Chapter 12: Freedom of Association Kimberley Brownlee Word count: 7179 Abstract: This chapter explores the contours of our freedoms to enter into and leave particular associations with particular people. The chapter highlights the fact that often our associations with each other are morally complex and, indeed, morally wrong. This moral complexity stems partly from the fact that associations are necessarily intersubjective: they affect the social needs, claims, and freedoms of at least two people. When our associations are morally wrong, we must determine whether they can be protected nonetheless by our sphere of associative freedom. The chapter shows that our sphere of associative freedom depends greatly on the character and consequences of our associations (or dissociations). The chapter also shows that, under certain conditions, freedom of association is less important than other associative rights, such as the positive associative claim-rights of utterly dependent people. Keywords: freedom of association, social connections, social rights, rights to do wrong, freedom of religion and expression, Introduction We spend the majority of our waking hours in the company of other people (Cacioppo et al 2009). The ways that we spend those hours can be carved up into different types of social connections. These include our family bonds, friendships, religious affiliations, business partnerships, collegial ties, club memberships, and 1 political associations (see Lawrence 2008). Some of these connections are deeply intimate, such as a typical parent-child relationship or a typical marriage. Others are less intimate, such as, typically, clubs, teams, and unions, but those less intimate connections can be gardens in which more intimate connections grow. Together, our various social connections exert a comprehensive influence over our life-plans and personal identities. They also give us some of our heftiest moral roles including mother, father, child, spouse, sibling, cousin, grandparent, friend, boss, partner, and teammate. In addition, our social connections include, more modestly but no less importantly, our ordinary, day-to-day interactions with strangers. Such ordinary interactions are minimally decent in that they are neither gratuitously offensive nor indefensibly aggressive. We greet the shop clerk when we buy groceries. We thank the person who brings us a delivery. We chat about the weather with a stranger on the bus. These interactions fall far short of associations since they are momentary, goal- oriented exchanges, and therefore lack the persistence, investment, and meaningfulness of associations. However, they are still a fundamental part of our practice of living harmoniously in close proximity with other people. They are also very important to people who have no closer social ties; and they are often the cradle in which closer ties develop. This chapter puts aside ordinary interactions to focus on the wonderfully diverse, but morally messy world of associations (for a related discussion, see Brownlee 2015a). The potential range of that diversity is constrained only by the limits of our associative imaginations. The associations we are inclined to imagine and realise for ourselves are informed by our community’s cultural norms. Within different cultures, different types of association become dominant, and those 2 dominant types shift as cultural norms shift (cf. Putnam 2000). Consider marriage as an example. In addition to the Western stereotype of the legal, consensual, church- blessed, self-selected, monogamous, heterosexual, adult marriage, there are many other models including homosexual marriages, arranged marriages, civil partnerships, non-monogamous marriages, polygamous marriages, “walking” marriages, forced marriages, and informal partnerships. The moral merits of different models depend partly, but only partly, on cultural and environmental conditions. Human associations are often inescapably morally messy, by which I mean that they are morally complex and problematic in ways that can defy a principled analysis. This is because associations are, by nature, intersubjective: they necessarily involve two or more persons’ interests. We cannot associate alone. (Of course, when we’re self-sufficient, we can dissociate from everyone and then be alone, but often that will be at the expense of someone who would otherwise be our associate.) Consequently, when we choose how, when, why, and with whom to associate, we make decisions that are inescapably bound up with other people’s associative interests. Here are some examples of morally messy associative decisions: • A girl is married off by her family at age twelve, but comes to embrace the marriage as she matures. • An intern has a sexual relationship with a President. • Two people have a one-night stand that leads to an unintended pregnancy. The woman gives the child up for adoption. • Romeo and Juliet risk both each other’s lives and their family members’ lives to be together. 3 • Paul Gauguin leaves his wife and children to become a painter (cf. Williams and Nagel 1976; Williams and Nagel discuss the moral merits of Gauguin’s decision to leave his family, noting that their discussion is not intended to track historical facts.) • A lonely, elderly widower rarely leaves the house, has no social circle, and does not believe he needs or should have one. • A world-renowned, state-funded orchestra admits only male members. • A national youth club refuses to admit openly gay group leaders. • A business club elects only white members. • A group of Neo-Nazi supporters parade publicly together. • A State military refuses to admit either homosexuals or women. • An established Church refuses to elect female bishops. • A bar refuses to serve pregnant women. • A fine dining restaurant refuses to admit children. In some of these cases, the associative part of the persons’ conduct might seem not to matter morally. But, in fact, it does matter morally when one person mistreats another in ways that define their association or dissociation. In what follows, I explore the morality of the form and content of associations. The above associative decisions are morally messy for different reasons. For instance: 1. In some cases, the moral messiness comes from people choosing to be exclusive. The orchestra, military, Church, business club, bar, and restaurant all exclude people. So too does Gauguin when he leaves his 4 family, as does the woman when she puts the child up for adoption. The military and the established Church are also morally complex for another reason, namely, that they are state institutions. 2. In some cases, the moral messiness lies in people making problematic associative decisions for their dependents, such as the family marrying off their twelve year-old daughter, and the woman putting the child up for adoption. 3. In some cases, it comes from associates making decisions that either pose risks for each other, as Romeo and Juliet do for each other, or pose risks for third parties, as Romeo and Juliet do for their families. (That said, it is more accurate to say that Romeo and Juliet act in a way that increases the chance that their families will pose risks to them and to each other.) 4. In some cases, the moral messiness lies in the grey area between autonomy and heteronomy. The lonely widower does not believe he needs or should belong to the social circle that he cannot form without help. The intern is flattered, but also finds it hard to refuse the President’s advances. Associative decisions like these confront us with many tough applied philosophical questions, which can be grouped under three headings that will be the focus of this chapter: 5 1. Content: What kinds of choices, attitudes, and behaviours does freedom of association protect, in principle? 2. Scope: How expansive is our freedom to associate or not as we please with whom we please in the ways we please? What rights-protected space do we have to act wrongly when we form, maintain, dissolve, and avoid particular associations? How does the scope of associative freedom compare with the scope of other personal freedoms such as freedom of expression or religion? 3. Value: What is the value of freedom of association? How does that value compare with the value of securing people’s basic social needs regardless of their associative preferences? What philosophers have to say about these three themes is highly relevant to a host of significant social problems that we confront today, such as pervasive chronic loneliness, social isolation, institutional segregation, child neglect, child abuse, and the neglect of elders (see Chapter 1 of this Companion for an analysis by Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen of the relevance, practical, activist, and empirical conceptions of applied philosophy, all of which pertain to philosophical debates about freedom of association.). In the West at least, aging populations, collapsed social welfare structures, and individualistic cultural norms all threaten people’s abilities to meaningfully build and sustain associations with each other. Moreover, these threats are not necessarily lessened, but may indeed be heightened, by our expanding technological potential. This potential enables us, first, to engage in instantaneous, 6 globalised, digital communication, which can make us “friends” to each other where that often means being alone together (see Turkle 2011). Second, it enables us to deploy (putative) social surrogates such as robots and virtual environments to replace direct human contact,