The Impossibility of “Freedom as Independence”

Most of the recent work on freedom is concerned with the liberal-republican debate. The latest move in this debate has been made by List and Valentini who argue in favor of a conception of freedom (called “freedom as independence”) that is located midway between the liberal and republican conceptions. In this article, we review some key aspects of the debate that led to List and Valentini’s move and then argue that their midway position is untenable. We first show how the debate has given rise to List and Valentini’s (republican-inspired) view that unfreedom is created not merely by more or less probable constraints (as liberals have claimed) but by the sheer possibility of constraints. We then argue that this position on possible-but-improbable constraints makes unfreedom ubiquitous and that “freedom as independence” is therefore an impossible ideal. In the course of our argument, we rebut some possible rejoinders that appeal to the difference between positive normative and non-normative constraints and to the ways in which “freedom as independence” is an open and versatile concept