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Andr L.

Holmes
Phil 408W
Freedom in Opportunities
You enter a mall and decide that you want to get some food because you are hungry. We
will suppose this mall is inside and each section is blocked off by doors; each door being
unlabeled. You come to a cross section with doors thinking that one of these doors leads to the
food court. Conveniently you choose the right one on the first try and disregard all other doors
and their respective areas. Since the food court is what you wanted you in the first place, you
feel free to do as you pleased. But say the door you wanted was locked or went to another area
would this change your outcome? This essay will examine the value of freedom in choices and
why not having the option to select a choice is limiting. We will look at positions from Philip
Pettit, Isaiah Berlin, and Thomas Hobbes to help us determine what factors we should include in
our analysis of choice in freedom.
INTRODUCTION
To begin, we will have to first understand freedom in its negative sense, or put simply,
external obstacles. This aspect of freedom is focused on constraints stopping you. We will first
take a quick look at Hobbes view of nonfrustration to get us started and see why this is an
incomplete view. Next we will look to Berlin and examine his view of negative liberty regarding
noninterference, expanding nonfrustration to include options that we did not choose regardless of
our state of frustration. Last we will enter Pettits view on domination and in which he argues
against Berlins position which he says is an unstable halfway house between the other two
positions.* We will then discuss these two views of Pettit and Berlin, and then defend Berlins
stance of noninterference.
NONFRUSTRATION & NONINTERFERENCE
The idea of nonfrustration can simply be put as your preference is available. With
Hobbes, in our food court example, as long as the food court is available to you, you are free,
since this is what you sought after in the first place. If you wanted to go to the food court but
that door had been locked or you were hindered in some way, this would have led to frustration.
In our simplified Hobbesian view frustration would lead to nonfreedom. With this view of
Hobbes we run into two main problems; first, this notion is based on desires or just lack of
accessibility, and second is that within this view we are greatly hindered in the number of other
options that can be taken. This view of nonfrustration is a lesser level of freedom as compared to
the other ones we will discuss later. If we think of this view in regards to desire, a change in
desire would then change your freedom. This is wrong. As described by Richard Arneson,
Suppose you were the subject of a tyrant or slave master who forcibly attached
an electrode to your head, or beamed a special ray at you, the effect of which was
to cause you to desire whatever the tyrant or master wishes you to desire.*
This example shows us that desires are not a sound basis to lay the foundation of freedom on. If
at a time your desires were not controlled by said tyrant you could still experience the phase of
nonfrustration. If you get what you think you wanted then you, in this Hobbesian sense are free.
Thus desires in this aspect of liberty are of less important, so we will disregard it and get back on
track. The next problem is the limit of choices, with Hobbes it does not matter if someone is
stopping you from going to any other court. In our above example you are free if you prefer the
food court and are allowed to go there no other options are accounted for.
Referring back to our example you are back at the corridor with the doors leading to each
other section. This time at half the doors a security guard inhibits your entrance and every one of
the remaining doors is locked or jammed your options are now more limited. This starts to
illustrate Berlins noninterference, or more so interference. You are less free to enter three out of
four of these doors, though the one you want to enter is open. The two doors inhibited by the
guards lead to courts with a free give away. Each one contains a mix of free food clothes and
other things you might find valuable. Another door which is jammed, leads to a kitchen supply
store which contains supplies to cook your own food. These options could be available to you,
but one is stopped by a guard and the other door is jammed. The constraints to your situation are
accumulating even before you can consider all your options. Is not having the availability to do
something you might not want to do a hindrance on freedom? According to Berlin you have to
have the options to go whatever routes are available in order to participate in full freedom, there
can be no interference. This expansion is Berlins noninterference. With the addition of these
other option Hobbes idea of nonfrustration now has full access to all potential options. Though
you might prefer the chicken its still nice to be able to get the beef or fish, rather than have these
choices unavailable.
PETTIT: DOMINATION
Pettit takes the building blocks of Berlin (and Hobbes) and tries to expand it to a new
outlook of freedom, which he feels is on the other side of Hobbes and a more complete view of
what Berlin had strived for. Pettit adds the factor of influence over a person that one may have
in his completion of freedom. Though the one exerting this power does not actually interfere,
they still pose as a factor in Pettits view.
To the extent that I have a power of interfering without cost in your choice, I
