Non-interference fails to capture liberty because slaves with lenient masters count as free.
Evidence
Liberals like Berlin have thus understandably rejected the positive and embraced the negative conception of liberty. The question remains, however, whether the received view of negative liberty as non-interference in particular adequately captures the political ideal we should be most interested in. Contemporary civic republicans argue that it does not. … By way of illustration, consider the following scenarios (both are standard examples in the republican tradition). In the first, imagine a group of slaves with a generally well-meaning master. While the latter has an institutionally-protected right to treat his slaves more or less as he pleases (he might start whipping them just for the heck of it, say), let us suppose that this master in particular leaves his slaves for the most part alone. Now to the extent that he does not in fact interfere with his slaves on a day-to-day basis, we are committed to saying— on the non-interference view of liberty—that they enjoy a good measure of freedom. Some find this conclusion deeply counterintuitive: if there is anything to the idea of political liberty, one might think, surely it cannot be found in the condition of slavery! — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 11
Categorization
- ADDENDUM: The master-slave thought experiment parallels the third article’s treatment of how domination/status relations structure societies — here applied to the conceptual question of whether freedom can coexist with subjection, relevant to institutional versus interpersonal power.
- corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 11
- XREF: connects to: Contrasting liberty with slavery reveals a non-domination rather than non-interference theory of freedom. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 170; Freedom as non-domination is not reducible to security of non-interference. — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 25
Related
- Contrasting liberty with slavery reveals a non-domination rather than non-interference theory of freedom. (similarity 0.92)
- Freedom as non-domination is not reducible to security of non-interference. (similarity 0.89)
- A benign master still dominates, so freedom requires civic status, not mere non-interference. (similarity 0.88)
- Freedom increases with reduced domination, not with improved insight into one’s dominator (similarity 0.88)
- Freedom in the republican tradition means non-domination rather than merely non-interference (similarity 0.87)
- Unfreedom lies in the structural power to dominate, not in actual interference. (similarity 0.87)
- Freedom is absent under any master’s power, however kindly that master behaves (similarity 0.87)
- Liberty can be lost through domination even when no one actively interferes. (similarity 0.86)
- Republican freedom as non-domination fuses absence from negative and mastery from positive liberty. (similarity 0.85)
- Freedom can be reconceived as non-domination rather than non-interference or self-mastery (similarity 0.84)
- Republicans hold liberty as non-domination while liberals define it as mere non-interference. (similarity 0.84)
- Republican freedom means absence of dependence on arbitrary power, not non-interference. (similarity 0.83)
- Domination and interference are distinct evils that can occur independently (similarity 0.82)
- Republican freedom can relate to noninterference in various distinct ways. (similarity 0.82)
- Freedom as non-interference can exist in isolation while non-domination requires society (similarity 0.82)
Broader Connections
- Contrasting liberty with slavery reveals a non-domination rather than non-interference theory of freedom.
#expands(0.92) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 170 - Freedom as non-domination is not reducible to security of non-interference.
#corroborates(0.85) — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 25