any-thing the slave is doing. If the master interferes with the slave’s activity, itwill not be due, even in part, to the master’s judgment that the slave hasbeen insufficiently deferential, or humble. It will be for other reasons.(Perhaps, and for other reasons, he is simply in a bad mood, and is notpaying any attention at all to the slave’s behaviour). If that is the case,then we can still condemn the master’s behaviour, and still condemnarrangements whereby the slave is vulnerable to his caprices, but we donot need to amend our analysis of liberty in order to do so.

To demonstrate this claim, let us suppose, somewhat outlandishly, thatGreen is not persuadable one way or another by any ingratiating behav-iour that Red can muster, but that he is guided exclusively by the weatherconditions. The case I shall refer to as the Variable Weather Liberty Case isrepresented in Table B:

The first column in Table B represents weather conditions: ignoringborderline cases, assume that it is either raining or not raining. The sec-

Weather condition Red is disposed to Green is disposed to

Raining choose x interfere with x

Not raining choose x not interfere with x

Table B

31 Thanks to John Divers for discussion of this point. J. Waldron, ‘Petit’s Molecule’, inG. Brennan, R. Goodin, F. Jackson, and M. Smith (eds), Common Minds: Themes from the Phi-losphy of Philip Pettit, (Oxford UP, 2007) expresses the conviction that the liberal should beable to demonstrate some robust connections between the possibility of interference andactual interference. I trust that this trail of modal platitudes helps to make that connectionmore perspicuous.

288 GERALD LANG


ond column represents Red’s choice: again, to simplify things, it isassumed that Red chooses x both when it is raining and when it’s notraining. The third and last column represents Green’s dispositions:assume that Green is disposed to interfere with Red’s choosing x when itis raining, but to refrain from interfering with Red’s choosing x when it’snot raining. Imagine further that it is usually not raining, so that theprobability of interference is low. Despite the low probability of actualinterference, there is undoubtedly something seriously remiss about thesepolitical arrangements. Though in one sense Green is perfectly predict-able — all we need is a decent weather forecaster to know what he willdo — he is nonetheless, from a normative point of view, unacceptablycapricious, eccentric, whimsical, or flaky.

The point I want to make is that we do not have to incorporate aweather condition into the analysis of liberty in order to be able to complainabout arrangements as capricious as these. An argument objecting toarrangements which abridge liberty on irrelevant or capricious groundsneed employ nothing more elaborate than negative liberty. More gener-ally, a liberal is entitled to say that negative liberty should be upheld onprincipled, not capricious, grounds. The exclusion of caprice, ingratiation,and any other irrelevancies or foibles, can be secured without having toappeal to the content of a theory of liberty. We need focus only on the per-mitted grounds by which liberty is enjoyed by agents. It follows that liberalsdo not have to employ anything more elaborate than negative liberty,because a commitment to negative liberty makes room for the condemna-tion of arrangements which fail to uphold liberty for the right reasons.

To drive this point home even more vividly, let us now consider, inTable C, the Variable Weather Justice Case, in which Yellow’s implementationof distributive justice is also affected by weather conditions:

Below 30 degrees Celsius, Yellow is a Rawlsian; over 30 degrees Cel-sius, he is a Nozickian. There is obviously something objectionable aboutYellow’s way of running things, just as there was something objectionableabout Green’s behaviour in the Variable Weather Liberty Case. But, asfar as I know, Rawls never mentions the weather in his careful and com-prehensive discussion of justice; he incorporates no weather condition intohis analysis. Was this an oversight? Did Rawls miss a trick? Of course

Weather condition Yellow is inclined to

Below 30 degrees Celsius operate Rawls’s justice as fairness

Over 30 degrees Celsius operate Nozick’s entitlement conception

Table C



not! Again, Rawls would simply say that justice should be upheld for theright reasons—it should be upheld on principled grounds, and not as aresult of caprice or whim.

The resulting lesson is clear: it was never incumbent upon Rawls, orany other theorist of justice, to provide an exhaustive list of examples ofunprincipled departures from justice, any more than it is incumbent uponthe liberal theorist of freedom to supply a similarly exhaustive list ofexamples of unprincipled departures from freedom’s tenure.

Though these two liberal counter-arguments do, I think, retire somerepublican concerns, they probably do not get at everything Skinner isworried about. Skinner also seems exercised by the master’s entitlementto interfere with his slave, and with what that entitlement disclosesabout the slave’s moral and political status. What this entitlementactually amounts to requires careful articulation, however. Consider thefollowing:

A power is arbitrary if the person wielding it is capable of interfering with others,

with impunity, solely on the basis of his or her own arbitrium or will, and hence with

no obligation to take into account the interests of those subject to the interference.32

What is of immediate interest here is Skinner’s mention of obligation. Butwhat sense of obligation does he mean? He can hardly be suggesting thatthe power-wielding agent is under no moral obligation to take into accountthe interests of those agents who are vulnerable to his interference, onpain of renouncing the very account of liberty which he and other repub-licans espouse. So the master’s non-obligation, or entitlement, to interferewith his slave must collect a slightly different interpretation. I exploresome suggestions in the next section.

VIII. LIBERTY AND POLITICAL STATUS

How do republicans construe the moral or political status which is under-mined by domination, and how do liberals fail to accommodate a con-cern for this status? Several ideas propose themselves.