count as dominating you; I am in a position associated iconically with a master or
dominus.*
But what exactly does this mean? This leads us back to an example we had earlier. Arneson
talked of a tyrant, which is similar to this case insofar as you are not fully accountable for your
choices. The tyrant directly interferes with your choice either through machine or beam, but
with this master of dominus, they indirectly affect you r choice, making the choice still yours but
affected by another. So what would domination note? Consider the case of the food court; you
are with your significant other, who tends to hold a good amount of power over you and could be
considered a dominus, so you reconsider if you are actually hungry and cut off the option of the
food court from your choices to please your significant other.
The ideal of freedom as nondomination would argue, then, for quite dramatic
limitations on the power that one person or group of persons may have of
imposing their will on another.*
In the aspect of nondomination it would be as though the dominus had no effect over you though
they might be there in person. This is an obvious factor that cannot be ignored for in the
majority of situations there is some type of dominus acting upon your choice, of some
magnitude, hindering your freedom to some degree.
SNYTHESIS OF BERLIN & PETTIT
Dealing with these two ideas we can see some overlap and some divergence. Berlins
halfway house, as stated by Pettit, can actually encompass Pettits view if put in the right light.
Though we are looking more into the aspect of negative freedom and Pettits view starts to lean
toward the positive side we still account for it as a limiting factor. The view of Berlin is about
noninterference, and the nondomination of Pettit can be seen as interference, though not in the
sense of Berlins interferences. I see Berlins normal view as direct interferences, and the
addition of Pettit just adds indirect interferences to the claim of noninterference. A door directly
stops you from changing locations, while forgetting your key acts as a less direct constrain from
you entering a room. A missing key held by your friend whether by intent or not is still an
obstacle in entering the door. Thus we can say the direct obstacle of not having a key is present
though it comes from your friend indirectly taking it. This example shows us elements of both
direct and indirect interference and must both be noted.
To demonstrate a more indirect interference let us say your friend didnt take your key
but said Hey before you go in can you___. This now stops you from entering the other room
momentarily. The downfall I find in the view of domination is that when it all boils down you
do not actually have to listen to these indirect interferences. In the last example if you
completely disregard your friend acquiring goal is undisrupted. In all instances of domination,
we must isolate the single event, or only look at the event without outside forces acting as a
factor. Thus we can determine disregarding the dominus hinders your choice a negligible amount
as it is an outside force and in the instance of obtaining your goal it is irrelevant. The only thing
that is affected is your relationship with the dominus and your emotions, the former being
external and thus can be negated in this choice and the latter internal but not relatable to the
choice at hand. This also goes back to the notion that desire brought and thus we should ignore
again.
Being able to choose whatever choice you want from all that are available starts to
maximize freedom. The benefits of always having maximum freedom give you the option of
having the choice you preferred. Maximum freedom also opens up other options that you might
find more beneficial than your preference. Preference changes could also occur because of the
newly available options thus changing your future preferences. You may not always be able to
choose what you want, but if you can choose all options the want can become disregarded and a
proper choice that is truly beneficial to you can be chosen rather than a superficial choice.
CONCLUSION
Hobbes introduced us to the notion of nonfrustration, getting your preference and having
no regard for another option. Berlin then gave us noninterference, having all options open to us
regardless of which one you wanted and having no thing to interfere with your choice. Pettit
then tried to expand on this notion and brought us nondomination as the main focus of all
negative liberty. We then critiqued Pettits view and diminished it to an outer realm of Berlins
noninterference. It always poses as a better choice to maximize choices not only for preferential
reason but beneficial reason that may not be known or obvious. As such talked about above
getting food could be beneficial to one who is a diabetic or has an unknown deficiency of some
type. Freedom comes from our choices and if we have nothing to choose from we truly would
have nothing.


*SOURCES:
Thomas Hobbes Leviathan (1651) via Freedom: A Philosophical Anthology
Richard J. Arneson Freedom and Desire (1985) via Freedom: A Philosophical Anthology
Isaiah Berlin Four Essays on Liberty (including Two Concepts of Liberty) (1969)
Philip Pettit Republicanism (1997) via Freedom: A Philosophical Anthology
Philip Pettit The Instability of Freedom as Noninterference: The Case of Isaiah Berlin via
Jstor.org http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/660694

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