The University of Chicago Freedom a Dissertation

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO FREEDOM A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY BY PASCAL BRIXEL CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2020 © 2020 Pascal Brixel All rights reserved For my parents TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. v Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgments .................................................................................................................... viii Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter I. Is Freedom One or Many? ...................................................................................... 15 Chapter II. Kantianism, Moralism, and Psychologism ......................................................... 53 Chapter III. Freedom as Activity for Its Own Sake ............................................................... 94 Chapter IV. Coercion and Exploitation ................................................................................. 135 Chapter V. Toil .......................................................................................................................... 198 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 236 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 240 - iv - LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Freedom as actuality and as potentiality ................................................................. 16 Table 2. Dimensions of freedom ............................................................................................... 18 - v - ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I develop and defend a conception of external freedom: freedom in relation to other people and the extrapersonal material world. One does something freely, I argue, only if one does it for its own sake and not merely for the sake of further ends. Historically, this idea is rooted in the work of Aristotle and especially Marx. It is more or less foreign, however, to the mainstream of contemporary analytic philosophy, and it has controversial political implications, particularly with respect to the social organization of labor. Mainstream accounts of freedom can be divided roughly into “negative” and “positive” theories. “Negative” theories tend to construe freedom as the absence of interpersonal coercion. Such approaches, I argue, are unable to make sense not only of non-interpersonal unfreedom and its social significance but even of coercion, for they fail to explain the way in which coercion makes its victim unfree, and consequently explain the wrongfulness of coercion in the wrong way. “Positive” theories, on the other hand, tend to construe freedom as autonomy, understood in terms of practical reason or desire. I argue that in their currently dominant forms, these theories are also unable to make sense of coercion because they misconstrue the unfreedom of coerced action as a defective form of internal self-relation, such as an impaired ability to set one’s own ends or to adjust one’s lower-order desires on the basis of one’s higher-order desires. My own account is a “positive” conception of freedom as autonomy which makes room for genuinely external forms of unfreedom. I begin with the familiar idea - vi - that doing something freely requires doing what one wants to do. But the relevant kind of desire, I argue, is intrinsic desire—the desire to do something on account of its intrinsic value. It follows that one does something freely only if one does it for its own sake, and not merely instrumentally. Free activity must be, in Marx’s terms, not “merely a means to satisfy needs external to it” but itself “the satisfaction of a need.” I show that this view makes sense of paradigm cases of unfreedom including the unfreedom of coerced action. Coerced action, by virtue of the peculiarly external way in which it is incentivized, is essentially a species of merely instrumental action and therefore unfree. I argue, however, that other activities motivated by similarly external incentives—such as paid labor—are merely instrumental, and therefore unfree, in the same way. Notwithstanding some moral differences between them, both coercively threatening someone and incentivizing them by means of payment are ways of objectionably using that person as a mere means. Finally, I show that toil—labor which is intrinsically unchoiceworthy by virtue of its content—is as such unfree. This includes “bullshit jobs” which the worker considers pointless as well as routine labor which affords the worker no meaningful scope for deliberation in her work. I argue that a market economy can be expected to give rise to avoidable toil of both kinds, and hence to avoidable unfreedom. The market, moreover, is also an unsuitable mechanism for the distribution of unavoidable toil, since such toil, as a form of socially necessary unfreedom, constitutes a distinctive social burden incommensurable with socioeconomic goods. If we are genuinely committed to living in a society of free people, I conclude, we have a collective duty to seek an alternative to the market as the central form of the social organization of productive activity. - vii - ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I could not have begun or finished this dissertation without the help of many friends, colleagues, and teachers. For keeping the Philosophy Department running and for their absolutely dependable administrative support on many occasions, I am grateful to William Weaver and Jessica Barbaro. For their role in preparing me for this stage of my education in the first place, I am grateful to many past teachers, especially Avner Baz, the late Bob Hargrave, Shannon Leggett, and Tony Ackerman. I am also grateful for the support and solidarity of many friends and colleagues, especially Dan Paget, Rory O’Connell, Amichai Amit, Jacob Butcher, and the Philosophy graduate students at the University of Chicago, as well as organizers and members of TPL and GSU, especially Jacob Swenson-Lengyel, Will Tanzman, and Jake Werner. My most direct thanks go to my committee. A.J. Julius came onboard relatively late in the process, but offered generous and invaluable advice. While I always get the feeling, when I read his work, of having encountered a fellow traveler and kindred spirit, his criticisms significantly improved this dissertation. I am particularly grateful to A.J. for pressing me to take more seriously the distinctiveness of coercion, and the magnetism of the thought that an ideal of freedom must be fully attainable in principle—that “the fix must be metaphysical, not technological.” I am still grappling with some of his challenges, and I look forward to many more conversations. Dan Brudney’s influence on this project extends from its overall shape down to the details. It was in one of his classes that I first read Marx’s early writings, and Dan’s - viii - own work on the early Marx has also been an inspiration. The many challenges he has put to me in conversation, moreover, have been indispensable to me. To begin with, he convinced me that my conception of freedom would require a much more substantial defense than I had initially planned for. Since then, his feedback has improved every part of my dissertation and made my arguments more careful and patient on countless occasions, especially when it came to responding to alternative accounts of freedom and autonomy. Ben Laurence has likewise helped me in fundamental ways. His objections, questions, and reading suggestions always targeted the most important issues and were unfailingly useful, especially in putting me into conversation with the Kantian and republican traditions and in pressing me to clarify the role of the concept of freedom in second-personal claims. I also want to mention that I immensely appreciated Ben’s encouragement along the way, which helped to sustain me at difficult moments. More generally, both Ben’s teaching and his writings in political philosophy have been formative for me. I am grateful especially for his continued reminder that we have to do political philosophy in such a way that we can say with a straight face that what we are doing is part of a real, practical endeavor of social change. Anton Ford, who chaired the committee, has been one of my most important teachers and mentors. The clarity and systematicity of his thought sets the standard to which I aspire in philosophy. More concretely, it was in his seminar that I first read Capital, and Anton’s understanding of Aristotle and Marx has shaped this dissertation in too many ways to count. Throughout the long process of writing, moreover, Anton has been generous with his time and provided direct, detailed, and invaluable substantive feedback. Equally importantly, he has consistently offered emotional - ix - support and practical advice, and I am not sure I could have gotten this project off the ground if he had not believed in it from the beginning, when it was a very ill-formed and indeterminate thing. Finally, I am grateful to Anton for his role in inspiring me to become involved in real political organizing, beginning

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