Abstract

Many authors have critiqued Phillip Pettit’s republican conception of freedom as non-domination (F=ND). I argue that the result of those critiques should not be any of the following (1) accept List and Valentini’s conception of freedom as independence (F=Ind) as a preferred alternative; (2) rely on trust in group agents via democracy or civic virtue as a means of defending F=ND; (3) revert to the traditionally accepted account of liberal freedom as the actual absence of interference. Instead, I argue that when the concerns of Pettit’s critics are addressed, what we are left with is a conception of freedom compatible with the implicit definition given in Nozick’s Anarchy, State & Utopia (ASU). I attempt to articulate a conceptual structure of liberty that is preferable to the rival views presented, and that is compatible with Nozick’s larger body of work beyond ASU. The positive view that is defended is that when comparing the structure of rights and freedoms in Nozick’s larger body of work against Pettit’s conception of Freedom as non-domination, the former is preferable. This is precisely because Nozick’s conception does not lead us to rely upon the “knock-on” effect of personal trust in government that republicanism requires in order to generate a state that maximizes freedom for all, but instead is able to generate a state exclusively from relations of mutually-beneficial exchange - relations that are themselves dependent solely on acts of impersonal trust - without violating any individual’s rights.