Freedom as Not Being Dominated

The Harm Principle pictured freedom as not being interfered with. Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner revive an older picture from the Roman republic: freedom is not being dominated. You are dominated when someone can interfere in your life at will, whether or not they do.

The test case is the kind master. A slave with a gentle owner may go unhindered for years. Still, the owner could change at any moment, and the slave knows it, so he bows and watches his tongue. By the interference test he is free. By the republican test he is not, and that fits how he lives.

Think of a worker who can be fired on a whim, a tenant evicted at will, a spouse with no money of her own. Each may be left alone and still unfree. The remedy is not fewer rules but rules that no one can bend at will.

The friendly landlord

Ana rents from Mr. Reyes, who has never raised her rent or complained. She is also careful never to mention the damp, never to be late with a form, never to have friends stay. He can end the tenancy with a month’s notice and no reason.

Her friend Dolores says Ana is lucky to be left alone. Ana says she lives as a guest who could be asked to leave. A law requiring a reason to evict would change nothing in Mr. Reyes’s behavior, and everything in hers.

Try this today Find one part of your life where someone could interfere at will but does not; ask whether you shape your conduct to keep it that way.