Consider, first, this passage of Pettit’s:

[D]omination will … tend to introduce a characteristic asymmetry of status. A rela-

tionship of domination leaves the dominated person in a position where it is likely

to be a matter of common knowledge that he or she is exposed to the possibility of

arbitrary interference and cannot, therefore, speak his or her mind without risk of

32 Skinner, ‘A Third Concept of Liberty’, p. 248, n. 53; emphases added.

290 GERALD LANG


falling out of favour and cannot be ascribed a voice that claims the attention and

respect of others… This point about status is of the first importance.33

I applaud the sentiments Pettit expresses in this passage. My disagreementwith him lies in his contention that it is only republicans who are wellplaced to accommodate them. What matters is that persons are in fact pro-tected from arbitrary interference from others, not simply that they haveto consciously engage in ingratiating behaviour in order to avert arbitraryinterference from others. Ingratiating behaviour is, as we have seen, anarbitrarily selected sub-set of behaviour; any behaviour or indeed anyfacts whatsoever about the person in question might trigger arbitraryinterference.

As another manifestation of their concern with status, republicansmight say that their focus on ingratiation reveals their sensitivity to theespecially morally problematic nature of interference (actual or possible)which derives from, specifically, human interference with action, asopposed to interference generated by natural obstacles, such as snowdriftsor the threatening behaviour of non-human animals. Pettit writes:

While a victim generally suffers reduced choice as a result of crime — say, that

involved in loss of money, traumatisation, or physical harm — this is the sort of

effect that might have come about as a result of an unintended accident. The evil

of reduced choice is certainly important, but it is distinct from the evil involved in

the assumption and exercise of domination by the criminal; it is this evil that

explains why, intuitively, it is worse to have one’s choices reduced by crime than

by an unintended, perhaps purely natural, accident.34

Pettit’s remarks are suggestive, and may well be correct, but the liberalaccount is no less capable than the republican account of accommodatingthe underlying ideas. This is because it is not obstacles or obstructionsper se which matter to Berlin’s account, but obstacles which are imposedby, or significantly related to, the workings of human agency. As Berlinclearly says:

I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes

with my activity. Political liberty in this [negative] sense is simply the area within

which a man can act unobstructed by others.35

Let us try another tack. Perhaps what the liberal ‘resilience of non-interference’ line of argument omits is a concern with the character of the

33 Pettit, ‘Keeping Republican Freedom Simple’, p. 350.34 Pettit, ibid, p. 344.35 Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, p. 122; emphases added. The point is also noted

by Carter, ‘How are Power and Unfreedom Related?, p. 62.



policies officially endorsed or enacted by the state, and the moral relation-ship which those policies disclose between the state and its citizens. Thepoint could perhaps be put like this. Imagine that, in Slack State, there is arefusal to officially acknowledge that the state’s citizens should enjoysecure and unobstructed access to options. However, the officials in SlackState are relaxed, almost supine, about its citizens’ behaviour, and anyactual interference is fairly uncommon. In Zealous State, by contrast, thereis such an official acknowledgement that its citizens’ access to certainoptions should be unobstructed, and there is a reasonable though notflawless degree of enforcement of these laws or policies. We can stipulatethat Slack State and Zealous State offer identical levels of actual or de factonon-interference with their respective citizens. For all that, does ZealousState offer something that Slack State does not, such that Zealous State’scitizens enjoy more liberty, or a better quality of liberty, than that whichis enjoyed by the citizens in Slack State?

If the inclination is to return an affirmative answer to this question,there are two possible explanations which are available to the liberal. Thefirst of them returns us to the distinction between the content of a politi-cal value and the grounds on which that value is permitted expression,which we explored in connection with the two Variable Weather cases insection VII. Though Slack State may offer a level of de facto non-interfer-ence with its citizens which rivals the level of de facto non-interferenceoffered by Zealous State, that achievement is clearly normatively fluky. Itis not an achievement which reflects commitments professed by SlackState, but is, rather, merely the upshot of slackness or inefficiency in SlackState’s pursuit of the policies it does endorse. It is therefore not anachievement for which Slack State can take any substantial moral credit,and that should be a matter of deep concern to Slack State’s citizens.

The second explanation of why the existing arrangements in ZealousState look more propitious for liberty than existing arrangements in SlackState has a more pragmatic or empirical character. Consider the agendasof those agents in Zealous State and Slack State, respectively, who wouldwish to raise the probability of the state’s non-interference with citizens’liberties. In Zealous State, the aim of liberty-lovers will be to improvecompliance with, or enforcement of, policies which are already sanctionedby Zealous State. In Slack State, the aim of liberty-lovers will be either tomake enforcement slacker still, or else to get Slack State to change its offi-cial policies in order to acknowledge that its citizens’ liberties ought toremain unrestricted. Plausibly, in most realistic political circumstances, theagenda of the liberty-lovers in Slack State will enjoy a more fragile like-lihood of success than the agenda of the liberty-lovers in Zealous State.

292 GERALD LANG


In summary, liberals can echo, though on perhaps distinct grounds, therepublican preference for Zealous State over Slack State.

IX. CONCLUDING REMARK

The argument is now complete. I have argued, first, that liberals caneffectively match republicans for coverage of the relevant obstacles topolitical liberty; and second, that republicans, but not liberals, are argu-ably guilty of preoccupation with an arbitrary limitation in the range ofthose obstacles to liberty. I conclude that there are no substantial republi-can worries which fail to be accommodated by negative liberty. Whateverother difficulties remain for Berlin’s account, it seems to me that thethreat posed by republicanism has proven to be largely toothless.36

University of Leeds

36 Earlier versions of this paper were presented in seminars at Hull, Leeds, Manchester,and McGill (at the Montreal Political Theory Forum). I warmly thank everyone who com-mented on those occasions. I also thank Ian Carter, John Divers, Antony Hatzistavrou,Iwao Hirose, Shepley Orr, Tom Porter, Jon Quong, and Scott Shalkowski for further con-versation and encouragement, and I’m particularly grateful to the two anonymous referees’comments on the penultimate draft.



invigilating republican liberty

Documents