Liberty, Threats, and Ineligibility

Intuitively, threats are inimical to liberty. Yet, it has proven difficult to account for this intuition whilst insisting that obstacles need to render actions physically impossible in order to classify as constraints on freedom. This has led some to also classify as constraints those obstacles that merely render actions ineligible. Extant proposals, however, are unsatisfactory because they operate with a notion of empirical ineligibility that gives rise to numerous difficulties. This paper develops an approach in terms of a notion of normative ineligibility that explains how threats classify as rights violations and uses this account to identify a mechanism that explains how threats restrict liberty, where this is done not via a distinctive characterization of the y-parameter but rather of the z-parameter (in MacCallum’s triadic schema). This makes it possible to consider threats as being inimical to freedom whilst retaining an impossibility view regarding the strength of constraints.

Email Dr. Neil Manson to receive link for this event:  namanson@olemiss.edu

The format of this event will be a workshop of Dr. Bader’s paper. Requests for an advance copy of the paper can be directed to Dr. Neil Manson (namanson@olemiss.edu).