Subjects:

Human Rights and Civil Liberties

Contents:

Introduction

PART I: JUSTICE AND OVERALL FREEDOM

1. The Concept of Overall Freedom

2. The Value of Freedom

3. The Distribution of Freedom

4. Reflective Equilibrium

PART II: VALUE BASED FREEDOM

5. The Value-Based Approach

6. Self-Mastery

PART III: EMPRICAL FREEDOM

7. Individual Freedom: Actions

8. Individual Freedom: Constraints

9. Group Freedom

10. Indicators of Freedom

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

4. Reflective Equilibrium

PART II: VALUE BASED FREEDOM

5. The Value-Based Approach

6. Self-Mastery

PART III: EMPRICAL FREEDOM

7. Individual Freedom: Actions

8. Individual Freedom: Constraints

9. Group Freedom

10. Indicators of Freedom

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

It is often said that one person or society is 'freer' than another, or that people have a right to equal freedom, or that freedom should be increased or even maximized. Such quantitative claims about freedom are of great importance to us, forming an essential part of our political discourse and theorizing. Yet their meaning has been surprisingly neglected by political philosophers until now. Ian Carter provides the first systematic account of the nature and importance of our judgements about degrees of freedom. He begins with an analysis of the normative assumptions behind the claim that individuals are entitled to a measure of freedom, and then goes on to ask whether it is indeed conceptually possible to measure freedom. Adopting a coherentist approach, the author argues for a conception of freedom that not only reflects commonly held intuitions about who is freer than whom but is also compatible with a liberal or freedom-based theory of justice.